By Liz Borkowski In the latest issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Joseph Plaster explores how the system for trucking imported goods from the Port of Oakland keeps both truckers and residents struggling. Truckers scrape by on meager earnings and can only afford the oldest, most polluting vehicles; pollution from hundreds of dirty trucks […]
This week, OSHA posted on its website a case study designed to show the benefits of implementing a comprehensive workplace safety and health program. In announcing the case study, Assistant Secretary Edwin Foulke, Jr said the report âis a good example of what can happen when management and employees dedicate themselves to workplace safety and health.â […]
By David Michaels More sickening revelations about FEMAâs lack of concern for the health of Americans, this time concerning their actions months after Hurricane Katrina. Spencer S. Hsu of the Washington Post reports that The Federal Emergency Management Agency has suppressed warnings from its own Gulf coast field workers since the middle of 2006 about […]
Last night, the Barton Amendment to the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill was defeated by a vote of 181-249. All the Democrats, along with 19 Republicans, voted against the amendment. If it had been enacted, it would have resulted in a cut of more than 20% of NIOSHâs budget, and would have killed the National Occupational Research […]
According to an American Road and Transportation Builders Association analysis, roadway construction workers are killed at a rate nearly three times higher than other construction workers. Tom Demeropolis at the Cincinnati Post reports that roadway construction workers safety is on officialsâ minds right now in Kentucky, where highway speed limits have just increased. In the […]
Yesterday the Libyan Supreme Council commuted the death sentences of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian-Bulgarian doctor to life in prison. The Tripoli 6 became a cause célèbre in the scientific and diplomatic communities when Libyan courts, after holding them in prison for eight years, refused to hear solid scientific evidence exonerating them from a […]
By David Michaels Weâve gotten news that Republicans in the House are planning to introduce a very destructive amendment to the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill, probably later today. This amendment will have a devastating impact on NIOSH’s research program, and it is important that we act to stop it. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) will offer an […]
By David Michaels Yesterday, we wrote about the efforts by Rep. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to extend the prohibition on OSHA from fully enforcing its respiratory protection standard to protect health care workers and first responders from tuberculosis. Wicker successfully added this prohibition to legislation in the past, but the prohibition now in place ends in […]
You may already have read about a series of chemical explosions that occurred this morning at the Barton Solvents plant near Wichita, Kansas. An estimated 650,000 gallons of an âarray of chemicalsâ were on fire, sending flames up to 150 feet high and a steady stream of thick black smoke into the air.
By David Michaels How to not stop the spread of drug resistant tuberculosis? Give health care workers and first responders respirators that donât fit correctly. It is hard to believe, but the House of Representatives will very soon (perhaps later today) be voting on an amendment to the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill that would prohibit OSHA […]