John F. Martonik, 58, former deputy director of OSHA’s Health Standards Program passed away on July 11 at his home in Annandale, Virginia. John retired from OSHA in 2002 and since then used his industrial hygiene expertise to assist workers in compensation and liability cases. He was especially expert in evaluating occupational exposures to benzene and petroleum distillates, […]
Federal officials have arrested three men in Las Vegas, saying they âenslaved more than 20 members of a Chinese acrobatic team, feeding them little, paying them next to nothing to perform, and confiscating their passports and visas,â the Associated Press reports. In the Seattle Weekly, Sarah Stuteville and Alex Stonehill tell the story of one […]
Dale Jones, 51 and Michael Wilt, 38 reported to work at the Caledonia Pit, a surface coal mine near Barton, Maryland at 5:30 am on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. In the 275 feet-deep pit, Jones operated the excavator while Wilt ran the dozer. By about 10:00 am that morning, something had gone terribly wrong. The massive highwall collapsed, burying the two coal […]
If you have a job, do you know who your employer is? The answer isnât always straightforward, César Cuauhtémoc GarcÃa Hernández points out in a recent Boston College Third World Law Journal article, and the implications can be profound. In âFeeble, Circular, and Unpredictable: OSHAâs Failure to Protect Temporary Workers,â GarcÃa details the disadvantages temporary […]
Cong. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) held a hearing on June 25 on the federal government’s response to the hazardous air contaminants that polluted lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks. The featured witness was former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who was in the hot seat for her claims that the air in NYC was safe to breathe. Much less attention was paid […]
After a contractor was rescued from a collapsed construction trench in Desert Hot Springs, California, Eric Solvig of The Desert Sun reported on how common it is for trench work in California to violate safety guidelines â and for workers to be killed or injured as a result: State officials issued more than 1,400 citations […]
At first, the FOIA request for workplace inspection data seemed straight forward.  The requester asked for all records contained in OSHA’s database of industrial hygiene samples for the contaminant beryllium during the period 1979 to 2005.  Previously, OSHA had provided on numerous ocassions comparable information to other requesters, and in some cases, even without requiring a formal FOIA request. […]
When I heard Christie Whitman was going to testify before the House Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties subcommittee , I hoped that if she were pressured by the Bush administration to hide her concerns about the air quality at Ground Zero and in lower Manhattan, that today might actually be the day sheâd âcome […]
The Newmont Mining Company reports that the body of gold miner Dan Shaw, 30, was recovered on June 30 after an 11-day rescue effort. The federal agency responsible for miners’ safety and health, MSHA, has zero, zilch, nada on its website about the accident, the rescue or the recovery effort. In “Do I Expect Too Much […]
MSHA’s Assistant Secretary announced that he is creating an Office of Accountability to provide “enhanced oversight, at the highest level in the agency, to ensure that we are doing our utmost to enforce safety and health laws in our nation’s mines.” The announcement came with the release of three internal investigation reports which Asst. Sec. […]