Korean Immigrants Nailed by Chemical Hazards

Throughout this country immigrant workers are doing hazardous work whose dangers go almost unnoticed. They don't generally belong to unions, and they will almost never see an OSHA inspector.

Luckilly for workers in some parts of the country, there are COSH groups and other health and safety activists who attempt to educate and help these workers.

This article deals with efforts by NYCOSH to address the hazards faced by Korean nail salon workers in New York who are exposed to a number of solvents that cause cancer, asthma, burns, serious allergic reactions, liver and kidney damage.

It began with a runny nose and red, irritated eyes, but then came the coughing. Before long, Soonok Kim was having trouble breathing.

A doctor diagnosed her with severe asthma, which she believes was likely the product of more than a decade spent working at nail salons with little ventilation and lots of chemicals.

"My chest felt a lot of pain. My body felt weak," said Kim, 37, of Flushing, who worked as a nail technician for 11 years after immigrating to New York City from Seoul in the Republic of Korea in 1989.

"I felt like I'd be dead sooner or later," Kim said.

NYCOSH and the Young Korean American Service & Education Center will survey 100 of these workers to find out what they are exposed to and to try to prevent others from suffering health problems.

Evidence of illness has been mostly anecdotal, with workers relating symptoms such as asthma, skin rashes, burns and severe allergic reactions. Though the city's more modern salons have ventilation equipment and provide employees with face masks and gloves, Na said most salons remain packed into tiny, poorly ventilated spaces, providing little relief for workers.

Salon employees often work 10 hours a day with their heads bent inches away from a client's hands and feet, Kim described. Breaks come only when business is slow. Lunch is eaten next to trays of toxic nail polish removers and other chemicals.

"It's a workforce that no one pays attention to in an industry that's not really regulated," said Beverly Tillery of the Manhattan-based New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit coalition of unions, workers, physicians, and health and safety activists.

Anti-Ergonauts on the Rampage Again

Michigan Republicans Vow to Cut Off Funding for Ergo Standard

Vowing to stomp out any hint of an ergonomic standard like it was a toxic weed, the Republicans in the Michigan state legislature are preparing to pass legislation cutting off funding for MIOSHA's work on an ergonomics standard. As I wrote previously,

In 2002, Michigan OSHA formed a steering committee to develop a framework for addressing an ergonomics rule and appointed members to the Ergonomics Standard Advisory Committee from management, labor and the public. Around half of the states run their own OSHA program and are able to issue their own workplace safety standard. Currently, California is the only state with an ergonomics standard. Washington state's was repealed last year.

After three meetings, Charles Owens, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business resigned from the Ergonomics Standard Advisory Committee because, he said, he realized that the mission of the committee was to develop a standard. Owens said that he had been under the impression that the purpose of the committee was to determine if a standard was needed. National NFIB was one of the most active business associations behind the repeal of the federal ergonomics standard in 2001.

According to Inside OSHA,

Within a week, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Marc Shulman (R-Oakland) will move to insert
language into the state’s fiscal year 2005 budget that will express the intent of the Legislature that no funds allocated to MIOSHA be used to promote development of an ergonomics standard. Shulman told Inside OSHA, “We [Republican lawmakers] have been informed that it [regulating ergonomics] just doesn’t seem like it is an economically feasible issue.”

Even though MIOSHA hasn't even yet issued a rough draft of a regulation, Shulman claims that early action is needed to protect workers' jobs: "When everyone is talking about jobs, jobs, jobs, we have to keep jobs in Michigan."

Now, this job blackmail attack is older than Adam Smith, and in times of high unemployment, it's particularly effective, as we have seen in Washington State. Of course, students of recent history may remember that Republican attacks on the federal ergonomics standard reached their zenith during the boom times of the Clinton administration. High unemployment, low unemployment. I guess no season is good for an ergonomics standard.

Even without Republican obstructionism, the standard faces a number of hurdles

The advisory committee is composed of an equal number of business and labor representatives, plus a public representative. Assuming it can reach agreement on a new rule, it would undergo a number of public hearings and would have to be approved by the two state standards commissions. In order to merit approval, the commissions must certify there is a "clear and convincing need" for the rule.

Finally, the Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform must sign off on the rule.

But hey. No point in putting everyone through all that pain. Might as well put it out of its misery now.

"Americans Are Going To Get Ripped Off"

Republicans Push to Deregulate Insurance Industry

Have you ever noticed how Republicans champion states rights until some states impose stricter controls over business than the federal government? (or until they want to select a President -- but that's another story.)?

The latest is an effort by Congressman Michael Oxley to take away states' ability to regulate the insurance industry. including workers compensation insurance. Oxley's bill

would force the states to adopt uniform standards and permit the market to determine insurance prices rather than have them determined by regulators as is generally the case now.

That is music to the ears of many of the biggest insurers. Once content with sluggish state regulation as long as it remained relatively lax, they have been campaigning for a single federal regulator to replace those in each of the states as competition with banks and mutual fund companies has intensified. The insurers say they want efficiency: one-stop shopping and quicker approval of new insurance and investment products. Their critics say that they want less regulation and that customers would suffer.

One force driving the initiative is a desire to end what Mr. Oxley called "the travesty of price controls" in the insurance industry by allowing the market to set prices. He said his changes would increase profits for an industry that has been lagging behind banking and other financial service businesses and would give customers more choices.

Oxley's proposal is strongly opposed by the AFL-CIO and the Consumer Federation of America. According to the AFL-CIO's Rob McGarrah,

While many states have fairly weak insurance regulation, it's better than the total deregulation Oxley has proposed for the American Insurance Association.

Effective insurance rate regulation in Massachusetts and Virginia protected workers from benefit cuts this past year, but skyrocketing workers' compensation rates in Florida and California forced legislators to cut benefits, with Schwarzenegger demanding another $11 billion in benefit cuts by Friday or he'll again put his "jobs" initiative on the November ballot. (Since California deregulated workers' comp insurance in 1993 26 companies have gone bankrupt and rates soared 300% in the last 2 years) In New York, insurers are leading the opposition to our drive to increase the near-poverty $400 week benefit rate.

J. Robert Hunter, a former insurance regulator in Texas and now the director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America says that

Americans are going to get ripped off. Insurance is not like other products. The policies are complex legal documents. Most people can't look at an insurance policy and tell whether they have a good one. It's hard to compare prices because coverage can vary greatly. You need someone looking out for the customer. The insurance companies aren't going to do that.

If you'd like to sign on to a letter opposing this legislation, contact Rob McGarrah at the AFL-CIO.

Piercing the Corporate Veil

No, this is not a story about Taliban attacks on business women. This is a story about OSHA possibly going after companies -- especially small construction companies -- who hide behind complex corporate structures to avoid repeat violations from OSHA.

The Washington Post's Cindy Skrzycki writes that the Occupational Safety Review Commission is considering two cases of business owners who have owned a series of companies that have killed workers, but are fighting repeat OSHA violations because their original companies have gone out of business.

The cases in question stem from OSHA inspections that alleged the companies were violating rules that protect workers from falls and other hazards.

The safety agency cited Sharon and Walter Construction Corp., a general contracting company in New Hampshire, for repeat violations since the owner ran an earlier company that had the same employees and work, and had been cited in 1995. The company owes $10,750 in penalties.

Charles A. Russell, an attorney for Sharon and Walter, said his client should not be considered a repeat violator since the first venture, a sole proprietorship, went bankrupt. He also said the company should not be held liable for an employee who fell off a roof because he was an independent contractor.

The other case involves two New Jersey companies that are involved in pouring concrete for major commercial projects. OSHA alleged that through complicated family ownership provisions, Altor Inc. and Avcon Inc. were in effect owned by father and son, Vasilios and Nicholas Saites, and they should be personally liable for $292,300 in penalties for various safety violations.

Paul A. Sanders, a New Jersey attorney representing Altor and Avcon, said: "The individuals don't intend to pay the fees. They don't think they are responsible."

The AFL-CIO doesn't agree.

"It's about naming and holding the responsible parties responsible," said Lynn Rhinehart, associate counsel for the AFL-CIO. "These are a series [of cases involving] construction companies and they have been repeatedly cited for OSHA violations. There is evidence they manipulated the corporate form to evade OSHA penalties."

Interesting cases, but I'm not optimistic. The Post notes that these cases were selected a for review a while back by Democrat Thomasina V. Rogers. Currently the Board has two Republican members, in addition to Rogers.

The Mouth Is More Dangerous Than The Trench

Dennis Mulvihill in a letter to the Cleveland Plain Dealer (published by master-blogger Atrios) wonders

why the Republicans believe that hearing a four-letter word on the radio is more damaging than death or catastrophic injury. Consider that the Bush administration wants to increase FCC

fines for indecency up to $500,000 per violation per station, yet at the same time, it wants to restrict noneconomic damages in tort cases to $250,000 or $350,000.

So if a DJ says a four-letter word on the radio, the harm is so appalling that a fine of $500,000 per word, per station is justified. But if someone is paralyzed, killed or otherwise catastrophically injured, the most the family could get for the (noneconomic) loss would be up to $350,000.

Good point.

The same analogy could be made for OSHA citations. It's a lot cheaper to willfully kill one of your employees than to call them a "fu*kwad" on the radio.

Magazine Finds OSHA 'Chemically Challenged'

OSHA's inaction is even getting to be too much for normally sober occupational health and safety journals. Jerry Laws, editor of Occupational Safety and Health magazine notes that

On Feb. 2, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board formally notified OSHA that it won't quietly accept the cooperative, anti-regulation approach OSHA favors. (I'll get angry letters from some readers over this statement, so watch our magazine's Letters page in upcoming issues. Here's my response: What other description fits an agency that scraps its own proposed regulations on tuberculosis, employer-paid PPE, and a musculoskeletal disorders column on the recordkeeping form, to name a few examples, and instead stays busy signing "alliance" agreements and lowering the bar so it can pad the ranks of its Voluntary Protection Program?)

You may remember that in January, the CSB found that OSHA's non-response to their recommendation that the agency revise its Process Safety Management standard to include reactive chemicals to be "unacceptable.

Noting that OSHA had also been dinged by the New York Times at the end of last year, Laws was unimpressed with OSHA director John Henshaws response to the CSB determination:

Henshaw had a quick answer ready when The Times focused on his agency's weak enforcement in fatality cases. He quickly answered [CSB Chairman Carolyn] Merritt, as well: "Our comprehensive approach to address hazards is a sound one. . . . We welcome the opportunity to continue to work with the Board and would consider further information they provide us." He could answer even faster by simply telling the truth: We aren't in the business of writing new rules.

And sometimes I think Confined Space is the only publication out there that sees OSHA for what it's really become. Welcome to the crowd, Jerry.

Utah Miners Strike In Safety/Pay Struggle

From China to the U.S....Coal Seventy-four coal miners at C.W. Mining Company's Bear Canyon mine (known also as Co-Op mine) in Huntington, Utah were illegally fired from their jobs on Sept. 22, 2003, after they protested the suspension of a co-worker and unsafe job conditions. The mine, owned by the Kingston family, had suspended UMWA supporter William Estrada for refusing to sign a disciplinary warning the week before.  
At the time, it was the company's third attempt to victimize a UMWA supporter, according to the Co-Op miners. The miners were involved in organizing themselves into the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).

Until recently, coal never struck my fancy. But this past week I met two coal miners from Huntington, Utah: William Estrada and Ana Lilia Vilalba, originally from El Salvador and Mexico, respectively. They educated me more than I had expected.

It would have been nice to just talk with them about the importance of their work, but instead, we talked about their working conditions.

Estrada and Vilalba are among 75 workers who have been locked out of their mining jobs since they decided to organize to demand better pay and better working conditions. Losing a job is difficult anywhere, but in the area where they come from in Utah, the Kingston family not only owns the Utah's Co-Op Mine, but many other businesses.

Working conditions at this mine have been in the news before. Three workers were killed in accidents in the mine since 1996.

"In coal mines, safety is a big thing," said Estrada, 37. "But in this company, if you're in a position to report an accident, you either work while injured or you risk losing your job. If you report an accident, they may accuse you of damaging the equipment and they'll take away your bonus."

Check out the UMWA website for more information.

Deadly Chinese Coal Mines

Yet another in a series of depressing articles about workers dying in coal mines in China:

Miners occupy the treacherous underside of China's economic ascent. As factories on the bustling coast churn out goods for the world, and as urbanites move into high-rise apartments and buy new cars, miners are bearing the often deadly burden of extracting the resources needed to keep the lights on and the machinery turning. By the government's own reckoning, more than 6,700 miners died in accidents last year, about 18 per day -- and experts say the real figure is probably twice that. The fatality rates in China's mines are as much as 350 times those in the United States and Britain, according to government reports.

Iowa Company, President Convicted for Workplace Death

Now this is some good news:

Jury convicts company in worker's death

VINTON, IA — A Benton County jury has convicted a Tipton company and its president of violating state safety rules in the death of a Cedar Rapids man.

Andrew Ross, 29, fell to his death in 1999 while working on a 300–foot free–standing communication tower. It was his first day on the job for Trigon Inc. The Iowa Occupational Safety and Health bureau said he lacked proper training and was not wearing fall protection equipment.

"This is the first criminal case in the state of Iowa in which a willful violation of OSHA laws that caused a death has been prosecuted," said Benton County Attorney David Thompson, who prosecuted the case.

Trigon and its president, Karl Thompson of Mount Vernon, were each found guilty of two counts of willful violation of safety regulations. Each charge is a serious misdemeanor and carries a maximum sentence of up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $1,500.

Tuberculosis: Plateau or Resurgence?

Only three months after OSHA cannned its tuberculosis standard, the Centers for Disease Control reports that tuberculosis cases are on the rise in California, Texas, New York and 16 other states. TB cases also rose by 5% in New York City.

Overall,

During 2003, a total of 14,871 tuberculosis (TB) cases (5.1 cases per 100,000 population) were reported in the United States, representing a 1.4% decrease in cases and a 1.9% decline in the rate from 2002. This decline is the smallest since 1992, when TB incidence peaked after a 7-year resurgence. In addition, the rate remains higher than the national interim goal of 3.5 cases per 100,000 population that was set for 2000

"We're not sure if this is just a plateau or a resurgence," said Dr. Eileen Schneider, an epidemiologist with the CDC's tuberculosis elimination division.

The trends are fueled a sharp jump in global tuberculosis cases and the US case increases are centered in states with highest number of immigrants, especially from Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, and China. Among infectious diseases, TB remains the second leading killer of adults in the world, with more than 2 million TB-related deaths each year.

Assistant Secretary for OSHA, John Henshaw announced last May that the administration had decided not to to issue the OSHA TB standard that the agency had been working on since the mid-1990's, despite the fact that the National Institute of Medicine had

concluded that an OSHA standard was needed to maintain national TB rates among health care and other employees at their current levels and to prevent future outbreaks of multidrug resistant and other forms of TB among these workers.

AFSCME, SEIU and a number of other unions petitioned OSHA for a Tuberculosis standard in 1993 in response to a nationwide outbreak of tuberculosis -- including multiple drug resistant TB -- that was exposing and killing health care and corrections workers. The standard was on the verge of being issued at the end of the Clinton administration, but because of OSHA's total focus on ergonomics, the curtain fell before the standard was finalized.

March 24 is World TB Day.

New Take on an Old Psalm

It's Sunday. Let no one say that we here at Confined Space are a bunch of heathens.


Bush is my shepherd, I shall be in want.
He leadeth me beside the still factories,
He maketh me to lie down on park benches,
He restoreth my doubts about the Republican party.

He guideth me onto the paths of unemployment for the party's sake.
I do fear the evildoers, for thou talkest about them constantly.
Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy deficit spending,
They do discomfort me.

Thou anointeth me with never-ending debt,
And my savings and assets shall soon be gone.
Surely poverty and hard living shall follow me,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.

(This is making its way around the internet. -- Thanks Ingrid.)

Strikes! Terrorism! Workplace Hazards!

We've got it all here.

Teamsters Local 251, representing drivers from chemical distributor Univar in Providence, RI, have been on strike for 8 months. Univar has hired replacement drivers and the union complains that the replacement drivers are inexperienced and create hazards.

And, it looks like they were right.

Sodium hydroxide leaked from a tanker, burning a police officer in the face.

the officer was burned about the face and head by sodium hydroxide that was being delivered to the ec pigments plant on Quequechan Street. The officer was treated at Saint Anne's Hospital and released.

Officials said that during a delivery of the chemical, a replacement driver forgot to secure the top of the tanker before he pressurized the cargo hold. The resulting spray of caustic soda burned the police officer, who was standing by the truck...Drivers from Teamsters Local 251 claim there have been numerous spills because of unqualified and untrained drivers.

So what was the police officer doing there?

The police "were here because there was a call that there was some terrorist action going on down here, but it was an union issue down here," District Chief Stephen Pietruska, of the Fall River Fire Department, said....

"The cops came and they said that they got a call that maybe terrorists were following the truck. The terrorists are behind the wheel of the truck. That's the terrorist," Greg Fagundes, a striking worker said.

The Weekly Toll

Pipe crushes worker in Castro Valley

CASTRO VALLEY, CA - A worker on a sewer pipeline project was killed Friday afternoon when he was crushed by a 4,000-pound piece of pipe that fell off a truck, the Alameda County Sheriff's Department reports.

The 31-year-old worker was killed shortly after noon when a 40-foot-long concrete-lined steel pipe fell off a flatbed truck for an unexplained reason, Sgt. Dave DiFranco said.

The Alameda County Coroner's office identified the dead man as Clemente Gonzalez-Contreras of Morgan Hill.

Mechanic Dies In Accident At Urbana High School

URBANA, Md. -- Frederick County school officials said a mechanic at Urbana High School fell to his death as he was climbing a light pole at the football stadium.

It happened about 10 a.m. Thursday when the worker was climbing the 65-foot pole to adjust the lights.

A school spokeswoman said Larry Rough, 45, fell more than 50 feet. Officials said he had been wearing a safety harness and three other workers were with him when the accident happened.

Court Officer Killed Serving Warrant

PHILADELPHIA (AP) One court officer was killed and two others injured early Friday when they were shot serving a warrant on a man wanted for failing to appear at his trial on rape charges, police said.

Joseph LeClaire, a 50-year-old supervisor, was shot in the head and stomach in an apartment in the city's Germantown section at 1:42 a.m., authorities said. More here.

VDOT worker killed at HRBT

HAMPTON -- A Virginia Department of Transportation worker apparently was violating safety rules and riding in the back of a truck designed for a taller tunnel when he was killed at the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel on Wednesday night, VDOT officials said Thursday.

Paul Thurber, 48, a Norfolk resident and electrician with the department for more than a year, was killed when his head hit the top of the westbound entrance to the tunnel.

Charles Brinkley, also riding in the back of the truck, suffered minor injuries and was released from the hospital after a short observation period.

Thurber and Brinkley were sitting on a ledge installed in the back portion of the platform meant to rest tools on when the truck entered the westbound tube and their heads hit the mouth of the tunnel.

Crash kills farm worker

LOGAN TWP., NJ -- An unidentified farm worker was killed when the van in which he was a passenger crashed into a flatbed trailer on Mallard Court Thursday.

Caesar Perez of Bridgeton was driving the large 1992 Ford Superwagon, taking workers to farm sites, according to police, when the van crashed into the parked trailer.

There were 13 passengers in the van when it crashed at 2:54 a.m., police said

Construction worker falls to death

Bronx, NY -- A construction worker plummeted to his death Wednesday after falling three stories from a Bronx rooftop onto a scaffold landing that collapsed beneath him, police said.

Calwain Brown of the Bronx, an employee of Ozone Park-based Tahoe Contracting Inc., was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital Wednesday about 9 a.m. Brown, who was in his 40s, died a short time later, police said.

According to building officials, Brown was climbing down a ladder leaning precariously against a residential building he was working on at 1180 Jackson Ave. A 12-foot stationary scaffold was positioned six feet away from the building, and the ladder was leaning against the scaffold pointed toward the roof, Buildings Department spokeswoman Ilyse Fink said.

"The weight of the worker and the angle of the ladder pried the scaffold away from the building and the worker fell three stories," Fink said.

Worker survives 8-story plunge

Hollywood, FL -- A construction worker fell more than eight stories Monday from a Hollywood apartment building, leaving him in critical condition with fractures and internal injuries.

Pedro Matta, a worker with a waterproofing and painting company, was repairing a balcony at the Apartments at Hillcrest complex when he fell more than 80 feet, said Hollywood Fire-Rescue spokesman Matt Phillips.

Matta, of Miami, fell after attempting to jump from the building's roof onto a motorized platform about a half-foot below the roof, said co-worker Ricardo Veliz.

Crane crash robs man of his legs

Bend, OR -- Friday was going to be the day that Melvin Henderson quit his job.

Half an hour after he arrived at work near Round Butte Dam, his body was mangled in an accident that cost him both his legs.

Date farm worker electrocuted after ladder touches power line

THERMAL, CA -- Authorities are investigating the death of a Thermal man who was electrocuted Tuesday on a date farm.

Gerardo Olvera-Hernandez, a 23-year-old date farm worker, died early Tuesday after he touched a ladder to a high-voltage power line at 84-301 Avenue 66, the Riverside County Coroner reported.

Olvera-Hernandez reportedly crossed under a 7.2-kilovolt power line while carrying a 32-foot metal ladder in the upright position while pollinating date trees. He was electrocuted when the ladder touched the power line.

Rosa Maria Gonzales, spokeswoman for IID Energy, said the voltage that surged through the man would light up roughly 7,200 light bulbs.

Lansing man falls to death in job accident

DELTA TWP., MI - Local and state officials are investigating the death of a 41-year-old Lansing man who died Monday after he fell 50 feet while working at the Eaton County Road Commission office.

William Shattuck was working from a bucket truck installing a flagpole at the office at 3102 Sanders Road, when the rope he was attaching to the pole snapped at about 2:30 p.m., Eaton County sheriff's Lt. Jeff Warder said.

Shattuck fell from the bucket, hit the truck, then landed on the ground.

Conveyor-accident victim identified

Matthew P. Boden, 32, of Denver died Monday after a piece of his clothing got caught in a conveyor belt at a SoundTrack store at 1370 S. Colorado Blvd.

Boden was strangled in the accident, police said.

The accident is being investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. More here.

Breyers worker killed in accident

FRAMINGHAM, MA -- In what police described as a tragic accident, an employee at the Breyers Ice Cream plant was crushed to death when a piece of machinery fell on him.

Gregory MacDonald, 45, of 31 Solar Ave., Braintree, was pronounced dead early yesterday at the MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham.

Fire and police officials said he was crushed when a large piece of equipment fell on him in the freezer area of the Old Connecticut Path facility.

Worker at Tyson plant in Wilkesboro dies in fall

(WILKESBORO, NC) -- For the second time in three months, state officials are investigating an accident at a Tyson Foods plant in Wilkesboro.

Authorities say David Hartness died on Sunday after ductwork collapsed as he worked on overhead pipes, causing him to fall 15 feet to a concrete floor.

An investigation by the state Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health division begins on the same week that state officials are reviewing a final report in the death of Tyson worker Thomas Okrenuk on December 27th.

Okrenuk was crushed in an accident inside the same plant where Hartness fell. More here.

Officials investigate fatal fall through roof

Macomb, MI -- Shop owner Dan Gleason stands beneath skylights in the ceiling of his business, Gleason-Holbrook Manufaturing on Groesbeck near Metropolitan Parkway in Clinton Township. Last Saturday, a roofing worker fell through one of the skylights and fell to his death on the factory floor.

State and local investigators are trying to determine why a 19-year-old Detroit man fell to his death while doing roof work at a Clinton Township tool and die shop.

William Edward Thomas was killed Saturday when he fell through a sky1ight and landed on the cement floor inside the Gleason-Holbrook Manufacturing Plant.

Boy's death result of fall at work site, not from bicycle

NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, SC - A 16-year-old boy who was initially reported to have died Tuesday as a result of a bicycle accident actually died as a result of an injury sustained while working at a construction site, according to the Horry County coroner.

Coroner Robert Edge Jr. said Gustavo Hilario died of head injuries received at a work site on Second Avenue North in North Myrtle Beach.

The boy's father, Geraldo Hilario, initially told authorities his son had been riding a bicycle on Ranchette Circle in Socastee and fell, hitting his head on the ground. More here.

Fall from tree kills Georgetown man

Georgetown, SC -- The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating a work-related accident that claimed the life of a Georgetown man Friday.

Henry Knowlin, 46, was working to remove a tree at a home under construction at 901 Sixth Ave. in Conway at about 10 a.m. Friday. According to Horry County Deputy Coroner Dan Bellamy, Knowlin was in the tree when he fell.

Bellamy said he fell about 45 feet and was unconscious. He was rushed to the Conway Medical Center where he died two hours later.

Firefighters Die in Church Blaze

PITTSBURGH-March 14, 2004 ? Firefighters who thought they had a church fire under control were trapped when the steeple collapsed Saturday. Two firefighters were killed and 29 were injured, including nine that were hospitalized, officials said.

Emergency crews found the bodies of both firefighters by Saturday afternoon, about eight hours after the fire started at the 131-year-old Ebenezer Baptist Church, city Operations Director Bob Kennedy said.

Firefighters Richard A. Stefanakis, 51, and Charles G. Brace, 55, both of Pittsburgh, died in the blaze

DOT Worker Struck, Killed

ATLANTA -- A state Department of Transportation worker was killed and another one injured Thursday when they were struck while picking up a piece of trash along the side of Interstate 20 in downtown Atlanta, authorities said.

The workers, whose identities were pending, were hit from behind around 11 a.m. while collecting debris along the westbound lanes of I-20 near Spring Street.

Sheriff's deputy killed, four injured during standoff with teen

LENOIR CITY, Tenn. -- The teenage son of a prosecutor killed a sheriff's deputy and barricaded himself in his home before he was found dead inside Saturday with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot to the head, officials said.

Michael Harvey, 16, was found in an upstairs bedroom of his lakeside home, said Loudon County Sheriff Tim Guider. He said the teenager had been dead for up to 20 hours.

The confrontation started Friday morning when officers went to investigate a domestic violence complaint from the boy's mother, who had fled to a neighbor's house. She allegedly was attacked with a pipe when she refused to let the boy drive to school after drinking the night before.

The first officer to arrive, Deputy Jason Scott, was fatally shot as he stepped out of his car, Guider said. He was shot four times, and a second officer retreated under fire and called for backup.

Worker dies after falling into a box compactor at a Macy's store in Yonkers

YONKERS, NY - An employee died in an apparent workplace accident Wednesday morning at the Macy's store in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers. Sources tell News 12 Westchester Dimitri Henry became caught in a box compactor and was crushed. Henry was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx where he later died.

Trench collapse kills worker

FISHERS, Ind. -- A trench that apparently failed to meet construction safety standards collapsed Monday morning, killing a Carmel man.

Hector Javier Marquez, 33, was working in a 3-foot-wide and 15-foot-deep trench on a home site when the dirt collapsed on him, Fishers fire officials said. The trench was not shored up with boards or gradually sloped. At least one of those safety steps is required in trenches deeper than 5 feet, according to the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration's rules.

More here and here.

Beltway accident kills road worker

Baltimore, MD -- A construction worker was killed yesterday evening when a car plowed into a work site on the shoulder of the northern side of the Beltway in an accident that brought traffic to a standstill for several hours.

State police said Erika Glazer, 76, of the 7900 block of Winterset Ave. in Baltimore was westbound on the outer loop when she apparently fell asleep at the wheel of her 2000 Acura, entered the shoulder of the fast lane and struck David A. Bowles, 51, of Kingsville.

Bowles...was erecting a portable highway sign advising motorists of scheduled lane closings when he was struck, police said.

A similar work-site accident occurred March 2 on a nearby stretch of the Beltway when an Ellicott City woman lost control of her 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse while eastbound near Thornton Road and struck three construction workers. She and one of the workers were seriously injured.

Man dies at Mason plant

The Ohio Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigators are investigating what caused an accident at Leggett & Platt in Mason that killed an employee after he fell into a compression machine early Monday morning.

At 2:27 a.m. Monday, Mason Fire Department emergency medical crews responded to an accident involving Robert Brogan, 30, of Franklin, at the bed spring manufacturer, 4074 Bethany Road.

OSHA spokesman Dick Gilgrist said Brogan was caught in the machine that compresses the bed springs and bands them before they are shipped.

Second Construction Worker Dies

Tragedy has struck twice at an Effingham County construction site. This morning, Johhny Boyette of Bonafey, Florida, fell to his death on the job. That's the second time in less than two weeks that a construction worker has died at Plant McIntosh. WG Yates and Sons Construction has suspended all work at the site until it completes an investigation.

Officials aren't saying how Boyette died, but WTOC has learned the man basket he was in tipped over. Two weeks ago, the same thing happened to Joe Bethanie, who plunged 40 feet to his death.

Happy Anniversary

Oh, and finally, let's not forget these men and women who were killed just doing their jobs.

Mexican Government Not Happy About Workplace Death Toll

The government of Mexico has expressed concern over the findings of the Associated Press investigation on the workplace death toll of Mexican workers in the U.S. The AP found that Mexicans are more likely than U.S.-born workers to be killed even when doing some of the same high-risk work. (I wrote about this article earlier this week.)

"The findings of the report are very specific, are very worrying to us," said Miguel Monterrubio, spokesman for the Mexican embassy in Washington.

Mexican consular officials in California said the United States has good worker protections on paper, but suggested those laws are too often neglected.

In short, the investigation found that

Since the mid-1990s, Mexican deaths have increased faster than a growing population that is now spread across the United States.

The Mexican death rate has reached 1 in 16,000 workers even as the death rate steadily decreased for the average U.S.-born worker to about 1 in 28,000 workers, the investigation found. Mexicans now represent about 1 in 24 workers in the United States, but about 1 in 14 workplace deaths.

The response to these findings from the Bush administration has been less than overwhelming.

The Bush administration did not directly address the findings of the stories.

Instead, the Labor Department released a statement that lauded its outreach to Hispanic workers and expressed concern over "the unique challenges" Mexican workers face in the United States.

Hispanics are a coveted constituency in this year's presidential election.

U.S. Chemical Industry: Worst of Times, Best of Times

 Bad times for U.S. chemical industry workers:

Across the country, 1 in every 10 chemical-related jobs has vanished in the past five years -- nearly 100,000 workers -- and that number would be worse if not for a surge in one segment, pharmaceuticals.

The chemical industry's eight-decade run as a major exporter has ended, with a $19 billion trade surplus in 1997 becoming a $9.6 billion deficit last year, according to the American Chemistry Council.

But good times for U.S. chemical industry executives.

The Dow Chemical Co. gave its top executive a $2.3 million bonus, a move that one area leader says sends a “bleak message” to a community where the corporate giant has been cutting jobs for two years.

In addition to the bonus awarded in 2003, William Stavropoulos received a base salary of $1.3 million, plus millions more in other incentives and benefits, according to the company’s proxy statement.

The American chemical industry has many problems:

Troubles began over a decade ago with the fall of communism, when countries of the former Soviet Union -- as well as China -- discovered they could compete in the world market for chemical products. Cheap labor and a freewheeling attitude toward safety and the environment helped them keep prices low.

As the global economy slowed, industries that consume chemical products came to depend on those lower prices to offset declining sales and profits. U.S. chemical makers struggled to cut costs and keep up. Then, around 2000, an unexpected problem hit: Natural gas prices went up.

Chemical plants are especially sensitive to natural gas prices because they use it both as a fuel and as a "feedstock" or ingredient in making plastics, resins, fertilizers and more. In the past five years, U.S. natural gas prices have roughly doubled as more and more electrical plants consume the clean-burning fuel but supplies stay stagnant. Other parts of the world -- including Western Europe -- pay far less.

But American chemical industry executives have few problems:

In addition to his base salary and bonus, Stavropoulos was paid $163,473 in other compensation, which was primarily for tax preparation and financial advice related to his return to the CEO position, according to the proxy statement.

Stavropoulos also received deferred or restricted stock awards valued at $6.5 million; 350,000 shares that are 10-year, market-priced options; $977,572 in long-term incentive payouts from deferred stock granted in 1998 and dividend unit awards granted prior to 1999; and $184,852 in other compensation for items ranging from relocation benefits to insurance.

And American workers are pissed off:

Kenny Perdue, secretary-treasurer of the state AFL-CIO, said today the bonus “flies in the face of the workers.”

“The workers are out there doing their jobs, trying to keep their pay and benefits and feed their families and the CEO is awarded a $2.3 million bonus that in his own mind he believes he’s worth,” Perdue said. “And all along the company is laying off workers. Why couldn’t the company use some of this bonus to keep workers?”

AFL-CIO Petitions Bush Administration to Take Action Against China's Treatment of Workers

Arguing that 700,000 U.S. workers have lost their jobs due to worker repression in China, the AFL-CIO has petitioned the Bush administration to pressure the Chinese government to increase wages and improve working conditions there. The AFL-CIO is arguing that worker repression in China constitutes an unreasonable trade practice that violates U.S. law.

Harold Meyerson has the real story here.

The petition and other information can be found here. Section VI-D, starting on Page 49, contains a lengthy discussion of workplace health and safety conditions in China.

Interview with Popcorn Lung Victim

Eric Peoples, whose lungs were severely damaged from inhaling vapors from a chemical used to flavor popcorn, was interviewed here on the CBS Early Show after being awarded $20 million by the jury.

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Additional articles in this series are listed at the right under Greatest Hits

Does It Really Work?

The National Institute for Occupational Safety has issued a publication on how to evaluate safety and health changes in the workplace.

The publication outlines steps that employers and workers can take to evaluate the effectiveness of health and safety improvements, as well as a number of case studies from health care, meatprocessing, grocery stores and chemical exposure.

Court Lets Parent Company of Two Dead Workers Off the Hook

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago has decided that a company whose subsidiary killed two workers cannot be held criminally liable even thought it had taken responsibility for the safety programs of its subsidiaries. I have written extensively before about the deaths of Blake Lane, 20, on a 120-foot steel tower in Mt. Prospect, Illinois and Wade Cumpston, 43, a veteran lineman from Ashland, Ky., who died March 25, 2000, while working on a high-voltage transmission tower in Plainfield, IL. Lane and Cumpston worked for L.E. Myers Co., a subsidiary of MYR.

The Justice Department, at OSHA's request, had attempted to prosecute MYR. The court found that indictment of MYR Group "was an unacceptable attempt to broaden the Occupational Safety and Health Act."

[Defense lawyers Joseph] Duffynoted the ruling was the third to decide that MYR Group could not have committed a crime under the law.

"It's unfortunate the company had to endure the public humiliation and economic consequences of an indictment," Duffy said.

Poor babies.

Unprecedented, But Not Surprising: Industry Lobbyists Write EPA Mercury Rule

Who would have ever thought that this administration's environmental policy would be influenced by industry lobbyists?

WASHINGTON — Political appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency bypassed agency professional staff and a federal advisory panel last year to craft a rule on mercury emissions preferred by the industry and the White House, several longtime EPA officials say.

The EPA staffers say they were told not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies called for under a standing executive order. At the same time, the proposal to regulate mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants was written using key language provided by utility lobbyists....

EPA veterans say they cannot recall another instance when the agency's technical experts were cut out of developing a major regulatory proposal.

Ho, hum. Just another day in Bush world.

What a Surprise: Company Fights Citation for Killing Workers

Someday, after a worker is killed and OSHA has issud its citation, I'd like to hear the President of the cited company say something like this:

"We're sorry. We really screwed up. We were trying to save a few bucks, get the job done a bit faster and cheaper and ended killing someone. We'll never forgive ourselves and we accept whatever sanctions we receive, knowing that no matter how high the fine, it won't begin to atone for the sins we've committed and the pain we've caused to the victims family, friends and co-workers.

Dream on.

Instead, when a company kills one of its workers, we typically get denials and protestations that "We did nothing wrong. We have an excellent safety program." Translation: The dumb worker screwed up and got what he deserved.

Today's version is from the Coors Brewing Company.and a contractor who together were fined over $140,000 for the deaths of Keith A. Dean, 44, of Grottoes, and Frank Domzalski, 45, who were killed in an explosion September 9, 2003, when a tank they were welding on exploded.

Virginia OSHA said that

Coors and maintenance contractor E.A. Breeden Inc. improperly allowed welding on a storage tank containing organic sludge and its combustible byproduct, methane gas....At the time of the blast, the two were welding on a 440,000-gallon sludge tank at Coors' waste-water treatment complex.

Coors had issued a "hot work permit" to Breeden before the workers started welding that certified that there were no combustible fibers, dusts, vapors, gases or liquids in the tank "even though both companies knew that the organic sludge in the tank and methane gas by-product had not been removed from the sludge tank."

Coors's response:

Coors denied wrongdoing.

"Coors is committed to workplace safety and believes that the citations are erroneous. We intend to vigorously contest them with Virginia [occupational-safety law]," the company said in a statement.

Figures

Let no rat die in vain.

Popcorn Lung Trial Follow-Up

This is off a listserve from Dr. David Egilman who provided crucial testimony for Eric Peoples in the popcorn lung trial:

BASF conducted an animal study of butter flavor in 1993. It revealed that the flavor was toxic to rat lungs at exposure levels that were lower than those experienced by many (perhaps all) workers with direct contact to it in popcorn manufacturing facilities. Workers with indirect contact (packaging) may also experience cumulative exposures above those that killed the rats.

Unfortunately the rats died in vain. BASF never published the study and never turned it over to NIOSH after they began to investigate the occurrence of bronchiolitis obliterans in some exposed workers. The study was turned over during discovery in the current lawsuit. Another gastric study revealed toxicity but this study was not easily obtained and was omitted from all MSDS sheets.

Clinical and perhaps animal trials of cytoxan and steroids and other drugs should be instituted to help determine how to best treat these workers.

If anyone has an idea about how to organize this let me know. BASF, and IFF [International Flavors and Fragrances Inc.] and FEMA [Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association] should fund these.

Finally case-controlled studies of "idiopathic" bronchiolitis cases may reveal the magnitude of the problem nationally or turn up other occupational causes of this disease.

Companies should be required to publish all such studies. Let the word go forth - Let no rat die in vain.

Egilman is a Clinical Associate Professor at Brown University.

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Additional articles in this series are listed at the right under Greatest Hits

Obesity Epidemic: Heavy Toll For Health Care Workers

Being fat is not just unhealthy for fat people, it's bad for the health care workers who have to lift them. Dealing with obese patients has induced one hospital to kick off

an Internet-based initiative to provide comprehensive answers to hospitals asking for help in meeting the needs of heavy patients – including proper ergonomics and sensitivity training for nurses and employees, according to Sandy Wise, the company's senior director of medical service lines.

Dealing with obese patients has raised safety issues because the federal government's Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends that workers manually lift no more than 50 pounds.

"This is a safety issue, as well as a quality-of-care issue for patients and health care workers," Ms. Wise said.

Jury Awards Popcorn Lung Victim $20 Million

What Lessons Have We Learned?

In a huge victory for American workers who face unknown hazards from exposure to chemicals at work, a jury in Joplin, Missouri has awarded factory worker Eric Peoples $20 million dollars. Peoples had argued that his lungs were ruined as a result of mixing flavoring oils used in microwave popcorn.

Peoples had charged that International Flavors and Fragrances and Bush Boake Allen, the manufacturers of the diacetyl (the ingredient that gave the popcorn a buttery flavor) knew their butter flavoring was hazardous, but failed to warn the workers at the plant where the chemical was used of the dangers or provide adequate safety instructions.

Peoples' lawyers introduced testimony that tests done as far back as 1993 showed that diacetyl could cause severe lung damage and that workers at the factory that made the chemical wore respirators. The Material Safety Data Sheet given to the popcorn factory, however, contained the phrases "no known health hazards" and "respiratory protection is not normally required."

Peoples needs a double lung transplant and is not expected to live much past the age of 50. Thirty other workers who suffered damage from the chemical are also suing.

I've have written quite a bit about this tragedy (See under "Greatest Hits" on the upper right of this page), but it might be useful to review some of the "lessons" of this case:

• Workers in this country are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. The health effects of chemical aren't adequately studied, and when they are, the results are hidden -- until someone notices that workers are starting to get sick and die. Ironically, Eric Peoples was somewhat lucky. Diaceyl left its "fingerprint" on his lungs in a relatively short period of time. Had the damage caused by the chemical masked itself as some more common "lifestyle" disease, it may never have been linked back to his working conditions.
  
  
• Current OSHA standards are ineffective. Despite the arguments over the legal interpretations and uses of OSHA's respirator and general duty standards, the fact is that OSHA standards are woefully inadequate to protect workers from the effects of most hazardous chemicals. The vast majority of OSHA's chemical exposure standards are over 30 years old and they only cover around 600 of the tens of thousands of chemicals in use today. Most chemicals have not been adequately tested and even where good data about chemical hazards exists, the information is often not communicated to workers, as we have seen in this case.
  
  In rare cases, the General Duty Clause or the respirator standard can successfully be used to protect some workers. But ultimately, until chemicals are adequately tested before workers are exposed, until more chemicals are adequately regulated, and until workers have a right to refuse to work with hazardous or untested chemicals, tragedies like this will continue to occur. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, more often than not, we won't even know how many workers are getting sick and dying from exposure to toxic chemicals.
  
  
• Industry Associations Lack Credibility. OSHA may never again be able to issue any kind of "controversial" standard, no matter how needed. And the reason isn't due to lack of science. The reason is opposition by the regulated industries, generally led by the associations representing those industries. New regulations aren't needed because companies naturally want to protect their workers, they cry. All they need is information.
  
  Well, in this case we saw that the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association (FEMA) had information about the hazards of diacetyl way before Eric Peoples was exposed. What did they do with it? Who knows? But it clearly never made it to the factory where Eric Peoples and his co-workers were employed, despite the fact that FEMA took upon itself the responsibility for evaluating and approving the safety of flavoring ingredients.
  
  Business associations have a legitimate role in our society. Businesses have a legitimate need for information about what happens in Washington. They have a legitimate need to have their interests represented. They need information clearinghouses and guidance on common issues such as health and safety.
  
  There is a legitimate need for such associations and that's why businesses pay their dues. But all of my experience shows their members aren't getting what they pay for. The associations lie distort and misrepresent information about practical, common sense laws and regulations that can only benefit the economic health of the industry and the physical health of their workers. They fund politicians who care more about their short-term campaign funds than they do about the long-term credibility and survival of the industry. They only seem to be able to exist by constantly claiming that the sky is falling. And they don't even do a decent job of disseminating information about health and safety hazards. Members should ask for their dues money back.
  
  
• The practice of considering chemicals to be innocent until proven guilty must end. I have written often about REACH, the European Union's proposal to gather and report the quantity, uses and potential health effects of approximately 30,000 chemicals, and about the defects of the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act. We must call on the U.S. Government to not only stop lobbying against the European proposal, but to advocate for a similar law here. (Although, realistically, we may need a regime change here before that happens.)

So, this jury verdict feels good. As Eric Peoples said, "We're relieved that it's over and our lives can get back to as normal as they can be. At least for now, we'll be able to spoil our children and let them forget for a while.''

But he and others are not going to have the lives that they should have had and they are still going to die much sooner than they should have.

Ultimately, victory will only come in the form of strong laws that will keep this from ever happening again. And for that we need a lot more people to be a lot more outraged at what we continue to do to the workers of this country and why we continue to let it happen right under our noses.

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Additional articles in this series are listed at the right under Greatest Hits

Mexican Workers in the U.S.: Impaled, Shredded in Machinery, Buried Alive

The Last Day in the Life of a Mexican Meatpacking Worker

No one witnessed the exact moment.

Maybe the cuts were taking just that much too long because Soto couldn't pause to sharpen his knife. Maybe the next slab whacked Soto's hand as he turned a beat late.

The wound didn't look that bad. Martin Contreras, still a high-level worker at the plant, had seen gashes gush far more blood. This man will survive, he thought, standing above Soto.

The knife had punctured Soto's chest just above the protective mesh. Above the left collar bone - where the jugular vein returns blood from the head to the heart.

Within minutes, Soto went from yelling in pain to dazed silence.

Contreras sped behind the ambulance in a manager's car - past cornfields and the Last Chance steakhouse - to the medical clinic. It turned out there was no need to rush.

Soto's wife, Gloria Sustaita, arrived with their young sons. In the emergency room, she didn't flinch, didn't cry. But this was the boy she knew growing up in Mexico City, the 21-year-old man she married, the father of her boys, the reason she stayed in Nebraska.

Afterward, she told a confidant, she felt as if their trailer home had become her own grave - as if she were "in a coffin, too."

Excel was not fined for Soto's death because no federal safety standards covered the circumstances that killed him, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA did make five recommendations: among them, don't let workers pull double duty.

This is just one of many tragic stories uncovered by AP reporter Justin Pritchard in an excellent investigation of the high number of preventable workplace deaths among Mexican workers in the United States.

The jobs that lure Mexican workers to the United States are killing them in a worsening epidemic that is now claiming a victim a day, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Though Mexicans often take the most hazardous jobs, they are more likely than others to be killed even when doing similarly risky work.

The death rates are greatest in several Western and Southern states, where a Mexican worker is four times more likely to die than the average U.S.-born worker. In Arizona, the annual Mexican worker death toll has been increasing, but because of the large Mexican-born population their death rates are lower than most other states - though the rates are still well above the average for U.S.-born workers.

These accidental deaths are almost always preventable and often gruesome: Workers are impaled, shredded in machinery, buried alive. Some are as young as 15.

And things seem to be getting worse:

• Mexican death rates are rising even as the U.S. workplace grows safer overall. In the mid-1990s, Mexicans were about 30 percent more likely to die than native-born workers; now they are about 80 percent more likely.
  
  
• Deaths among Mexicans in the United States increased faster than their population. As the number of Mexican workers grew by about half, from 4 million to 6 million, the number of deaths rose by about two-thirds, from 241 to 387. Deaths peaked at 420 in 2001.

We know what the problems are. Mexican workers are hired to do the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs. They receive no training and little safety equipment. The are afraid to complain about unsafe conditions if they don’t speak English, don’t know their rights or if they are here illegally.

So what is OSHA doing about the problem? OSHA’s John Henshaw says the agency is trying to deal with the problem using its Spanish language factsheets and working through its Hispanic Taskforce, which coordinates outreach. That’s all well and fine, but they’ve got some major problems to address:

As OSHA works to improve safety, language remains a barrier. By the agency's own count, there are no Spanish-speaking inspectors or accident investigators in the half of Georgia that includes immigrant-rich Atlanta. Some other Southern cities do have Spanish-fluent enforcement officials.

In its eight-state Southeastern region, OSHA has a single Spanish-speaking outreach worker. Marilyn Velez encourages workers and employers to avoid unsafe practices.

And things are only going to get worse. With OSHA's funding stagnant, there will be no ability to hire any significant numbers of Spanish-speaking staff. And OSHA is attempting once again this year to kill the Susan Harwood worker training grant program which has funded a number of successful projects to educate immigrant workers about workplace safety and their rights.

The $11 million Harwood grants would be replaced with a $4 million program that would rely more on internet and other forms of electronic training rather than "inefficient" classroom training that had the disadvantage of being done during work time (ignoring the fact that OSHA standards require training to be done on worktime.)

Henshaw insists on selling the web-program as part of OSHA's Hispanic outreach program, conjuring up visions of tired Hispanic workers dragging home to their trailer parks from a 10 hour day cutting chickens in the poultry plant, making dinner, helping the kids with homework, and then relaxing in front of their high-speed internet connections for a bit of health and safety training.

Another issue raised by the article:

President Bush's recent proposal to grant illegal immigrants temporary legal protections energized the national immigration debate. Yet in these discussions, job safety has been an afterthought. Meanwhile, Mexicans continue to die on the job.

I’m skeptical that Bush’s proposal will help at all (even in the very unlikely event that it gets passed) as I’ve written before. Making semi-legal immigrants dependent on staying in the good graces of their employer isn’t likely to make workers more confident about complaining to OSHA about health and safety problems. Workers Comp Insider has more discussion about the effect of Bush's immigration proposal on the health and safety conditions of Hispanic workers.

Meanwhile, the Nation’s Health, a publication of the American Public Health Association also has a special report on Work Place Health Disparities Increasing Among Hispanics. (Scroll down to page 11)

The article focuses on many of the health related problems facing Hispanic workers in the United States and notes that the U.S. lacks a reliable system of accurately tracking occupational disease and injury, especially date pertaining to certain ethnic and racial minorities. Pesticide exposure is one of the most serious problems facing Hispanic workers, according to Virginia Ruiz, environmental health coordinator at the Farmworker Justice Fund:

When Ruiz talks to farm workers along the border, she often hears complaints such as lack of pesticide safety training, not being provided with handwashing equipment, not being told when or where pesticides have been applied and, occasionally, stories of being directly exposed to pesticides.

Erik Nicholson, Pacific Northwest regional director for United Farmworkers raised another problem: Health care professionals often miss many pesticide-related health because they don’t ask the workers where they work and what they do.

Finally, the APHA article discusses the problems of day laborers in New York city, including those who face respiratory health problems stemming from clean-up of the World Trade Centers.

Also, see this article about a pesticide poisoning in Florida.

Asbestos in Sarnia: A Slow-Motion Bhopal

One thing that amazes me when I read and write about stories like the popcorn lung tragedy is how little we learned from the decades of coverup -- and the continuing devastation -- wrought by asbestos. This article in the Toronto Globe and Mail is one of the most devastating I've ever read about the man-made plague of asbestos.

Blayne Kinart is a man who used to take pride in the look of his body. When he was 50, he says, there wasn't an ounce of fat on it. He was all muscle, a tribute to the physical rigours of being a millwright in Canada's chemical valley, the maze of petrochemical plants located on the southern outskirts of this Ontario city.

His wife Sandy likes to joke that her husband, a childhood sweetheart who caught her eye in grade school, had always been as "healthy as a horse. If you got a cold in 300 years, it was something."

But today, at 57, Mr. Kinart looks like he wandered into Sarnia directly from a Nazi death camp. Eighteen months ago, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer in the lining of the chest wall. It's an exceedingly rare cancer -- but one that is exceedingly common around Sarnia.

If you are unfortunate enough to get mesothelioma, it basically means only two things. The most immediate is that you've just been handed a death sentence, and an excruciatingly painful one. The other is that at some point in your life, you've breathed asbestos fibres.

There is an epidemic of mesothelioma in Sarnia, the epicentre of what, by some assessments, is the worst outbreak of industrial disease in recent Canadian history.

Jim Brophy, who runs a clinic for Sarnia workers, points out another aspect of the tragedy.

Among the patterns are women who have had their lung cavities scarred because they've done something married women did without thinking in the 1960s and 1970s -- they washed their husband's work clothes. This isn't normally life-threatening, but it is if your husband's coveralls are dusted with asbestos. In other cases, industrial cancers are family affairs, afflicting multiple generations.

Free Speech For Highway Workers

Support Michael Gerstenlager

I wrote a couple of days ago about Michael Gerstenlager, the Ohio highway maintenance worker who displayed a sign with the word "traitor" on a snowplow while helping provide security for President Bush's motorcade. Gerstenlager, a steward with the Ohio Civil Service Employees, AFSCME Local 11 has been suspended and faces termination (if not a trip to Guantanamo).

He can use your support. You can send e-mails supporting Gerstenlager to OCSEA Director Bruce Wyngaard.

And although I would never advocate such a thing, wouldn't it be interesting if Gerstenlager's idea caught on everywhere Bush traveled?

Pesticide Poisoning of Immigrant Worker

The pesticide poisoning of an immigrant worker in Florida has drawn the attention of state lawmakers, concerned that many migrant workers who toil in Florida's fields are unaware of the possible dangers such work holds.

Mario Chavez's hands tremble as he reaches for his dinner plate. He has ''tubes in his kidneys'' because they can't function on their own. His memory is fuzzy.

Until November 2002, Chavez unloaded plants from a trailer at Costa Nursery Farms in the Redland -- plants that were destined to adorn living rooms in homes he could never afford.

Chavez says pesticides from those plants entered his pores, making him vomit every night for a week, turning his face red and swollen. He had a brain hemorrhage and spent a month in a coma.

Doctors have not concluded that the pesticides caused the brain hemorrhage, but they have not ruled it out.

The incident, however, sparked an investigation into the nursery's practices by the state last year. Six violations were found, and the nursery was also fined.

Without any protection, Chavez had been unloading plants that had just been sprayed with a pesticide that was supposed to have a 24-hour waiting period.

Several bills currently moving through the Legislature would require farm owners to tell their workers what pesticides they are using and what the toxic effects could be. Similar bills died in the Legislature last year.

The nursery where Chavez worked was fined a whopping $7,000. They are, nevertheless, denying any wrongdoing and are fighting the citation.

Chutzpa.

Ho hum. Nursing Home Work Is Dangerous. What Else Is New?

Every year it's the same. OSHA releases its list of most dangerous workplaces, and every year nursing homes make the most frequent appearance on the list.

A nursing home employee in New York is more likely to get hurt on the job than a firefighter, a cop or a construction worker, federal statistics show.

A whopping 187 nursing homes across the state made the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration list of employers with excessive injury rates in 2002, making it the top industry in which workers are most likely to get hurt.

In fact, there are traditionally so many nursing homes on OSHA's targeted inspection list, that nursing homes are the only industry that doesn't have all of its targets inspected. There are simply too many.

And that's why OSHA used to have a Nursing Home Initiative that targeted this hazardous industry for special attention. The nursing home initiative lasted all of one year before OSHA cancelled it.

Problem solved? Mission accomplished?

Doesn't look like it from here.

(And don't even mention that stinkin' no-science, job-killing, pinko ergonomics standard. Just get over it already.)

IBM Chemical Problems In The News Again

Computer maker IBM, which has been in the news for a number of lawsuits, is once again in the news for contaminating a town in NY.

"Your house acts as a kind of chimney" for the vapors, which have tested positive for the contaminant trichloroethene, or TCE, said Alan Turnbull, 69, who in 2002 created the Residents Action Group of Endicott, also known as R.A.G.E., after his wife, Donna Turnbull, 57, was found to have throat cancer. Ms. Turnbull does not smoke, and she used to exercise regularly in her finished basement. Now, she rarely ventures down the basement stairs.

That the TCE found in Endicott, a suspected carcinogen, has been measured at very low levels is scant comfort to those worried about more than two decades of exposure. "Oh, sure, we're scared to death," said Ms. Turnbull, who has lived in her Cleveland Avenue home for 21 years. "We know the chemicals are dangerous, but we don't know how dangerous or the long-term effects."

Results of air quality tests from homes in 2002 prompted the state environmental officials to announce in January that the Endicott pollution was more serious than previously believed.

Silica Lawsuit

Last month I wrote about hundreds of workers who were exposed to silica dust while digging a tunnel for a nuclear repository for the Department of Energy (DOE). According to the DOE, up to 1,500 of them may have inhaled airborne silica.

"This lawsuit will expose an outrageous fraud against the work force and even the visitors at Yucca Mountain, one that's already killing people," said plaintiff Gene Griego, who worked as a tunnel supervisor at the Yucca Mountain site.

Griego, a nonsmoker who lives in Las Vegas, was diagnosed last year with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The lawsuit names Bechtel Corp. and its Nevada subsidiaries on the Yucca Mountain project; Bechtel SAIC Corp. of Delaware; Kiewit Group of Delaware; Parsons Brinckerhoff Construction of Delaware and subsidiaries; Morrison-Knudsen, now known as Washington Group International of Delaware; and TRW Automotive Holdings of Delaware and subsidiaries.

But not to worry...

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said Thursday that because the DOE was not named as a party to the lawsuit, it would not comment. But he added that the health and safety of Yucca Mountain workers "has been and continues to be our first priority."

Yeah, just like worker health and safety was a priority at Hanford.

Sometimes, You Just Can't Fool Any Of The People

Working Class Hero

Ohio is destined to be the Florida of election year 2004. Gore gave up on the state early in 2000, yet he lost it by only a few points. With high unemployment and jobs fleeing overseas like cockroaches from Raid, it looks much worse for the R's this year. Which is why President Bush was there earlier this week bragging (sic) about his economic policy.

Well, there's one Ohio worker who wasn't fooled -- and is paying the price.

A state maintenance worker was suspended after he displayed a sign with the word "traitor" on a snowplow while helping provide security for President Bush's motorcade, the Ohio Department of Transportation said.

Michael Gerstenslager was asked to park a snowplow on an entrance ramp to block access to a highway that the president's motorcade used to go from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport into downtown Cleveland on Wednesday.

A state trooper in the president's motorcade saw the sign and reported it to the state's transportation department, ODOT spokeswoman Lora Hummer said.

Gerstenslager is suspended with pay while the department investigates, Hummer said. She said she couldn't identify the potential violations or penalties until the investigation is complete. Discipline can range from a verbal warning to dismissal.

A disciplinary hearing will occur next week, Hummer said.

Gerstenlager is a steward in the Ohio Civil Service Employees, AFSCME Local 11. (I'm sure he must be a graduate of one of my training classes.)

Discipline? I say give him the medal of honor.

OSHA: Missing in InAction?

We've written a lot here in Confined Space about OSHA's attempt to make itself totally irrelevant or even invisible. Well, an enterprising investigator has figured out what the problem is. His discovery is here.

Remember, you heard it first at Confined Space. (Style help from Wage Slave World News.)

NPR Story on Worker Safety and Health Problems at Hanford

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a Wasington Post investigation into serious health and safety problems at the Hanford nuclear reservation. Workers were being exposed to toxic and radioactive vapors, but their employer and the worker health clinic was covering up the fact that their resulting dieases were work related.

Now NPR has joined the investigation with this story about the worker health clinic, funded by the Department of Energy to deal with workplace problems, that is accused of falsifying medical records and failing to provide adequate care to workers exposed to dangerous substances.

Popcorn Lung Trial Update 4

Comment and Background

I received a comment from Larry Halprin, an attorney with Keller and Heckman, taking issue with a comment I made in yesterday's popcorn lung trial update. An industrial hygienist representing International Flavors and Fragrances, which is being sued by Eric Peoples, had testified that "regulations issued by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration require employers to assess hazards in their company and develop plans to control those hazards."

Larry objected to my statement that "Actually, the chemical that allegedly destroyed Peoples' lungs is not covered by any OSHA exposure regulation, nor is there any OSHA regulation that requires employers to control exposure."

Jordan:

Regarding your article titled "Today's Popcorn Lung Trial Update", I believe you have overlooked the application of 1910.134(a). Starting with that premise, I respectfully disagree with your analysis, which seems to conclude that current OSHA standards are inadequate to address this issue.

Sincerely, Larry

Now, Larry and his firm may represent the dark side, but he does have a partial point here. OSHA's respiratory protection standard, 1910.134, paragraph (a)(2) states that "Respirators shall be provided by the employer when such equipment is necessary to protect the health of the employee." (And paragraph (a)(1) states that respirators can only be used as a last resort, after other, more effective control measures -- such as local exhaust ventilation -- have been used.)

And the preamble to the respirator standard states that 1910.134(a)(2) has been used "in conjunction with a citation of the General Duty Clause....to control exposure to a contaminant that was clearly a recognized hazard even though no OSHA PEL [permissible exposure limit] existed."

And, in fact, there have been a few cases where OSHA has cited employers for exposing employees to a chemical that did not have a permissible exposure limit. (For example, OSHA has cited hospitals for overexposing workers to cancer-causing anti-neoplastic drugs.)

So, yes Larry, in theory, if the workers at the popcorn plant had known how seriously hazardous the chemical was, and had the employer not controlled their exposure, the employees could have requested an OSHA inspection asking for a general duty clause citation against the employer for not protecting them against exposure to diacetyl.

But we'd have to make some major assumptions for that to happen. First, Peoples' employer would have had to have received a good MSDS from the manufacturer with accurate information about how dangerous diacetyl was. As we shall see below, this wasn't the case.

Second, assuming the employees had been trained and had all of this knowledge, they would have to have had a pretty expert knowledge of how OSHA works. Not finding diacetyl on OSHA's PEL list, they would have had to have known about the General Duty Clause and how it could be used in conjunction with 1910.134(a)(2). That might happen if the workers were represented by a union that was aware of the problem, or perhaps if they were represented by an attorney with Larry's knowledge of the law, an attorney who wasn't representing the dark side.

Third, the General Duty Clause would have to be much easier to use. There are a number difficult conditions that must be satisfied to successfully use the General Duty Clause, especially when dealing with a "new" hazard.

All of these things theoretically could have happened, but finding your way through this maze of legal interpretation is a long way from a simple requirement that employers control workers' exposure to diacetyl. And it's a long way from the OSH Act's guarantee of a safe workplace for every American workers.

So, Larry, to answer your question, no, I do not believe that current OSHA standards are adequate to address this issue. Not even close.

Meanwhile, back at the trial....

Dave Carroll, the director of fragrance safety assurance for flavoring manufacturer International Flavors and Fragrances, which is being sued by Eric Peoples because they produce a popcorn flavoring ingredient that is alleged to have destroyed Peoples' lungs, has testified that

The warning sheets that accompanied butter flavoring used in a Missouri microwave popcorn plant should have alerted plant managers to the possibility of hazards to employees. (In other words, we're innocent, Peoples' employer is to blame for his condition.)

I find this rather curious as Carroll also testified that:

he had written a computer program to produce the data sheets for the company's flavorings. He testified that the butter flavoring's sheet contained the phrases "no known health hazards" and "respiratory protection is not normally required," but said that does not mean users should not take precautions in using their product.

Carroll also testified that the sheets state that ingredients in the butter flavoring could irritate the skin and eyes, and might cause severe irritation to the eyes, throat, and lungs.

Well, that's perfectly clear.

At least it was clear to International Flavors and Fragrances, because

Under cross examination by Peoples' lawyer, Carroll confirmed that workers at the company's Chicago plant, which produced the flavoring, had been wearing respirators since 1995.

Well, isn't that convenient. The manufacturer has its workers in respirators, but they send out an MSDS to the popcorn company that says that respirators aren't needed. Then they blame the popcorn company for not making their workers wear respirators.

Chutzpah

vapor vapors
Additional articles in this series are listed at the right under Greatest Hits

Environmental Injustice

Greenwatch Today, a nice little daily environmental e-update, reports that the Bush's EPA is not carrying out President Clinton's Executive Order on Environmental Justice, signed 10 years ago. Clinton's initiative was intended to ensure that environmental hazards don't disproportionately affect minority and low-income populations.

EPA's Inspector General found that

the EPA has yet to develop "a clear vision or comprehensive strategic plan, and has not established values, goals, expectations, and performance measurements" for integrating environmental justice into its policies. As a result, any protections provided to minorities and low-income families from environmental hazards have been spotty and solely dependent upon regional EPA initiatives.

"After 10 years, there is an urgent need for the Agency to standardize environmental justice definitions, goals, and measurements for the consistent implementation and integration of environmental justice at EPA"

The administration defended its action by stating that it would provide environmental justice to "everyone."

Or no one.

Whatever.

More here.

Today's Popcorn Lung Trial Update 3

An industrial hygienist, Jay D. Keough, testified yesterday for the popcorn flavoring maker who is being sued for manufacturing diacetyl which destroyed the lungs of workers who were exposed to it. He maintained that the popcorn plant where Eric Peoples worked (and, by implication, not the flavoring producer) was responsible for warning workers about any hazards associated with the use of butter flavoring.

This is something I never knew:

Keough, who testified for the defense, said regulations issued by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration require employers to assess hazards in their company and develop plans to control those hazards.

Now that's a new one. Actually, the chemical that allegedly destroyed Peoples' lungs is not covered by any OSHA exposure regulation, nor is there any OSHA regulation that requires employers to control exposure. Although the Hazard Communication Standard requires the employer to inform and train workers about the hazards of chemicals they work with, there is no requirement that the employer actually control exposure to the chemical.

This is the theory, according to OSHA, of what's supposed to happen once the workers have the hazard information:

The HCS (Hazard Communication Standard) provides workers the right-to-know the hazards and identities of the chemicals they are exposed to in the workplace. When workers have this information, they can effectively participate in their employers’ protective programs and take steps to protect themselves. In addition, the standard gives employers the information they need to design and implement an effective protective program for employees potentially exposed to hazardous chemicals. Together these actions will result in a reduction of chemical source illnesses and injuries in American workplaces.

Note that there is no requirement that the employer actually control exposure to the chemical. And although workers have the right to know about the chemicals they are exposed to, they have no right to act on that knowledge or force the employer to act on that knowledge. And the statement that this information "will" result in a reduction of chemical source illnesses is often just wishful thinking.

There is no doubt that workers' right to know about the hazards to which they are exposed can be a powerful tool. But in order to effectively protect themselves, workers also need to know about their rights and feel secure enough to confront their employer if effective control measures are not being taken. And that usually means they need a union -- which these workers did not have.

The only exception would be if OSHA chose to cite under the General Duty Clause which requires employers to maintain a safe and healthful workplace. Complaints can be filed under the General Duty Clause if the hazard is "recognized" and are "causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm" to employees. But General Duty Clause citations are not easy to get, and are a far cry from a black-and-white requirement for employers to control exposures to all hazardous chemicals.