U.S. Chemical Safety Board considers withdrawing retaliation protections for offshore oil workers; unions re-examine their role in the wake of sexual harassment revelations; America’s fastest-growing jobs are also among the lowest-paying jobs; and migrant women continue to face exploitation on the job.
APHA Annual Meeting
Occupational health, environmental protections the focus of new public health policies
The American Public Health Association adopted 13 new policy statements. Six of them address priority topics on worker safety and environmental health.
Climate change, workplace violence, and children’s health were some of the topics addressed at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting.
Environmental Health
In wake of Zika outbreak, survey finds major improvements needed in U.S. mosquito control
In southern Texas, the city of Laredo hasn’t confirmed a single case of dengue in nearly 20 years. Just a short walk across the border into Mexico, the city of Nuevo Laredo has confirmed hundreds of cases of the mosquito-borne disease. Hector Gonzalez says the difference lays in the city’s robust commitment to public health-led mosquito control.
12,000 researchers and advocates have gathered for the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting. Firearms, climate change, and women’s health are on the agenda.
At BuzzFeed News, Zahra Hirji and Jason Leopold report that the news organization has obtained internal emails, recordings and interviews from oil company BP showing that executives are struggling to “reset” its Alaska operations after a string of incidents that threatened workers’ lives. For example, on Sept. 10, two workers inadvertently triggered a leak of […]
News headlines about 9 million deaths in 2015 due to pollution were eye catching. The Lancet Commission’s Report on Pollution and Health goes much deeper than point estimates. The authors argue that governments, foundations, and medical societies pay too little attention to the local and global consequences of pollution.
Millions of cubic yards of household debris from Hurricane Harvey is piling up in southeastern Texas. An NPR story following Hurricane Katrina paints a picture of what happens when it is carried away to landfills.
In the last two years, the California Legislature has provided the Department of Industrial Relations with significantly increased financial resources to enhance the effectiveness of Cal/OSHA and better protect the 19 million workers in the state. DIR has failed to take full advantage of these resources to strengthen Cal/OSHA while at the same time it has provided refunds to employers who have paid the fees that generate these unused resources. The net effect is a Cal/OSHA that is weaker and less effective than it could be if all available resources were put to work. The people who pay the cost of these resources “left on the table” are the workers of California and their families and communities.
Articles on the public-health toll from hurricanes, plus pieces on DACA, hookworm, and “President Trump’s War on Science.”