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Three Indiana men – Stoney Powell, 45 and Roy Mathis, 60 of Wheatfield, and William Decker, 48 of Scottsburg – were killed near Searcy, Arkansas on Wednesday, May 14 in an explosion at a fuel storage facility. The three men worked for the Kentucky-based firm C&C Welding. Losing a loved one is difficult in any circumstance, but it must be especially painful when your love is killed so far away from home. An Associated Press story reports that the storage facility is owned by TEPPCO Partners LP (NYSE: TPP) and the firm’s spokesman Rick Rainey noted:
“the explosion occurred just before 2:30 p.m…..[and] the tank had been previously cleaned and workers were preparing to install a new gauge on it. [I]t was not immediately clear whether the workers were inside or outside of the tank at the time of the explosion.”
Other brief news is provided at KATV coverage and ArkansasMatters.com.
Offer a moment of silence for these men and their families.
The nonprofit group OMB Watch is a terrific resource for learning about and monitoring the inner workings of the government. Their mission is “to increase government transparency and accountability; to ensure sound, equitable regulatory and budgetary processes and policies; and to protect and promote active citizen participation in our democracy.” Over the years, I’ve had many occasions to appreciate how they track and explain the easy-to-overlook steps in the regulatory process that profoundly affect public health.
OMB Watch has just launched a new website, and I’m particularly excited to see that they’ve combined their former blogs – Reg Watch, the Budget Blog, and Advocacy Blog – into a single blog called The Fine Print. (Regular readers will probably recognize Reg Watch from its frequent appearances in the Friday Blog Roundup.) Here are a few of the posts you’ll find there:
- Congress takes on toxics … again: Congressman Frank Pallone has introduced a bill to strengthen the Toxics Release Inventory, which the Bush administration weakened with a 2006 rule.
- House Passes Bill to Improve Information Sharing with First Responders: The House passes legislation that would make it easier for all levels of government to access information generated by the Department of Homeland Security about security and terrorism.
- GAO Report Highlights High-Risk Areas: A new report from the Government Accountability Office identifies three new high-risk areas that are either susceptible to high levels of waste, fraud, and abuse or in need of transformational change to achieve greater efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability.
Visit OMB Watch’s new website for more of their new look and content.
I was on the National Mall yesterday when Barack Obama took the oath of office and gave his inaugural address, and the mood was both delighted and solemn. The densely packed crowd alternated between loud cheers and reverent silence as Obama spoke.
Our new president was blunt in his description of our current situation, reminding us that we’re at war, our economy is badly weakened, and our healthcare, education, and energy systems are far from where they should be (full text here). But he expressed confidence that we can meet these challenges:
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.
What I found most heartening about the speech was not just this faith in our country’s abilities, but the “common purpose” that Obama outlined, which included these:
OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) cleared yesterday’s OSHA’s advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) on the butter-flavoring agent diacetyl. The OIRA website indicates the review was completed on 1/14/09, with a recommendation for some change(s) to the document.
Diacetyl is associated with serious lung impairment in exposed workers, including the debilitating disease bronchiolitis obliterans. See the SKAPP website for further information (here).
The Pump Handle will be on vacation for the remainder of the year. Comments are still welcome, especially on Progressive Public Health posts.
We wish all of our readers and friends a healthy, peaceful 2009.
I received an email today from Leo Gerard, the Int’l President of the United Steelworkers, the 850,000 person-strong union of men and women employed in Canada and the U.S. who work in the metals, rubber, chemicals, paper, oil refining and the service industries. His email simply read:
Excellent video celebrating 60th anniversary of UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Please watch and remember how powerful it is to treat every human being and our planet with dignity. Regards, leo.
Dear President Gerard. Thanks.
Watch it (00:04:31)
Our post on preventing falls among the elderly has been included in the latest edition of Hourglass, a monthly blog carnival devoted to the biology of aging. Alvaro at SharpBrains has assembled recent aging-related posts in a creative format; for more, check out Ouroboros for the Hourglass archive, submission info, and upcoming schedule.
Blog carnivals are regular compilations of blog posts on a chosen topic. Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock provides a comprehensive overview of the carnival concept and regularly links to new carnival editions. Here are just a few more carnivals related to public health:
- Grand Rounds, the weekly rotating carnival of the best of the medical blogosphere
- Health Wonk Review, a biweekly compendium of the best of the health policy blogs
- Carnival of the Green, a weekly digest of the green blogosphere
- Cancer Research Blog Carnival, a monthly carnival devoted to all things cancer-related
If you’ve got a favorite public health-related carnival to share, leave a link in the comments.
“This happens. We live with that.”
These are the words of ironworker Luis Guzman, who was working at the site of a new Manhattan skyscraper Tuesday when his fellow worker, Anthony Espito, 43, fell 40 stories (roughly 400 feet) to the ground. He was killed instantly. It appeared Mr. Espito was in fact wearing a safety harness, but it wasn’t attached to anything.
Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette has been following closely and reporting on the deadly blast on Aug 28 at the multinational Bayer CropScience’s plant in Institute, WV. His first story (here) indicated that witnesses saw a red fireball at about 10:25 pm, and that thousands of residents were told to shelter in place, and his next story reported on the plant’s rocky safety record. Mr. Barry Withrow, 45, who was killed in the blast was buried on Sept 1. This small WV town is well known in public health circles because of its notorious connection to Bhopal, India and that city’s experience with a deadly MIC release in 1984 at a Union Carbide plant which killed 3,000 and maimed thousands more.
Ken Ward’s continuing investigation offers extremely disturbing news today, with the Charleston Gazette’s headline reading: Bayer withheld details of blast in 911 calls. He writes:
“Bayer CropScience officials repeatedly refused to give local emergency responders details about last week’s explosion and fire, according to recordings of phone calls between the company’s Institute plant and Kanawha County’s Metro 911 Center. Plant officials told dispatchers that there was an ‘emergency’ in progress, but said the company instructed them not to provide more details.”
The Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) confirmed yesterday that it has referred evidence related to the Crandall Canyon disaster to a federal district attorney for a possible criminal investigation. Murray Energy was assessed a $1.34 million civil penalty on July 24 for violations related to the massive ground failure which took the lives of nine men, but the Mine Act of 1977 also provides for criminal penalties which include up to one year in jail. (In contrast, the OSH Act’s criminal provisions only allows up to 6 months in jail.) The referral was made through the Mine Safety and Health Review Commission to the U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman.
