Remember the excellent Charlotte Observer series on poultry workers? If you missed it the first time, it’s well worth a read. After a 22-month investigation, reporters conveyed a grim picture: poultry-plant workers suffer high rates of crippling injuries, but fear losing their jobs if they complain; companies cover up the problems, and OSHA lets them off […]
Back in March, a Boston Globe article by Farah Stockman broke the news that workers whoâd been cleaning up the Qarmat Ali water injection plant in Iraq had been exposed to something that they were told was only a mild irritant â but which was, in fact, the dangerous substance sodium dichromate. After that report, Senator […]
On Saturday, Firedoglake hosted an online discussion on David Michaelsâ Doubt is Their Product: How Industryâs Assault on Science Threatens Your Health â and David was lucky to have the chat hosted by Jordan Barab, whose wonderful Confined Space blog provided so much inspiration for The Pump Handle. In his introduction, Jordan not only did a […]
Updated (6/19/08) below Just before last year’s holiday season, Charles Budds Bolchoz, 48; best friends Karey Renard Henry, 35, and Parish Lamar Ashley, 36; and company owner Robert Scott Gallagher, 49, lost their lives in a violent explosion at T2 Laboratories in Jacksonville, Florida (previous posts here, here). The firm manufacturered Ecotane®, a gasoline additive âmethylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonylâ (i.e., […]
Mr. Robert Carey, 45, an athracite coal miner from Shamokin, Pennsylvania was killed on Monday by falling rock/coal at the Harmony Mine. So far this year, 26 workers at U.S. mining operations have died on-the-job. Just this past Sunday, former MSHA chief J. Davitt McAteer had an Op-Ed in the Charleston Gazette entitled: “Enough: No More Mining Deaths.”   He wrote: […]
The New York Times reports this week that Charles M. Smith, the Army official responsible for overseeing the Pentagonâs multi-billion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years after the Iraq invasion, says he was removed from his job for refusing to pay the company more than $1 billion in charges for which it lacked […]
Updated below ( 6/18/08 ) Earlier this month I wrote in “Crashing Cranes, Deaths and the White House’s Edict” about the inexcusable inaction by the US Department of Labor and OSHA to address the decades-old problem of crane-related deaths. I am not alone in my disgust at this regulatory system, which yet again is failing to protect our nation’s […]
by revere Originally posted at Effect Measure You know any post that starts out . . . Gerardo Castillo, 30 years old, had worked at the Blommer Chocolate Co. for 9 years. His family wanted him to quite ever since an explosion in a roaster killed a fellow worker and injured another. He was fearful […]
DuPont was busted a couple of years ago by U.S. EPA for failing to report information about adverse health effects associated with exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA or C8), the chemical used to make Teflon and other non-stick surfaces. Now it seems that DuPont is dutifully submitting information to EPA’s TSCA 8(e) docket and we can […]
Last week James Delayo, New York Cityâs chief crane inspector, was arrested on the charge of taking bribes to let cranes pass inspection. According to officials, these accusations arenât directly related to the two deadly crane accidents that killed a total of nine people during the last three months. William K Rashbaum provides details in […]