Despite significant unanswered questions about human and environmental health impacts – and no exposure monitoring requirements – the EPA has approved a new herbicide called Enlist Duo for use on genetically engineered corn and soybeans in six Midwestern states. Environmental groups and farmers are suing to block approval, saying EPA failed to adequately assess health risks.
Drug Safety
A Q&A with public health leaders on the opioid epidemic: ‘Prescription opioid abuse is still raging out of control’
While pharmaceutical companies are making billions in painkiller profits, it’s the public sector that ends up bearing the burden and cost of the fallout that accompanies skyrocketing sales of highly addictive prescription opioids. After the jump is a Pump Handle Q&A with two public health officials at the forefront of the opioid abuse epidemic within America’s big cities.
Article series investigates lead poisoning at the nation’s gun ranges; autopsy shows coal miner was wrongly denied black lung benefits; health care workers take part in mass protective gear training; and a Wells Fargo employee sends a big email about income inequality.
Too bad Murray’s Chicken doesn’t care as much about working conditions for its employees, as it does about the living conditions for its birds.
California
Expanding the right to know: California workers gain additional access to workplace toxics information as new hazards emerge
“If the California Public Health Department had been able to find out that my company was using a chemical that was killing people, I might never have gotten so sick that I had to have a lung transplant,” Ricardo Corona told a California Judiciary Committee last April, testifying in favor of California Senate Bill (SB) 193 that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on September 29th.
Agriculture
New York dairy farm workers organize for justice: ‘Law or no law, we are going to organize’
“Yes, you can use my name because it doesn’t matter. They have already done everything they can do to me.” Those are words from Eliceo, a former dairy farm worker in upstate New York. Earlier this year, Eliceo, 36, decided to speak up and share his story with local advocates who are tirelessly working to improve conditions on New York dairy farms and end persistent reports of workplace safety violations, preventable work-related injuries, wage theft, exploitation and in some cases, worker deaths.
In his first week on the job, President Reagan’s appointee to head OSHA ordered a booklet about the hazards of cotton dust destroyed. He considered the image and words of textile workers afflicted by “brown lung” disease “biased.”
Latino workers face higher fatality rates on the job; health care workers in Spain blame inadequate protective gear for Ebola infection; California law aims to prevent violence in health care settings; and the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the 10 deadliest occupations.
Injury Control & Violence
Not an “accident”: William Jeffrey Belk, 29, suffers fatal work-related injuries at Boise Cascade plywood plant in North Carolina
This week’s snapshot of just one work-related fatality in the U.S. This one occurred on September 26 at a plywood plant in Moncure, North Carolina.
In announcing National Farm Safety Week, President Obama emphasized his Administration’s commitment to reducing hazards of agricultural work – including for young people. So how are we doing at protecting children and teens working on farms and ranches? Note: There is no federally required safety training for youth working in agriculture. Estimated injury rate is 38 per day and fatalities, 115 per year