By Dick Clapp An ambitious paper was released in Boston last week, with subsequent media coverage in local, national and international outlets (see, for example the New York Times’ Green Blog and Reuters). The first author, Paul Epstein, was interviewed on the Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise, which was anchored in the Boston Harbor as […]
Freshman Congressman Larry D. Bucshon (R) of Evansville, Indiana is a cardiothoracic surgeon. His father was an underground coal miner and a member of the United Mine Workers Union for 37 years. Both his grandparents were coal miners. But, Republican-controlled Capitol Hill is now the Twilight Zone when I heard him say the following last […]
I was already tired of President Obama repeating the Republican’s rhetoric about big, bad regulations, how they stifle job creation, put an unnecessary burden on businesses, and make our economy less competitive. He did so last month in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and in his State of the Union address. But yesterday, […]
Injury Control & Violence
Labor Dept forges ahead to strengthen mine safety, but steps back on other worker health and safety rule
The contrast is striking. Look at the screenshot of the outcome of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs’ (OIRA) review of two Labor Department rules to address flaws in our worker health and safety system. One is a proposal by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to crack down on mine operators who […]
Environmental Health
President Obama moves to the right on regulation; appeasing business has real life costs
by Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPR Blog Sixteen months ago, President Obama stood in the well of Congress and issued a ringing call for a progressive vision of government. Working to persuade Members of Congress to adopt health care reform, he said that “large-heartedness…is part of the American character.” Our ability to stand in other […]
By the end of 2011, the Labor Department’s worker safety agencies expect to issue six new rules to better protect workers from on-the-job hazards. In the Department’s regulatory plan issued yesterday, OSHA projects it will finalize four rules while MSHA expects to complete two new standards. As I’ve written before, these plans quickly become stale […]
Our friend and APHA OHS colleague Mark Catlin has assembled on YouTube an amazing collection of more than 500 environmental health and safety film clips. The video collection contain footage dating back to the 1920’s, with loads WWII-era films produced by the U.S. military, Public Health Service and companies promoting tires, asbestos, oil, steel, tetraethyl […]
A second, more powerful explosion today rocked the Pike River coal mine in Greymouth, New Zealand. This event forced government and company officials to declare that the 29 miners are surely dead. The initial blast occurred on Friday, Nov 19 deep in the mine and rescue attempts had been thwarted by dangerous gas levels. The […]
Mining
MSHA asks federal judge to close unsafe Massey coal mine, wants paychecks to continue for affected miners
For the first time in the agency’s history, the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) went to federal court to ask that a dangerous coal mine be shut down until it fixes its safety problems once and for all. In its official complaint to the U.S.district court for the eastern district of Kentucky, […]
Injury Control & Violence
Coal miner’s widow makes worker safety a campaign issue in KY congressional race
Melissa Lee’s life changed forever on May 20, 2006 when her husband Jimmy, 33 was killed, along with four other workers, in an explosion at the Kentucky Darby coal mine. Afterwards, she not only had four sons to raise without a dad, but as soon as Melissa started speaking up to demand mine safety improvements, […]