The practice of posting a notice about meetings between regulated parties and OMB staff began during the GW Bush Administration, not a group known for transparency. Even that very secretive Administration saw the value in informing the public promptly of such meetings. The Obama Administration’s OIRA is now 0-2 when it comes to disclosure of […]
[Update 4/22/2011: see CDC’s NIOSH corrects asbestos statement] It was almost too much to believe. Here I was attending the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization’s (ADAO) annual meeting, mingling and learning from patients and researchers about asbestos-related disease, and I hear that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and […]
by Eileen Senn, MS The multiple options that OSHA is considering to address their badly outdated rules for chemical hazards were described in my November 17 post. They include updating OSHA Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs) which are erroneously considered to be safe levels for chemicals in workplace air. In reality, it’s wrong to call them […]
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 […]
Cancer
“It’s on our website”: an insufficient response to asbestos danger lurking in millons of attics
No doubt that a federal agency’s website can be a useful public relations tool. We all have much better access now to government data, reports and other records. That’s certainly a good thing. But even the most content-rich website cannot substitute for other forms of communication and information sharing. Yet more and more lately I’m […]
Cancer
Rohm and Haas rejects link between vinyl chloride and brain cancer, victims disagree, see you in court on Sept 20
The Center for Public Integrity’s Jim Morris reports this week on a civil lawsuit between the chemical manufacturer Rohm and Haas, and the family of Franklin Branham, 63, who died just a month after being diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor. The Branham family is the first of 31 victims who lived in McCullom Lake, […]
New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here. By Alice Shabecoff As the massive oil slicks from the BP disaster continue to advance upon shores and communities, worries over the effects on wildlife and the natural environment abound, and rightfully so: hailed as […]
New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here. By Richard Clapp The President’s Cancer Panel report released on May 6 had some strong findings and recommendations on ways to reduce the cancer burden caused by workplace exposures. This is welcome news to U.S. […]
By Elizabeth Grossman If the recommendations of the just published President’s Cancer Panel report, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, become part of a comprehensive national policy agenda, the United States will have a remarkable new cancer prevention strategy – one that includes aggressive efforts to reduce and eliminate chemical exposures that […]