It’s too late for Ronald Martin of Dema, Kentucky. “I’m in last stage of black lung,” he wrote in shaky script, “please help the miners so they won’t suffer like I suffer. I can’t breathe but a little.” Mr. Martin sent his note to the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to comment […]
by Kim Krisberg Mark Martin isn’t inclined to sit down and shut up — well, unless it’s on the seat of a bicycle. “More people need joy in their lives and there’s a real simple way to get it: ride a bicycle,” Martin told me. “It’s a joyous thing to ride a bike.” The Baton […]
An ad hoc committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) identified a litany of potential benefits of including information about individuals’ occupations, industry, and work environment in their electronic health records (EHRs). The reason the question was posed at all stems from a provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which provides […]
Freshman congressman Larry Bucshon (R-IN) scolded OSHA chief David Michaels for using the term “cancer” as a buzz word. The congressman, who is also a thoracic surgeon, said: “I don’t like it when people use buzz words that try to get people’s attention, and cancer is one of those.” The exchanged occured last week at […]
The winners of this year’s American Public Health Association’s (APHA) recognition awards for achievement in occupational health and safety illustrate the diversity of talent among those committed to ensuring workers’ rights to a safe workplace. Martin Cherniak, MD is a clinician and researcher at the University of Connecticut; Amy Liebman is with the Migrant Clinicians […]
I felt a sense of déjà vu Tuesday morning when I heard NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce reporting on Senator Tom Coburn’s attacks on National Science Foundation-funded research. I realized that the same thing happened last August, and I wrote about it in a post called “Scoring Political Points by Misunderstanding Science.” Last year, the report mocked […]
In a new New York Times Magazine piece, John Tierney pulls together the results of several studies that suggest willpower is finite and decisionmaking exhausting. While these findings are important in many ways (Tierney leads off with an example from the criminal justice system), I was especially interested in the implications for dieting. The whole […]
The Republican chairmen of the House Education and the Workforce Committee and its Subcommittee on Workforce Protections are invoking “sound science” and “transparency” in a request to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for data and draft publications of a cancer mortality study of underground miners exposed to diesel exhaust. Congressman John […]
[Updated 9/21/11: see below] Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk……is the familar sound around house framing and roofing jobs of the pnuematic nail gun. !Expletive! Expletive! Argh….Expletive!….is the cursing yelps from guys whose fingers, hands, and other body parts are punctured by nails inadvertently shot from these construction tools. An estimated 37,000 individuals in the US […]
Thanks to Ken Ward at Coal Tatto for alerting me to a hearing conducted last week in the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Overight and Government Spending, of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called “EPA’s Appalachian Energy Permitorium: Job Killer or Job Creator?” The majoirity of the witnesses were at the ready […]