regulation
sb admin | April 11, 2008The first story about the death of Mr. Ricky "Mud Puddle" Collins came on Thursday afternoon (3/27) in an AP story Massey Miner Killed in Logan County. The short news clip mentioned a miner employed at Massey Energy's Freeze Fork Surface Mine in Logan County, who we later learned was Mr. Collins, 43, of Dan's Branch, WV. The article said he:
"died while working on a trailer at a railroad crossing near Stollings in Logan County Thursday,"Â but
"MSHA is not investigating the accident because it did not occur on mine property."
An article the next day said the trailer "saddle-bagged" over the…
sb admin | April 7, 2008The watchdog group OMB Watch does a terrific job staying on top of all of the proposed rules, executive orders, and other federal government actions that have far-reaching effects but can be easy to miss. Now, they've launched a new initiative to educate people about the regulatory process and show them how they can participate in it: the Regulatory Resource Center.
Check out their explanation of how the regulatory process works (including a notice-and-comment rulemaking flowchart); handy glossary of regulatory terms; instructions for finding rules in the Federal Register and commenting…
revere | April 6, 2008About a month ago (March 1, 2008) we brought you the story of how a highly reputable and knowledgeable scientist, Dr. Deborah Rice of the Maine Department of Maine Department of Health and Human Services, was bonced off of an EPA scientific advisory committee because the chemical industry trade group, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), objected that she had a bias. How did they know? Dr. Rice, as part of her duties as toxicologist for the State of Maine, testified before its legislature that on the basis of a review of the scientific evidence she believed the deca congener of the…
sb admin | April 3, 2008by Susan F. Wood, PhDÂ
The FDA Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007 includes a small section addressing direct to consumer (DTC) advertising. The bill doesn't limit advertising to consumers, nor does it give FDA authority to put a moratorium on advertising while more data on safety or effectiveness is collected during the first months or years that a product is on the market.  A moratorium was recommended by the IOM in it's drug safety report in 2006, but was not adopted by Congress - perhaps due to arguments about first amendment rights, but perhaps due to objections by both the…
sb admin | April 1, 2008The Department of Labor's Inspector General (IG) issued a report yesterday about the Utah Crandall Canyon mine, saying:
"MSHA was negligent in carrying out its responsibilities to protect the safety of miners."
The investigation was carried out in response to a request from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and documented in an 80-page report entitled: "MSHA Could Not Show it Made the Right Decision in Approving the Roof Control Plan at Crandall Canyon Mine."Â Â The August 2007 underground mine disaster killed nine men, including Mr. Gary Jensen a federal…
sb admin | April 1, 2008This was one of the first-class quotes from former OSHA Assistant Secretary Jerry Scannell (1989-1993) during today's hearing on workers' safety and health before the Senate HELP Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. His comment came in response to discussions about OSHA's and the Department of Labor's Solicitor's Office's practices of reducing penalties, even in cases of serious violations. Mr. Scannell said he often felt pressure from inside and outside the agency to settle inspection and fatality-investigation cases by using "discount factors" to reduce monetary…
sb admin | March 27, 2008The Senate HELP Committee's Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety announced that former OSHA Assistant Secretary, Mr. Gerard Scannell, will testify at next week's hearing on workplace safety. He was the OSHA chief during the George H.W. Bush administration, and a long-time officer with the National Safety Council.Â
The hearing (previous post here) about serious and repeat violators of worker safety protections will also feature testimony by Mr. Eric Frumin, Director of OHS for Unite!Here, who will likely discuss corporate bad actors, link Cintas (post here).  I'm so…
sb admin | March 26, 2008The Palm Beach (Florida) Post is reporting that Ag-Mart has settled a civil suit filed by a migrant farmworker family who alleged their son's serious birth defects were associated with the company's improper handling of pesticides. Earlier reporting in March 2005 by the PB Post exposed the working and living conditions of this family and other farmworkers, and birth defects among some of their children. Â
At the same time this settlement was reported, another Florida newspaper wrote that violations against Ag-Mart for failure to comply with the State's pesticide use rules had…
sb admin | March 25, 2008The Senate HELP Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, chaired by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), will hold a hearing on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 entitled "Serious OSHA Violations: Strategies for Breaking Dangerous Patterns." The subcomittee has not yet released a witness list, but I'd expect to hear something about some of the bad actors profiled in the "Dirty Dozen" report, prepared in 2006 by the National COSH.
sb admin | March 24, 2008With the six-month deadline approaching for issuing citations and monetary penalties, OSHA announced today 13 willful and 25 serious violations against RPI Coatings, the employer of five workers who died in early October at the Excel Energy Cabin Creek Station hydroelectric plant near Georgetown, Colorado. The penalty amount proposed by OSHA against RPI Coatings is $845,100.
The deceased workers were part of a contract maintenance crew who were applying a specialized epoxy coating onto the inside of a 3,000 foot-long (and 4 foot-wide) pipe.  A fire erupted inside the pipe, starving…
sb admin | March 24, 2008In todayâs Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Williamson links the housing-market crisis to recent problems with food, drug, and toy safety and suggests that the combination of these problems spells more regulation on the horizon:
The idea that less regulation is better for the economy has held sway in Washington since the Reagan administration. Now that consensus is crumbling, posing a potentially costly challenge to business no matter who wins the White House in November.
The crisis in the nation's housing market, the recent turmoil on Wall Street and a series of safety scares involving food,…
sb admin | March 21, 2008A coal miner from eastern Kentucky filed a law suit yesterday requesting a federal court judge to compel MSHA to issue a health standard to prevent miners from developing black lung disease. The Petition for Writ of Mandamus (Howard v. Chao) argues that Congress intended, through the Federal Coal Mine Health & Safety Act of 1969 (amended 1977), MSHA to promulgate regulations to prevent new cases of coal workers pnuemoconiosis, progressive massive fibrosis and other illnesses related to miners' exposure to respirable coal mine dust. Despite evidence over the last 12 years that…
sb admin | March 21, 2008It's national Sunshine Week---an effort "to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger."  A great way to celebrate the public's right-to-know what its government is doing, is by sending a FOIA request to your favorite local, state or federal agency. In that spirit, I faxed a FOIA request to OSHA today.Â
My request stems from an exchange of comments on work-related motor vehicle fatalities following my March 7 post "When the Road is Your…
sb admin | March 19, 2008Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard District of Columbia v. Heller, which pits DCâs handgun ban against the Second Amendment. DCâs gun law is the strictest in the nation, since it effectively all handguns; it does, however, allow for rifles and shotguns if theyâre kept disassembled or under trigger lock. The big issue is whether the Second Amendment â âA well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringedâ â guarantees an individual right to gun ownership, or only a collective right that hinges on…
sb admin | March 19, 2008On OSHA's latest regulatory agenda, the agency noted it would complete the required SBREFA report for a draft rule on beryllium in January 2008, and it did (121-page PDF here) This report stems from the December 6 meeting between OSHA, the Small Business Administration and small entity representatives, as required by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act . This 1996 law requires OSHA (and EPA) to share a draft of proposed regulations to a group of small business owners (i.e., companies with 500 or fewer employees) so they can suggest changes to it or to the agency's…
sb admin | March 18, 2008Despite the excellent presentations by USMWF's Tammy Miser, the Chemical Safety Board's William Wright and NFPA's Amy Spencer, the image that remains in my head from last week's congressional hearing on combustible dust was Ranking Member Howard "Buck" McKeon's performance. After the aforementioned witnesses made common-sense appeals in support of an OSHA standard modeled on National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards, Congressman McKeon (R-CA) made unconvincing claims that such rules are so very complicated. Surely, no simple small businessman could ever be expected to…
sb admin | March 14, 2008Yesterday we learned that former Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) passed away at age 90. His former colleague, Sentor Edward Kennedy issued a statement, saying:
"He was the conscience of the Senate, who never shied away from the difficult fights, and never apologized for standing up for workers."
I had the unforgettable opportunity to watch Senator Metzenbaum in action at numerous congressional hearings on worker safety and health topics. Whether the topic was right-to-know, protections for hazardous waste clean-up workers or inadequate OSHA penalties, he was always well-prepared and…
sb admin | March 13, 2008My experiences tell me that journalists play a critical role in public health improvements; my evidence is anecdotal, but my examples continue to mount. Take Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette and his coverage of the toxic substance ammonium perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C8. It's the chemical used to make Teflon non-stick surfaces. Recently, Ward wrote about a mortality analysis of workers in a 3M facility in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. What's noteworthy about Ward's story is not so much the study's findings, but rather, that he does the yeoman's work to monitor the…
sb admin | March 8, 2008That's the word from Georgia's Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner, John Oxendine, during his announcement that the State will impose new safety requirements to prevent combustible dust explosions. The Commissioner's new rule comes one month after a deadly explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, which killed 12 and severely injured scores of other workers, including 11 who remain in critical condition from the severe burns they suffered in the blast. (More on the burn victims and the long recover ahead for them here.)
The new safety requirement which were…
sb admin | March 7, 2008The scene was an icy morning in western Maryland, along the Garrett County and Allegany County lines. Mr. Dwight Samuel Colmer, 41, a truck driver with Western Maryland Lumber Company was hauling a load of coal just before 11:00 AM when his truck began to slide. The State of Maryland's "Motor Vehicle Accident Report" says:
"...hit guard rail, and overturned to the passenger side. Driver was ejected and crushed under the dump truck and died from the injuries."
The report indicates the incident occurred on a public road called Bartlett Street. Is this a work-related fatality?Â
Well, it…