The latest edition of the Labor Department’s regulatory agenda offers a mixed bag of unaddressed workplace hazards and slipped deadlines, as well as a few new topics for possible regulatory action to protect workers.
Injury Control & Violence
Not an “accident”: Jesus Mendizabal, 43, suffers fatal work-related injury on Staten Island, NY
This week’s snapshot of just one work-related fatality in the U.S. This one occurred on November 28 on Staten Island, NY.
Wouldn’t it be something if the President’s annual pardoning of a turkey be replaced with an annual Thanksgiving recognition of workers along the food chain?
Four workers from DuPont’s La Porte, TX facility are dead. Their employer makes hundreds of millions on its behavior-based, blame the worker safety program. Federal investigators will find that the catastrophe occurred because of decisions made far up the chain of command, not unsafe behaviors by the victims.
Environmental Health
Occupational health and safety leaders honored, new policies adopted at American Public Health Association annual meeting
The OHS Section’s annual meeting at APHA brings together the best of public health: solid research, community-based methods, policy and politics, social justice and solidarity.
The fatal work-related injuries that killed Juan Carlos Reyes’ could have been prevented had his employer followed worker safety regulations.
Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was indicated by federal prosecutors for events that led to the April 2010 death of 29 West Virginia coal miners.
The Obama Administration set a goal of ending homelessness among veterans in 2015. This Veterans’ Day, they are about 50,000 veterans away from that goal.
Environmental Health
Listen in on small businesses discussing draft OSHA infection control regulation
A select group of small business representatives will meet with OSHA this week to discuss a possible new regulation to protect workers from infectious diseases. OSHA has been convening these panels since 1997, but it will be the first time that we’ll be able to listen in on the discussion.
Michigan State University researchers Ken Rosenman, MD and Joanna Kica, MPA provide a reality check on the incidence of work-related skull fractures.