Yesterday, Jordan Barab mothballed his blog Confined Space, and workers and worker advocates lost a powerful online resource. The good news is that we’ve gained a political resource, since Jordan’s departure from the blogosphere is due to his new staff position on the US House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor. Still, we’ll all miss the combination of up-to-the-minute news, biting commentary, and ceaseless advocacy for worker health and safety that have characterized Confined Space since its inception in 2003. (See Revere’s post yesterday for more on how much Jordan has contributed.)

While we know that we can’t duplicate Jordan’s work at Confined Space, we’re going to try to fill some of the void that his departure has left in the blogosphere. Jordan has instructed us in his methods for keeping up on worker health and safety news, and we’ll be bringing some of that news to our readers as part of our occupational health blogging.

There’s also a great deal of interest in continuing the Weekly Toll feature in which Jordan and his tireless blogging partner – Tammy Miser, who runs United Support & Memorial for Workplace Fatalities – compile a list of workers who’ve died while on the job. This feature puts a human face on the issue of worker health and safety. It reminds us why it’s crucial to keep fighting for safe workplaces. We hope that Tammy and others will keep publishing the Weekly Toll, and that we can help bring it to the blogosphere.

As a service to the thousands of readers who’ve come to rely on Confined Space, we’re creating a special category of posts. It’ll be a slice of Confined Space at The Pump Handle – or “Confined Space @ TPH” for short. Of course, we also invite Confined Space readers to check out our Occupational Health category and to read our posts on other areas of public health and the environment – and you can keep up-to-date by getting our RSS feed, or subscribing to our weekly e-mail digest. Confined Space archives will continue to be available on Jordan’s old site, and our posts will probably keep linking back to his past coverage.

Thanks to Jordan Barab for his tireless dedication to keeping us informed and fired up about worker health and safety. We’ll be watching for further greatness in his career.