regulation
sb admin | September 14, 2009 Earlier this month, the Appalachian Citizens' Law Center (ACLC) sent a petition to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) urging the agency to revise its regulations on respirable coal mine dust to better protect mine workers from pneumoconiosis and other disabling respiratory ailments.  The ACLC's motto is "Working for Justice in the Appalachian Coalfields."  The ACLC's petition is just the latest in a long list of calls on MSHA to put an end to black lung and silicosis---diseases that are 100% preventable.  I personally believe there should be no higher regulatory…
sb admin | September 9, 2009A Washington Post editorial entitled "Down and Out" (9/8/09) alerted me to a new report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) on working conditions experienced by low-wage workers in the U.S. The 72-page report "Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers:  Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America's cities," describes the results of a survey conducted in 2008 of more than 4,300 workers employed in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, and their experience with wage-and-hour violations, and retaliation for attempting to organize or pointing out safety problems.
Among the …
dgmacarthur | September 2, 2009David Clark at Genomics Law Report has a thorough dissection of the recent and highly restrictive laws passed in Germany governing access to genetic testing. You should read the whole thing to get a sense of what happens when governments grab the wrong end of the regulation stick, but here's the crucial paragraph:
The German Act [...] adopts an extremely protective, even fearful, view of genetic information as something so dangerous and private that the generation and disclosure of genomic data must be mediated solely through specially trained physicians, accompanied by psychological and…
sb admin | August 31, 2009In a two-page notice in today's Federal Register, the Department of Labor's acting assistant secretary for policy has officially withdrawn the so-called "secret rule" on occupational health risk assessment. It was exactly this time last summer that the G.W. Bush Administration's Labor Department proposed new requirements for OSHA's and MSHA's preparation of occupational health risk assessments.  The proposal was infamous for both the secretive manner in which it was developed and for its likely adverse impact on the already slow pace of rules to protect workers' from exposure to…
sb admin | August 21, 2009by Richard Denison, PhDÂ cross-posted from blogs.edf
In June, EPA published a Federal Register notice that included Significant New Use Rules (SNURs) for two carbon nanotubes (as well as 21 other chemicals). That notice certainly got the attention of lawyers in town (see here, here and here). The nanotube SNURs would require anyone planning to produce or process either of the two substances to notify EPA if the person intended not to comply with the (rather limited) risk management conditions specified by EPA. Well, as reported yesterday by Sara Goodman of E&E News, EPA is now…
sb admin | August 21, 2009Three physicians and researchers from the Capital University of Medical Sciences (Beijing, China) have published a case report in the European Respiratory Journal describing severe lung disease in seven female workers employed at a shop where they applied polyacrylic coatings to polystyrene boards. The lung disease is just one part of the story---two of the women died (ages 19 and 29)---the other part is that pathology samples from the workers' lungs identified 30 nm (nanometer) in diameter particles. Further investigation found that the coatings used by the workers contained nano…
sb admin | August 12, 2009I'm reading a wonderful collection of public health success stories, in the collection assembled by John W. Ward and Christian Warren entitled "Silent Victories: The History and Practice of Public Health in 20th Century America"Â (Oxford, 2007.)Â Our colleagues Tony Robbins and Phil Landrigan wrote a chapter on occupational disease and injury prevention, and in it, introduce me to Sir Thomas Legge.Â
He was the UK's first medical Inspector of Factories (appointed in 1897) and he capitalized on his title and training to expose occupational hazards, propose interventions and demonstrate…
sb admin | August 10, 2009In the U.S. Senate last week, between the debate and the vote on judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced S. 1580, on behalf of Senator Edward Kennedy, a bill to amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. As far as I can tell, its text is nearly identical to H.R. 2067 , the bill introduced in April by Cong. Lynn Woolsey. The bills' major provisions are:
expanding OSHA coverage to the 8.5 million public sector workers (who are employed by state, county and local governments, and not covered by an OSHA…
sb admin | August 5, 2009Exactly 2-years after the disaster, the five-member U.S. Chemical Safety Board voted unanimously to adopt its final investigation report on the March 2005 catatrophic explosion at the BP Texas City. Fifteen workers were killed and 180 others were injured from the blast. Among the many disturbing findings from the CSB's investigation, was data showing that equipment operators had worked way too many shifts in a row and were fatigued, seriously fatigued.
Our investigators determined that operators involved in the startup likely were fatigued, having worked 29 straight days of 12-hour…
sb admin | August 4, 2009by Richard Denison, cross-posted from EDF Blogs
Today, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) unveiled its "10 Principles for Modernizing TSCA."Â Â Also today, the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition - of which EDF is a member - issued a news release and unveiled its 9-point "Platform for Reform of TSCA."Â How do they line up?
I'll leave to you readers to decide just how much alignment (or lack thereof) there is between these dueling manifestos. To get the ball rolling, I'll use this post to single out three key differences.
First, however, let me say I welcome the fact that ACC is…
sb admin | July 31, 2009It's long past time to breathe some fresh air into the Department of Labor's Solicitor's Office (SOL). I was hopeful when President Obama nominated M. Patricia Smith in April to serve as the Solicitor of Labor, but since her May 7 confirmation hearing, her appointment is languishing in the Senate HELP committee. The Solicitor's Office has about 600 employees, many of whom are attorneys working in regional offices across the country, and they are supposed to help DOL agencies accomplish their missions by providing legal advice. The mission statement includes, ensuring that the
"…
sb admin | July 31, 2009by Sidney Shapiro, cross-posted from CPR Blog
On Tuesday, the White House announced the appointment of Dr. David Michaels to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). An epidemiologist and a professor at George Washington Universityâs School of Public Health and Health Services, Michaels will bring substantial expertise and experience to the job. Besides being an active health research â he studies the health effects of occupational exposure to toxic chemicals â he has also written impressively on science and regulatory policy. His book, Doubt Is Their Product: How…
sb admin | July 23, 2009by Garrett Brown
On June 5th, 200 babies and small children were dropped off at a private, government-subsidized day care center in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora state in northern Mexico. A fire broke out next door and soon smoke and fire filled the day care center killing 48 babies and children, and severely burning two dozen more.Â
It turns out that the owners of the day care center included the wives of two top state officials and a businessman with close links to Eduardo Bours, governor of the state of Sonora. It also turns out the building was a fire trap that had repeatedly…
revere | July 22, 2009The National Pork Producers Council didn't like swine flu being called swine flu. Bad for business. So we now call it 2009 H1N1 or some such thing. It's totally swine-origin, but hey, if Lord Agribusiness doesn't like it, that's that. Same thing with antibiotic resistant bacteria, like methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus ("MRSA"; best source on the net Maryn McKenna's blog). The Pork Council doesn't want anyone to die of MRSA. They just don't want it associated with their product, even though a Dutch strain associated with pigs is now spreading in the US (and infecting people).
Some…
sb admin | July 21, 2009Steven Cain, 32, reported to work at Massey Energy's Justice No. 1 coal mine at about 3:30 pm on Wednesday, October 8, 2008.   He never returned to his family. At about 11:00 pm that night, he died inside the mine when he was crushed between a loaded supply car and a coal rib (vertical coal wall). The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward reports at Coal Tattoo on the results of MSHA's investigation, including how
"...Massey and the contractor that employed Cain, Mountaineer Labor Solution, received just a tiny slap on the wrist from MSHA. Federal regulators did not cite either company.…
sb admin | July 20, 2009Last fall, Mr. Rosaulino Montano, 46, a worker on my campus at the George Washington University, died when he fell seven stories while installing windows on a new $75 million residence hall. Mr. Montano was an employee of Engineered Construction Products,  and because his work-related death occurred at my place of employment, I was particularly interested in tracking the OSHA investigation until the case was closed. I wondered whether there was a "controlling employer," such as a general contractor or even if my employer, GWU, and whether they had some responsibility for safety at…
sb admin | July 6, 2009The White House announced today 10 nominations for senior administration positions, including Mr. Joe Main to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health (MSHA).   The biography provided with the announcement notes that he:
"... began working in coal mines in 1967 and quickly became an advocate for miners safety as a union safety committeeman as well as serving in various local union positions in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). He was employed by the UMWA in 1974 as a Special Assistant to the International President, and joined the UMWA Safety Division…
sb admin | July 6, 2009Last week, OSHA's area office in Wilmington issued citations to Valero Energy Corp's Delaware City oil refinery, including four repeat* and nine serious violations of process safety management rules. Because Valero boasts that its "process safety program instills safety and reliabiity at every refinery," how is it that they have been found with REPEAT violations of OSHA's process safety management standard. A repeat violation means that Valero was cited previously for the same or substantially similar condition in the last three years.Â
OSHA conducted its inspection of the Valero…
dgmacarthur | June 24, 2009Pharmacogenetics Reporter has a lengthy article (subscription required) on the California bill SB 482, sponsored by personal genomics company 23andMe, which seeks "to distinguish so-called "post-CLIA bioinformatics services" from entities providing laboratory services".
In other words, 23andMe is pushing to have companies purely providing analysis of genetic data regulated separately from those doing the actual laboratory testing. Since 23andMe out-sources its testing to an external laboratory, this would exempt the company from some regulatory requirements. The move follows some fairly…
sb admin | June 22, 2009Friday (6/19) was the final day for participants from OSHA's public hearing on its proposed cranes and derricks rule to submit comments to the agency; by my count, seven organizations responded. The Edison Electric Institute  offered the lengthiest document (94 pages), and it was peppered with provocative language, such as
"...these and many other vexing questions arise from OSHAâs convulated proposed regulatory scheme."
the rule "...would de-stabilize settled principles [and] would be highly ill-advised....could stimulate more litigation...and [create] an avalanche of state and…