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In the final leg of a long and costly lawsuit against the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), U.S. district judge Hugh Lawson ruled in favor of ACGIH, dismissing claims by the National Mining Association and others* that the non-profit, scientific organization violated Georgia’s Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. (A complete case study on this matter appears at DefendingScience.org.) The court also rejected the industry-plaintiff’s attempt to resurrect related claims against the Department of Labor, reprimanding them with:
“The Court disagrees with the Plaintiffs’ asssessment that this case somehow breathes life into expired claims and will not entertain any discussions towards a count already dismissed.”
The Court defended ACGIH, saying it is:
“a non-profit association comprised of a group of scientists…more like an entity designed to promote ideas than one that engages in deceptive advertising in an effort to derive a financial benefit.”
A few days ago, researchers at West Virginia School of Medicine who are involved in the C8 Health Project provided some initial results from the 69,030 participants who live in the vicinity of DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, WV. The information was presented at a May 7 public lecture entitled “The C8 Health Project: How a Class Action Lawsuit Can Interact with Public Health: History of Events” (Slides here), and was reported in the Charleston Gazette (here).
The Weinberg Group is one of the product defense firms I write about in my new book “Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health.” These firms help polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products avoid regulation – only now the Weinberg Group is not a product defense firm, it’s transformed itself into a “product support” firm.
The May 12th issue of Newsweek contains Sharon Begley’s excellent review of Doubt is Their Product (which should now be available in your local bookstore). Naturally, we like it because it says nice things about David’s book, but we also think Begley does a terrific job describing the kinds of abuses the book chronicles. It’s not surprising to see her giving a pithy summary of how polluters manufacture uncertainty, since she wrote last year’s Newsweek cover story “Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine,” which provides one of the best overviews of the global warming denial movement I’ve seen.
The review is well worth a read; here’s a taste:
Just as the 60-day deadline approached for filing a legal challenge to a new health standard to protect mine workers from asbestos exposure, mining industry trade associations submitted their petitions in federal court. MSHA’s rule was published on February 29, and tick-tock, like clockwork, the National Mining Assoc, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Assoc (NSSGA) and others filed suits in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting judicial review of MSHA’s rule. Under both the OSHA and MSHA statutues, ”any person who may be adversely affect by a [newly promulgated] standard” may file a petition in the US Court of Appeals challenging the “validity of the standard.”
These legal challenges to worker health and safety standards are typical—nearly every final OSHA health standard was challenged by some industry association—It’s just part of the standard-operating due-process protections afforded hazardous materials to which workers are exposed. Even in this case, for ASBESTOS, a known carcinogenic and respiratory toxin which has been responsible for the death and disability of hundreds of thousands of individuals, is still granted its “day in court.”
The story barely received a blurb in the U.S. press (Thurs, 4/10/08). Inside a refrigerated truck designed to transport seafood, a group of 121 Burmese women, men and children were suffocating inside, just hoping to make it to their destination—work–a job–in the resort towns on the Andaman coast of Thailand. According to the Asia Times, the truck was following a route taken by tens of thousands of Burmese, seeking jobs in Thailand’s fisheries industry, construction sector and rubber and palm oil plantations. The UN-affiliated Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational Accident Victims (ANROAV), coodinated by Jadish Patel (APHA/OHS awardee), urges the worldwide community of workers’ rights advocates to condemn the economic, social and political environment in Burma which makes illegal migration necessary for these workers. When this truck was seized, 54 of the migrant workers had perished, including 37 young women.
Catch Devra Davis on BookTV this weekend, talking about her terrific book The Secret History of the War on Cancer. More details, including broadcast times, are here.
Earlier this month, I wrote in Restoring FOIA about recently passed amendments to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which were signed into law by President Bush on Dec. 31, 2007. Supporters of the OPEN Government Act, including the Society for Environmental Journalists (SEJ), are hoping that these new FOIA requirements will bring easier and speedier access to government records. The new law requires the Administration to create an ”Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)” to review agencies’ compliance with FOIA and serve as an ombudsman for FOIA users.
Suddenly, late last week, the emails were flying across the ever-informative SEJ listserve that the Bush Administration is “trying to hijack” the OGIS. The Bush Plan? To shift the office from NARA and to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Yes, the same DOJ that defends EPA, OSHA and other agencies in lawsuits filed by FOIA requesters.
The Pump Handle will be on hiatus for the remainder of the year.
We wish all of our readers and friends a healthy, peaceful 2008.
Exactly one year ago today, we published our first post here on The Pump Handle. It’s been an eventful year, to say the least.
By far, our most popular post was David Michaels’s “Popcorn Lung Coming to Your Kitchen? The FDA Doesn’t Want to Know,” which publicized the first reported case of bronchiolitis obliterans in a consumer and the pathetic reaction from public health agencies. Of course this is just one piece of the larger butter-flavoring story, which we’ve been following since our inception, mostly focusing on OSHA’s superficial responses to a hazard that’s robbing workers of their lung capacity.
We’ve also kept ourselves busy advocating for drug-safety reforms at FDA; considering ways to improve occupational health and safety in the U.S.; monitoring White House attempts to seize more control over regulatory agencies; weighing in on the conflict-of-interest issues surrounding the bisphenol A risk assessment; and criticizing the CPSC for its lackluster response to lead-tainted toys and other unsafe products. As tragedy unfolded at the collapsed Crandall Canyon mine in Utah, we explored the problems that contributed to the disaster and ways to keep miners safer.
What does it take for MSHA’s Richard Stickler and the Solicitor of Labor to do their jobs?
- Front-page newspaper stories about MSHA’s failures?
- A letter from a grieving mother?
- A petition signed by other family-member victims of workplace fatalities?
Apparently, it took all this and more for MSHA finally to decide that the November 8, 2005 coal truck accident at the Alliance Resources’ Metikki Mine which killed Chad Cook, 25, was work-related.
Since we broke the story of the first “popcorn lung” case in a popcorn consumer, many new readers have visited The Pump Handle. We’ve been writing about the hazards of diacetyl for years (here and here, for example). If this is your first visit, you might want to know who we are, where our name comes from, and why we are constantly writing about ways the FDA, EPA, OSHA, MSHA, CPSC, and other federal regulatory agencies could better protect our health and environment. Read the rest of this entry »
A mere nine months after the National Academy of Science told OMB to junk its junk science proposal, the Bush administration is at it again. On Wednesday, OIRA administrator Susan Dudley and OSTP’s associate director Sharon Hays sent a memorandum to all executive agencies. The memo advised that “after carefully evaluating [the] constructive recommendations from the NAS, as well as feedback from rigorous interagency review, and public comments” OMB decided not to issue a final version of its risk assessment bulletin, but instead, to issue a memorandum “to enhance the scientific quality, objectivity, and utility of Agency risk analyses and the complementary objectives of improving efficiency and consistency among the Federal family.”
Translation: Fine, we’ll nix the bulletin, but if you think we’re just going to walk away without getting our two cents in, you’ve got another think coming.
President Bush has nominated Dr. James W. Holsinger, Jr. to be U.S. Surgeon General. Here’s the short item from the Associated Press:
President Bush has nominated a Kentucky cardiologist who is interested in fighting childhood obesity to be the next surgeon general, the White House announced. The nominee, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Kentucky, has led Kentucky’s health care system, taught at several medical schools and served more than three decades in the Army Reserve, retiring in 1993 as a major general.
Head over to Effect Measure for more details about Holsigner, such as his anti-gay religious views and the incompetence and negligence at the Department of Veterans Affairs when Holsinger was its Chief Medical Officer.
“That mine scared me to death,” is the headline for the Charleston Gazette’s story by stellar reporter Ken Ward. He relays the experience of MSHA inspector, Minness Justice, who was responsible for inspecting A.T. Massey’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine in the three month’s preceding the coal mine fire on January 19, 2006, which killed miners Don Bragg, 33 and Ellery Hatfield, 46. The inspector admits he didn’t see a missing ventilation wall which likely would have prevented some of the smoke from the conveyor belt fire from penetrating into the miners’ escapeway. Ward’s interview reveals in troubling prose the challenges faced by mine inspectors:
“‘There are maybe 13,000 stopppings in this coal mine,’ Justice said, ‘We don’t touch every stopping in the mine.’”
OMB Watch is reporting that the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Chaired by Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) will soon hold a confirmation hearing on Susan E. Dudley. nominated to be Administrator of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The office, part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), oversees all of the Administration’s regulatory (or anti-regulatory) activities.
There’s lot’s more information on Ms. Dudley, and on OMB’s latest shenanigans, at OMB Watch’s website Dudley Watch. Genevieve Smith, at the American Prospect Online, dubbed Ms. Dudley “The Anti-Regulator,” in a profile you had better read if the rumors are true:
Dudley’s public comments written during her time at Mercatus [a free market policy advocacy group] reveal a hostility towards environmental, health, and safety regulations that is ideological and virtually total. As Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Action has said, “Susan Dudley makes John Graham [previous head of OIRA] look like Ralph Nader.” Laura MacCleery of Public Citizen’s CongressWatch, who helped spearhead the campaign against Graham’s nomination, put the matter even more bluntly: “John Graham has an anti-regulatory bias, but Susan Dudley is an anti-regulatory crusader. This is like trading in a scalpel for a sledge hammer.”
This week, two Senate Committees will focus attention on worker safety and health topics. On Wednesday, February 28, Senator Tom Harkin’s Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS and Education will receive testimony on “Improving Mine Safety: One Year after Sago and Alma.” On Thursday, March 1, Senator Patty Murray’s Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing entitled “Asbestos: Still Lethal, Still Legal: The Need to Better Protect the Health of American Workers and Their Families.”
Dr. Tony Robbins recent response to my draft on OSHA at 35 makes the important point that economic developments are often more powerful than public health initiatives as determinants of environmental and occupational illness. I agree with his thought that predictive models of exposure might facilitate anticipatory public health strategies rather than our more typical efforts to catch up after the fact. It is with this in mind that we need to focus on forward looking ideas rather than dwelling on the frustration that comes from a close look at worker protection in the OSHA years. Here are three. Read the rest of this entry »
Christopher Thomas needed to make some extra money. The 51-year old welder—also a husband and father of two—had begun work in the GMD Shipyard in Brooklyn Navy Yard about a week before. It was mid-morning on a Saturday—his day off—but Thomas had come into work anyway. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
The Bush Administration has been unsuccessful in convincing Congress to pass legislation rolling back public health and environmental protection, even when both the Senate and the House were controlled by Republicans. Some notable examples: attempts to gut the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act failed miserably.
With the Democrats in control of Congress, and less then two years left in office, the Bush Administration has evidently decided to end run Congress and use executive power to handcuff the public health and environmental agencies. That’s not just my opinion. It’s the prediction of Fred Barnes, editor of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, according to Howard Kurtz’s Media Notes blog at the Washington Post.
The Science Blogging Conference, held this past weekend at UNC-Chapel Hill, wasn’t just for bloggers. Many of the attendees, particularly science students and educators, came to learn how they could use blogs, and some of them launched their own blogs over the course of the weekend. The journalists in attendance seemed to be immersed in the blogosphere already: some were blogging as part of their jobs, some relied on bloggers as sources, and some were both bloggers and journalists.
During the conference, I found it particularly interesting to hear different conversations about how blogging and more traditional forms of science journalism complement and conflict with one another.
There have been a number of thoughtful and challenging comments on the future of safety and health posted in the past week. I want to acknowledge some of these and also to suggest more discussion about the principles that might help choose which potential actions to increase worker protection should get priority attention. Read the rest of this entry »
We’re going to start sending out a weekly digest of blog posts via email. If you’d like to sign up, send an email to thepumphandle [at] gmail [dot] com with “subscribe” in the subject line.
The Pump Handle is taking the remainder of the year off.
We wish all of our readers and friends a healthy, peaceful 2007.
by Revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
We continue our summary of the Institute of Medicine “Letter Report” on non-drug non-vaccine measures to slow or contain the spread of an influenza pandemic of a severity similar or worse than that of 1918 (see previous post on models here). The IOM report examined several analyses of historical data from 1918 to see if it was possible to obtain information on the effectiveness interventions on the pattern of outbreaks in various cities in the US. It is well known that both timing and severity varied a great deal in that pandemic. The goal was to see if differences in morbidity and mortality were related to specific actions taken in response.
by Revere and cross-posted at Effect Measure on October 24, 2006
An urgent communication from the World Health Organization (WHO) expresses concisely how far behind we are in being prepared for a global pandemic of influenza. Currently there are a number of vaccines under development, some of which might protect against an H5N1 virus that has become readily transmissible from person to person. But none are in production, and even if some were found adequate (not the case) and large scale production begun (far from the case), we, the world, would still be in a fix:
by PotomacFeverish
What is on the agenda for science during the last 2 years of this Administration? Many believe that with the change in Congress, now we can relax regarding the abuse of science that we have seen in recent years. The scientific community needs to be aware that much of the actions taken by the Executive Branch cannot be blocked by Congress, at least not in the short term. Every administration has made promises, and they often endeavor to come through on these promises during the last few years (or even the last few months) of their term of office. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, if the goals are consistent with good science, public health and the law. Are we going to see a “compromising” Executive Branch, working with Congress, promoting good science, or are we going to see more of what we have seen in the past, issuing of regulations, decisions, and policies that undermine the missions of our health, environment, and science-based agencies?
by David Ozonoff
My new Pump Handle blog colleague, “Revere”, has posted on NIH’s proposal to limit the Research Plan section of Research Project Grant applications to 15 pages, down from the current 25. He/she/they (Revere’s blog, Effect Measure, is ambiguous as to how many Reveres there are) also gives a peek into the NIH grant review process, something people are often curious about. As Revere says, it’s a bit like seeing how sausages are made. You might not want to know. In any event, since Revere opened up the topic and since this site is more pitched to public health professionals than Effect Measure (which is a public health blog for anyone interested in public health), I thought I’d add my thoughts on things I’ve found to be most important in writing an NIH grant proposal.
The story of the pump handle is familiar to any first-semester public health student: During the London cholera epidemic of 1854, John Snow examined maps of cholera cases and traced the disease to water from a local pump. At the time, the prevailing theory held that cholera spread through the air, rather than water, so Snow faced criticism from others in the science community – not to mention resistance from the water companies. He finally convinced community leaders to remove the pump’s handle to prevent further exposure
We’ve created The Pump Handle blog to serve as a gathering place for people interested in public health and the environment. Science is the product of community effort, and it often takes a community effort to make sure that science is used appropriately, and not buried or corrupted for ideological or profit-making reasons.
Are there new ideas or discoveries from the public health or environmental fields that you think deserve more attention – or that aren’t getting explained quite right in the mainstream media? Leave us a comment and let us know.
