Regulation | The Pump Handle

Food Safety & Nutrition Public health officials urge USDA to withdraw plan to “modernize” poultry inspection, worker and food safety will suffer

May 31, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 2Comment

The Obama Administration’s quest to appease businesses’ claims about burdensome regulations awoke a giant in the form of the civil rights, public health and workers’ safety communities. From the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Council of LaRaza, to the American Public Health Association, the feedback on USDA’s proposal to “modernize” the poultry inspection process is loud and clear: scrap the idea because faster line speeds will take a grave toll on poultry plant workers.

Injury Control & Violence Americans say they respect life and the rule of law, but not so much when it involves workers’ lives and safety hazards

May 15, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH

The AFL-CIO’s annual “Death on the Job” report presents the painful truth that the penalty for employers who violate safety rules that lead to worker fatalities, is woefully inadequate. Our nation’s rhetoric about respect for life seems not to apply to working people who face serious hazards on-the-job.

Regulation Disappointment and outrage: Advocates react to withdrawal of safety rules for child farmworkers

May 10, 2012 The Pump Handle

Advocates react to the Obama administration’s unexpected decision to drop proposed revisions to rules on children working in agriculture — an industry with a high fatality rate for young workers.

Injury Control & Violence Child agricultural labor rule: Not just dead, but erased from DOL’s website

May 4, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 3Comment

It was bad enough when the Obama Administration withdrew a proposed rule to protect the most vulnerable workers in our country—children employed on farms—-but somebody told the Labor Department staff to delete all evidence of the proposal from the Labor Department’s website.

Cancer Ideas galore on ways to speed process for new worker safety protections. Where is the leadership to implement them?

May 1, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 1Comment

Earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report on the snail’s pace of the OSHA process of issuing new rules to protect workers from health and safety hazards on-the-job. One telling table in the document showed the agency issued about 20 new major regulations in each of the previous two decades (i.e., […]

Food Safety & Nutrition USDA gives us 30 more days to tell it why 175 birds-per-minute line speeds will take a toll on poultry workers

April 26, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 2Comment

Gabriel Thompson writes today in The Nation about a summer job he had a few years back, working on the assembly line at a Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant in Alabama. The chickens flew by on hooks at 90 birds-per-minute as he sliced and cut the meat non-stop. It didn’t take long for him to meet […]

Cancer Mitt Romney’s idea of freedom: businesses free to do whatever they darn well please?

April 17, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 2Comment

Mr. Mitt Romney spoke this weekend at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual convention and kicked off his remarks applauding the gun-lovers group’s defense of the 2nd amendment to the Constitution. “This fine organization is sometimes called a single-issue group,” Romney said. “That’s high praise when the single issue is freedom. I love my freedom […]

Cancer Worker safety rule stuck in White House black hole, disease risk persists

April 12, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 3Comment

More than 425 days—-that’s 14 months—-have passed since the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sent to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) a draft proposed regulation designed to protect workers who are exposed to respirable crystalline silica. The hazard is one of the oldest known causes of work-related […]

Environmental Health Top notch job by OSHA staff to globally harmonize labels and datasheets for chemicals

March 23, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH

Earlier this week, Lizzie Grossman reported here at The Pump Handle on revisions to OSHA’s Hazard Communication standard which align the agency’s 30 year old rule with a globally harmonized system for classifying and labeling chemical hazards. In “Moving from Right-to-Know to Right-to-Understand,” we learn how the changes stem from a 2002 United Nations resolution […]

Cancer Moving from the “Right to Know” to the “Right to Understand”: Global harmonization of OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard

March 21, 2012 Elizabeth Grossman 3Comment

by Elizabeth Grossman His job, the Metalworkers Alliance of the Philippines union leader told us, was assembling the electronics – the wire- or cable-harnesses – that go into cars. The work involved soldering, using flux, along with epoxies, and various degreasers or solvents. He and his co-workers didn’t know the actual names of the substances […]

Liz Borkowski, MPH	Celeste Monforton, DrPH,
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