What does Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee have to do with a COSH group, specifically the Connecticut Council on Occupational Safety and Health (ConnectiCOSH)?

Well, one of the witnesses invited to testify by the minority (Republican) members of the Committee is New Haven, CT fire fighter, Frank Ricci.  He was the lead plaintiff in a discrimination case, ruled upon by a three-judge panel which included judge Sotomayor, and overturned in a 5-4 decision last month by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

According to Mr. Frank Ricci’s website, he is “Director of Fire Services for ConnectiCOSH.”  Here’s the problem: ConnectiCOSH doesn’t have a director of fire services, and according to organization’s leadership, Mr. Ricci does not hold ANY elected or appointed position with their group.  

TPMDC has a copy of a letter sent by ConnectiCOSH to Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, setting the record straight about Mr. Ricci’s affiliation with Connecti-COSH.  For our benefit, TPMDC has a screenshot of fire fighter Ricci’s website on which he claims:

“serves as the Director of Fire Services for ConnectiCOSH.”

I hope the Senate Judiciary Committee posts a copy of Mr. Ricci’s written statement on their webpage to see if he makes the claim in his testimony as well.  He is scheduled to testify today (July 16).

P.S.  ConnectiCOSH’s Steve Schrag will be awarded the Tony Mazzocchi award at the 2009 American Public Health Association’s OHS Section awards luncheon on November 10 at the Philadelphia Convention Center.  (See full OHS Section program here)

Last year, coal miner Scott Howard of Letcher County, Kentucky sued the Mine Safety and Health Administration for failing to “promulgate a respirable dust regulation that will eliminate respiratory illness caused by work in coal mines.” Howard alleged that this failure left him in unsafe working conditions; he filed his suit after new studies found bluck lung disease increasing among Appalachian miners. As Ken Ward Jr. reports in the Charleston Gazette, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has now ruled that “Howard could not successfully bring the lawsuit because he had not yet petitioned MSHA directly to write the regulations.”

In 1969, federal law limited coal dust in underground mines to 2 milligrams per cubic meter of air. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has long recommended that the limit but halved. The Clinton administration’s effort to tighten the limit wasn’t completed by the time the Bush administration took office, and Bush’s MSHA chief Dave Lauriski dropped the proposal. Ward notes in his Coal Tattoo blog that the decision against Howard puts the ball back in MSHA’s court, and wonders whether Joe Main, Obama’s pick to run MSHA, will be confirmed quickly and be able to speed up the process on a coal-dust rule; right now, the administration isn’t planning to even publish a proposed rulemaking until April 2011.

In other news:

Savannah Morning News (Georgia): Following the explosion at Imperial Sugar’s Port Wentworth refinery that killed 14 people and injured many more, OSHA conducted interviews with more than 100 workers. Reports from these interviews suggest many workers were never trained by the company on how to evacuate the building in an emergency.

The Desert Sun (California): A group of farmworkers from the Coachella Valley petitioned California and federal lawmakers to provide them with clean drinking water and sewer systems.

Washington Post: Robert Ranghelli talked to news outlets about mishandling of bodies at the funeral hope where he worked; now, he’s been fired for violating company policy by speaking with the media.

New York Times (editorial): The Labor Department should move swiftly to improve pay and overtime rules for home healthcare aides.

Yesterday, President Obama announced his choice for the Surgeon General post: Regina Benjamin, a family doctor who built and repeatedly rebuilt a rural health clinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. She was the first African-American woman to be named to the American Medical Association’s Board of Trustees, became President of Alabama’s State Medical Association in 2002, and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2008. In his remarks, though, Obama explained that it’s Benjamin’s experience delivering care in an underserved area that makes her such an appropriate choice at this particular moment:

For nearly two decades, Dr. Regina Benjamin has seen in a very personal way what is broken about our health care system.  She’s seen an increasing number of patients who’ve had health insurance their entire lives suddenly lose it because they lost their jobs or because it’s simply become too expensive.  She’s been a relentless promoter of prevention and wellness programs, having treated too many costly and — diseases and complications that didn’t have to happen.  And she’s witnessed the shortage of primary care physicians in the rural and underserved areas where she works.

But for all that she’s seen and all the tremendous obstacles that she has overcome, Regina Benjamin also represents what’s best about health care in America — doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients; those Americans who would do anything to heal a fellow citizen. Through floods and fires and severe want, Regina Benjamin has refused to give up.  Her patients have refused to give up.  And when we were talking in the Oval Office, she said:  The one thing I want to do is make sure that this Surgeon General’s Office gives voice to patients, that patients have a seat at the table; somebody is advocating for them and speaking for them.

Because the Surgeon General’s chief function is to use the bully pulpit to advance the administration’s health priorities, it’s telling that Obama chose a Surgeon General who will presumably advocate for improving healthcare access for those who are underserved. I expect we’ll see her in the news promoting the mechanisms Congress chooses for making insurance more widely available and affordable (those mechanisms could include a public plan, a health insurance exchange, a Medicaid expansion, and premium subsidies).

There’s another part of her biography I hope will also inform improvements to our healthcare system. Benjamin started practicing medicine in Alabama as part of the National Health Service Corps, a program that provides scholarships and loan repayments to primary-care clinicians who agree to serve in Health Professional Shortage Areas for two to four years. This program is a great way to address the shortage of primary-care doctors in medically underserved area – a shortage that will become even more apparent if we succeed in expanding healthcare coverage to people who currently lack it. According to the NHSC, 80% of their clinicians stay in the underserved area after their time commitment is up, as Benjamin did.
 
I look forward to having a Surgeon General who will push for healthcare access, with an emphasis on prevention, for all.

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure

by Kas

Approximately 100 people from Washington, DC-area universities, local government, and private industry shared an organic experience at the 2009 Policy Greenhouse held this morning at The George Washington University.  The Greenhouse provided a forum for people to present, in five minutes or less, their ideas for innovative, sustainable solutions for local problems.  The solutions may be addressed now, using some portion of the millions of stimulus dollars received by DC, or in the near future through changes to existing or development of new DC-specific environmental policies.  The presentations were directed to The Committee on Government Operations and the Environment from the Council of the District of Columbia (who co-sponsored the event with the Office of Sustainability at GWU).  Read more about the Greenhouse and the solutions that were pitched here and at the Greater Greater Washington blog.

The Greenhouse was an innovative forum and, one could surmise, left attendees with “good” feelings about DC government initiatives, some DC government offices, and how the community, DC government, and area universities are trying to capture sustainability’s gestalt.  Attendees probably left with a brain full of high impact ideas for solutions that can “do good” and make people “feel good.”

I left the meeting not feeling so good and asking myself two questions:

1) What are the problems the Greenhouse was organized to solve?
2) Why wasn’t an environmental health practitioner one of the Greenhouse presenters?

To resolve these questions, I had a personal Greenhouse session where I presented several innovative solutions to myself.  Here’s what I have come up with so far:

The Greenhouse organizers need a criteria-based decision-making tool to identify the top five sustainability-related problems.  Only then can a brainstorm session, like the Greenhouse, prove useful.  Throwing money at a solution that doesn’t address a problem is not sustainable.

Also, the lack of a presence of public health – and environmental health specifically – seems to be a problem that extends beyond this single event. The burden is on the environmental health practitioners to elbow our way to the brainstorm roundtable.  It appears easier to get involved with sustainability-related issues and to have a say in these issues if you’re an engineer, architect, lawyer, or policy maker. Environmental health practitioners need to devote the time and other resources to have a presence in sustainability-related discussions.  If we utilize our risk assessment and risk communication knowledge, we may be able to effectively shape problem identification and problem resolution.

Finally, we need a dose of introspection.  People want to “do good” and “feel good” about the environment but haven’t defined what is “good.”  In our efforts to achieve greenly goodness we haven’t taken the time to stop to think about why it is what we’re currently doing is “not good” and why it leaves us feeling less than “good.”

Kas is an industrial hygienist studying public health in the DC metro area.

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure

I’ll soon be at the end of my career, funding-wise, although I plan to continue as an active scientist for as long as my neurons will process information in a logical order. I mention this so you won’t take this as special pleading. I’m not going to benefit from it. But if we want to continue to make advances in science and health (as well as other things), we’re going to have to invest more heavily in basic research. And when we do, we’ll have to do it smarter than we’ve done it before. Notice I didn’t say anything about competing economically as a nation, although any nation that fails to invest in science will fall behind. Science doesn’t care about national borders and neither do I. I’m talking about learning enough about how the world works that we can deal with major threats like influenza pandemics — to take an example not at all at random.

Several months ago, I attended presentation by Michael Taylor, a former FDA deputy commissioner for policy who’d recently become a professor here at the George Washington University’s School of Public Health. Taylor’s presentation, “Building a Prevention-Oriented Food Safety System: FDA’s Challenge and Opportunity,” explained why it’s so hard to ensure that our nation’s food supply is safe; factors range from the complexity and variety of food products to the fragmented regulatory structure for food. I remember that during the Q&A, someone brought up “the egg rule,” and it prompted groans and eye-rolling from the food-safety experts in the room – apparently, it was a prime example of bureaucratic paralysis.

Yesterday, Vice President Biden unveiled a series of new measures to improve food safety, beginning with the long-awaited egg rule – and the FDA announced that Michael Taylor will serve as Senior Adviser to the Commissioner on food issues. According to the agency’s news release, he will:

• Assess current food program challenges and opportunities
• Identify capacity needs and regulatory priorities
• Develop plans for allocating fiscal year 2010 resources
• Develop the FDA’s budget request for fiscal year 2011
• Plan implementation of new food safety legislation

In terms of food program challenges, capacity needs, and regulatory priorities, Kristen Perosino’s post about Taylor’s GW presentation gives a sense of his thinking: 

In a recent seminar at George Washington University, former FDA deputy commissioner for policy Michael Taylor discussed the agency’s role in food safety.  He noted that FDA has food safety expertise and a well-trained field force with a science-based approach to food inspection.  FDA remains the international gold standard for food safety.  However, the agency lacks a mandate for prevention (which Taylor cites as the fundamental problem), limiting the agency to a reactive rather than preventive approach to food safety.  FDA is also challenged by internal fragmentation (responsibilities are distributed among the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the Center for Veterinary Medicine, and the Office of Regulatory Affairs), declining staff, and a limited capacity to provide leadership on food safety.  Oh, did I mention resource shortages?  This is the agency that regulates 80% of the U.S. food supply, but receives one-third of the federal food safety budget.

Food policy expert Marion Nestle (author of What to Eat, Food Politics, and Safe Food) has already weighed in on Taylor. She explains that she knows that he worked for Monsanto between jobs with FDA and USDA, but she supports him for this position nonetheless:

But before you decide that I must have drunk the Kool Aid on this one, hear me out. He really is a good choice for this job. Why? Because he managed to get USDA to institute HACCP (science-based food safety regulations) for meat and poultry against the full opposition of the meat industry — a truly heroic accomplishment. His position on food safety has been strong and consistent for years. He favors a single food agency, HACCP for all foods, and accountability and enforcement. We need this for FDA-regulated foods (we also need enforcement for USDA-regulated foods, but he won’t be able to touch that unless Congress says so). So he’s the person most likely to be able to get decent regulations in place and get them enforced.

Here’s her description of how Taylor pushed the public health agenda at USDA, which is responsible for the safety of meat:

Watch what happened when he moved to USDA in 1994 as head of its Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). Just six weeks after taking the job, Mr. Taylor gave his first public speech to an annual convention of the American Meat Institute. There, he announced that USDA would now be driven by public health goals as much or more than by productivity concerns. The USDA would soon require science-based HACCP systems in every meat and poultry plant, would be testing raw ground beef, and would require contaminated meat to be destroyed or reprocessed. And because E. coli O157.H7 is infectious at very low doses, the USDA would consider any level of contamination of ground beef with these bacteria to be unsafe, adulterated, and subject to enforcement action. Whew. This took real courage.

The amazing thing is that he actually made this work. Now, HACCP rules apply more to USDA-regulated products than to FDA-regulated products. This new appointment gives Mr. Taylor the chance to bring FDA’s policies in line with USDA’s and even more, to make sure they are monitored and enforced.

Fixing our food safety system won’t simple – there are thousands of different stakeholders involved, and Congress may not like the idea of reorganizing agencies’ food responsibilities and finding the resources required to do the job right. Best of luck to Michael Taylor in his new position!

Investigative journalist Carole Bass has written extensively about nanotechnology, emphasizing how little we know about the risks associated with the nanoparticles now used in a wide range of consumer products, from sunscreen to stain-resistant clothing. Her latest piece, in the new issue of E Magazine, includes an exploration of what these particles do when they wash off our skin and clothing and go down the drain:

[Cyndee] Gruden, a civil engineering professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio, is tackling part of that last question by looking at the effects of two nanometals—titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, used in sunscreens, paint and other products—on bacteria.

Metals “can be toxic to microorganisms,” she notes. “In fact, that’s specifically what they’re for” in consumer products: to inhibit mold, mildew and other nastiness. But when nanometals make their way to a sewage treatment plant, Gruden worries that they might harm the beneficial bacteria that break down what’s delicately known in the business as “biosolids.”

Her preliminary findings, which she presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (an academic group, not an industry organization) in March, are mixed. Nano-titanium dioxide damaged bacteria, causing cell walls to break at “relatively low concentrations,” similar to what you might see at a sewage treatment plant, Gruden says in an interview. But “in terms of function, what does that mean? Are the bugs able to do what they’re supposed to do?”

To answer that question, she added some biosolids to her test tubes and measured how much methane the bacteria produced as they digested for five days. The titanium dioxide didn’t seem to slow the bugs down; in fact, methane production actually increased. But when Gruden added nano-zinc oxide, gas production slowed down. She’s running more experiments this summer to see what happens when the bacteria are exposed to the bugs for a full 30 days.

“The take-home message for me is, the behavior of these particles is very complex,” Gruden says. “When you take a nanoparticle and put it into the environment, you have to know how it’s going to behave. And we don’t.”

Can you imagine what would happen if sewage treatment plants started failing? It’s not a nice picture. It’s the kind of risk that should make us slow down and stop pumping out more of these nanoparticles, at least until we know more about how they’ll behave in the environment.

The White House announced today 10 nominations for senior administration positions, including Mr. Joe Main to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health (MSHA).    The biography provided with the announcement notes that he:

“… began working in coal mines in 1967 and quickly became an advocate for miners safety as a union safety committeeman as well as serving in various local union positions in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). He was employed by the UMWA in 1974 as a Special Assistant to the International President, and joined the UMWA Safety Division in 1976, serving as Safety Inspector, Administrative Assistant, and Deputy Director. In 1982 he was appointed Administrator of the UMWA Occupational Health and Safety Department, a position he held for 22 years, managing the international health and safety program and staff. “

In an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal reporting on Main’s nomination, mine worker advocate Tony Oppegard said:

“A year from today, you will see a very different agency in terms of the way it’s run.”

Here’s hoping for a speedy confirmation process [remember Senate Dem's, Bush's choice Mr. Dave Lauriski did not have a confirmation hearing] so Mr. Main can get to work.

Last week, OSHA’s area office in Wilmington issued citations to Valero Energy Corp’s Delaware City oil refinery, including four repeat* and nine serious violations of process safety management rules.  Because Valero boasts that its “process safety program instills safety and reliabiity at every refinery,” how is it that they have been found with REPEAT violations of OSHA’s process safety management standard.  A repeat violation means that Valero was cited previously for the same or substantially similar condition in the last three years. 

OSHA conducted its inspection of the Valero Delaware City site under its National Emphasis Program (NEP) for ”Petroleum Refining Process Safety Management (PSM).”    The NEP was launched in 2007 after OSHA was criticized for utterly failing to monitor in any comprehensive way employers’ compliance with the PSM standard.  In fact, the Chemical Safety Board chair, Carolyn Merritt, alerted us to the matter, noting in May 2007 congressional testimony:

“…in the ten years from 1995 to 2005, federal OSHA only conducted nine [comprehensive process safety] inspections anywhere in the country, and none in the refinery sector.”

The interesting fact about this particular Valero oil refinery is it is one of the few that can be inspected under this OSHA NEP.  The vast majority of Valero’s 14 U.S. sites are exempt from these comprehensive PSM inspections because they are participants in OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP).  (See FOM at page X(A)(1)(c)) 

It makes me wonder whether similar violations of the PSM standard would be found at the “inspection-exempt” Valero sites?  After all, it is the same employer, the same board of directors, the same executive team, and presumably the same safety policies and procedures at its sites.  Valero’s own website notes the company

“…has the most refineries certified as Star Sites, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s highest recognition of facilities that exceed safety expectations under OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program.”

and

“Ten Valero refineries are Star Sites*…[and] fewer than 30 refineries nationwide hold the distinction.”

OSHA describes VPP Star sites as ”exemplary worksites with comprehensive, successful safety and health management systems.”  But what do REPEATED violations at Valero’s Delaware City refinery say about the true quality of the firm’s overall H&S program?? These were REPEATED violations of 

• failing to conduct and document inspections and tests on process equpment 
• failing to conduct proper process hazard analyses
• failing to maintain adequate process safety information

These REPEATED violations mean that Valero was cited previously for the same or substantially similar condition in the last 3 years, AND the citations were a final order of the independent Review Commission (OSHRC) AND the citations were issued by federal OSHA.   (Under OSHA policy, citations issued in one of the 21 States that run their own OSHA program can’t be used as the basis for a repeat violation.)   

With ten other Valero sites exempt from these comprehensive inspections under the PSM NEP, and at least 56 other refineries (SIC 2911) also exempt under OSHA’s current policy, how does OSHA know whether similiar PSM failures are occurring at these refineries?  Is it any coincidence that at the upcoming VPP participants’s annual conference (Aug 24-27) I couldn’t find a single workshop on PSM?    (I used search terms “process,” “safety management,” “process safety,” and “highly hazardous.)  I did find, however, a whole category titled “behavior-based safety,” featuring 15 workshops.

Recall that the PSM standard is designed to address the “unexpected releases of toxic, reactive, or flammable liquids and gases in processes involving highly hazardous chemicals.”  When process management goes awry, the result can be catastrophic for workers and the community. 

A company’s acceptance into VPP is contingent in large measure on its annual injury and illness rates.  It must be at or below the national average for of their respective industries.   For a refinery, however, injury-incident rates are not likely to be a useful metric for process safety performance.  As noted in a recent GAO report, OSHA’s VPP: Improved Oversight and Controls Would Better Ensure Program Quality,  injury and illness rates may not be the best measure of program performance, especially given the descrepancies found in rates reported to OSHA and the rates calculated during on-site reviews.   I hope that the evaluation announced by OSHA to assess VPP will include a hard look at whether it is wise to build blanket exemptions from inspections to these sites (as well as sites designated as SHARP, strategic partnerships and alliances) and identification of performance measures that are appropriate for specific industries. 

 
*Based on information obtained from OSHA’s VPP webpage, Valero’s 10 VPP sites are: 

Valero Benicia Refinery Benicia, CA
Valero Wilmington Refinery Wilmington, CA 
Valero St. Charles Refinery Norco, LA
Valero Paulsboro Paulsboro, NJ
Valero – BIll Greehey Refinery East Plant Corpus Christi, TX
Valero – BIll Greehey Refinery West Plant Corpus Christi, TX
Valero Houston Plant Houston, TX
Valero Refining Texas City Texas City, TX
Valero Travel Services San Antonio, TX
 Valero, 3 Rivers Refinery Three Rivers, TX

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Celeste Monforton, MPH, DrPH is an assistant research professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health.  Her husband owns shares of Valero stock.