The Ghosts of Brentwood:Despite Anthrax Tests, Workers Debate Returning

One day last week, John H.Bridges III, the U.S. Postal Service's on-scene incident commander, opened a black rubber door -- ignoring a white piece of paper with "Exclusion Zone" printed in bold, black letters -- and stepped onto the work floor of a building once so contaminated with anthrax that even the rats inside were treated as hazardous material.

Interesting article on preparations for re-opening the anthrax-contaminated Brentwood Post Office building.

The American Postal Workers Union, which represents the postal workers now inside, took a neutral approach, advising members that reentering the building without protective gear was strictly voluntary. "I wouldn't make any assumptions on the final clearance of the facility," said Corey Thompson, safety and health specialist for the union.

Thompson said such a clearance needs to come from the Environmental Clearance Committee, an independent group of 15 academic, government and private-sector experts that was formed to evaluate the fumigation's effectiveness. It is chaired by the D.C. Department of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The committee issued an interim statement in March that the technical requirements for a successful fumigation were met and that all samples were negative for anthrax. But it stopped short of endorsing reoccupancy. The findings "should not be interpreted as a recommendation" that the facility is safe for reuse, the statement read. The committee said it wanted to review more fumigation data and sampling results. There has been ongoing air sampling during the renovation.

Some workers are wary of the Postal Service's assurances that the facility is safe and given the past history, it's hard to blame them. Some have retired and others have transferred to other locations.

Those not coming back cite lingering doubts about the success of the fumigation process. The place still evokes grim memories for many, and Joan Bell[who sorted mail on Machine 17 and retired in August after a 35-year postal career] said she avoids even driving by. A powdery ghost infected the machines they staffed, killed two of their colleagues and cast a cloud of uncertainty over their health and faith in management, which many said lingers to this day.

The Fighting O'Sullivan

Interesting article on Terry O'Sullivan, President of the Laborers who was recently elected Chairman and CEO of ULLICO to replace the ousted Robert Georgine.

Airport Screeners Fight to Organize Union, Threaten National Security. Oh My!

This article from the Orlando Sentinel describes Airport screeners efforts to build a union and eventually get collective bargaining rights despite the Administration's insistence that unions and homeland security are incompatible.

The opening salvo was fired in January by TSA chief James Loy, when he forbade screeners access to collective bargaining. That was followed by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and its absorption of tens of thousands of civil service workers, who were offered only a one-year guarantee that their union rights would be preserved. And now the Department of Defense is asking Congress for unprecedented authority to hire, fire and promote its 746,000 civilian workers.

The administration couches everything in national security terms, saying it wants to create a nimble work force capable of responding to today's threats. But union leaders call it thinly veiled union busting.

"The part that really frustrates me is that they are lying to the public. They have all the flexibility they need under the current law," said Bobby Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 government workers.

Although screeners are allowed to join AFGE, they aren't allowed to bargain. Screeners talk about how they are being mistreated and claim they are being harassed for organizing activities.

Among the problems cited in Orlando and other airports: Schedules are inconsistent from week to week, and sometimes even day to day; paychecks are lost or wrong; employees are often denied breaks whenever there is a shortage of workers; and screeners who used to work for private screening companies are given first shot at promotions.

And they say those who complain about working conditions often are harassed by supervisors -- including being given less desirable schedules or denied transfers.

"The way we are treated -- it's always negative," said Marzke, who thinks his union activism has made him a target.

Marzke was one of 13 screeners who made a trek to Washington, D.C., in March to officially join the union and take part in a news conference. Immediately afterward, he started having trouble with his pay -- including missing two consecutive paychecks.

"I could only assume it was retribution for my union activities," Marzke said.

***

Nationwide, screeners are complaining about many of the same things, though there are issues of more importance to specific locations.

At Boston, for example, union activist Dennis Cullity is worried about the lack of radiation-detection badges -- they track cumulative exposure -- for screeners who operate X-ray machines. Such badges are worn by the technicians who come in to repair the machines, he said.

"But we're with the machines eight hours a day and we don't get to wear them," Cullity said. "If they are wearing them, why aren't we?"

In Los Angeles, a hub for flights to and from Asia, screeners complain about not being allowed to wear masks to ward against the sometimes fatal respiratory disease SARS. But also, screeners want to see less chaotic scheduling.

But less chaotic scheduling would clearly threaten the security of the homeland, according to Robert Poole, director of transportation studies at the Reason Foundation,* a conservative think tank.

With unions would come new workplace rules that could make it harder for managers to respond to sudden threats. The TSA likes to point to its rapid mobilization of screeners around New Year's Day, when intelligence suggested terrorists were planning to sneak shoe-bombs aboard U.S. jetliners.

"You want to have that level of flexibility. And that's going to be difficult to preserve if the union takes hold," Poole said....

Even if they can't strike, union workers could use other tactics, including sick-outs and work slowdowns, to apply pressure during contract negotiations, said Charles Slepian, an aviation security expert with the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center.

"We can't start messing around with the aviation industry," Slepian said.

Well, all I can say is that it's a good thing there weren't any of those union members involved in 9/11 events. Imagine what a mess that would have been.

*Reason Foundation on Bush's Government Privatization Proposal: "In an exciting development for privatization advocates, the Bush Administration announced plans to privatize 850,000 government jobs, almost half of the federal work force. The decision is a powerful endorsement of Reason’s decades of privatization work....Reason Executive Director Adrian Moore and Senior Fellow Carl DeMaio provided research and strategic guidance in formulating the Agenda, and are working closely with OMB to ensure its smooth implementation."

Bush Administration Bears It All

Check out this article in the Washington Post about the Bush Administration's challenge of hard-fought measures to protect grizzly bears by allowing a permit for silver and copper mines in a wilderness area. It would be the first major mining project allowed beneath a wilderness area.

And there's this, a political phenomenon that is becoming all too common in this administration:

Now, the Bush administration -- more than any White House in the past 28 years -- has been willing to take on the charisma of the big bears. The administration has made land-use decisions that it describes as sensible and scientifically based while largely ignoring howls from environmental groups about how those actions will harm Ursus arctos horribilis.

As a consequence, a painstakingly won consensus among federal experts and environmentalists about what is needed to protect grizzlies is breaking down. Some federal wildlife managers concede that, when it comes to grizzlies, no one trusts them anymore.

Come on guys, we're just talking silver and copper here. Surely there's some "threatening" country we can invade and leave our grizzly's in peace.

For Some, Every Day is 9/11

As the following article illustrates, breathing problems and post-traumatic stress disorder still plague construction workers who were working at the World Trade Center the day of the attacks and afterwards. A meeting hosted by NYCOSH looked at the persistent problems, what could have been done to prevent them and what can be done to be better prepared should there be a next time.

Talk Among Yourselves

I'm trying to finish up an article I promised to write (way back in the pre-Confined Space days when I had more time) and I promised to teach a seminar at my kids' school on Monday entitled "Sex, Lies, Tax Cuts and the Federal Budget: It's all so boring I could die!" I figure that ought to pack 'em in.

What this means is that I have little time for writing until early next week. So, if you're bored:

1. Read the archives.

2. Check out OSHA's new draft ergonomics guidelines for grocery store workers. Quiz: Can you figure out from these what early signs and symptoms you're supposed to report?

3. Discuss. Use the comment or no comment if there aren't any comments. (Come on, it took me a lot of time and help from fellow bloggers to get these comments working.) Use them.

Feds Get Serious About McWane

The federal government is targeting the McWane Corporation, "one of the nation's most persistent violators of workplace safety and environmental laws," for possible endictment under federal crmiinal law, according to the NY Times.

The investigation — encompassing McWane's safety and health record as well as its failure to protect the environment — is especially significant because it represents an unusual effort by the federal government to build a case against a major corporation that for years has avoided serious criminal sanctions despite a lengthy record of infractions.

The company has been cited for more than 400 safety violations and 450 environmental violations since 1995. While the company has paid roughly $10 million in fines and penalties, no McWane official has ever gone to jail for these violations. Instead, a disjointed and fragmented regulatory apparatus repeatedly failed to detect, much less end, patterns of misconduct.

The PBS Frontline program on McWane will be repeated tonight on many public television stations. Check your local listings.

Acts of God, Acts of Man, cont'd: Coal Mine Near-Disaster Explained

At the end of March, I summarized an excellent article, LESS THAN MIRACULOUS, The Near-Disaster at Quecreek Mine by Charles McCollester about the real story behind last year's "miraculous" Somerset County, Pennsylvania mine rescue. The article had appeared in the Nation, but was not available electronically. I just noticed that it is now available on the web for all to read. So read it.

Dozens Killed in Chinese Mine Blast

Associated Press (washingtonpost.com)
Wednesday, May 14, 2003; Page A20

BEIJING, May 14 (Wednesday) -- A gas explosion ripped through a coal mine in eastern China Tuesday, killing at least 63 miners and leaving 23 others missing 1,500 feet underground, officials said.

The explosion struck the Luling coal mine near the city of Hefei at 4:13 p.m., the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Hefei is about 600 miles south of Beijing. By early today, rescuers had recovered 63 bodies and had found no signs that the other miners are alive, said an official reached by telephone in the mine's administration office.Xinhua said 27 of the 113 people working in the mine at the time of the blast were rescued. The cause of the blast was under investigation, the officials said.

China's coal mines are considered the world's deadliest, with more than 5,000 fatalities reported last year in explosions, floods and cave-ins. Explosions are common and often are blamed on a lack of ventilation to clear natural gas that seeps out of coal beds. Other accidents have been ascribed to lack of fire-control equipment or indifference by mine managers to safety rules.

Democracy American Style

Do you think that most people in this country realize that the American version of Democracy (or at least that practiced in the U.S. House of Representatives) involves the ability to allow lawmakers NOT to vote on important, but controversial issues like whether or not we will continue to ban the sale of assault weapons?

GOP Will Let Gun Ban Expire, House Won't Act on Assault Weapons

The Republican-controlled House will not renew the federal ban on Uzis and other semiautomatic weapons, a key leader said yesterday, dealing a significant blow to the campaign to clamp down on gun sales nationwide. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said most House members are willing to let the ban expire next year. "The votes in the House are not there" to continue the ban, he told reporters.

His spokesman, Stuart Roy, said, "We have no intention of bringing it up" for a vote.

As majority leader, DeLay decides which bills are voted on in the House. Because the 1994 assault weapons ban expires next year, the House and Senate must pass legislation to renew it by Sept. 13, 2004. If Congress does not act, the AK-47 and 18 other types of semiautomatic weapons that were outlawed a decade ago by President Clinton and a Democratic-controlled Congress would be legal again, handing a major victory to the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups.

This is the part that really gets me.

Past votes and an NRA survey of lawmakers before the 2002 elections suggest that a majority of House members oppose renewing the ban, GOP officials said. But several Republicans, who requested anonymity, said some pro-gun GOP leaders worry that if members are forced to into a roll call vote, they might switch under pressure from gun control advocates.

Oh my, we wouldn't want that. Imagine if our Congressional representatives had to come under pressure from their constituents and be held accountable for their vote. Horrors!

Better to let the ban expire without having to vote on it at all. That's democracy, American style!

From Montana to New Mexico: Won't Be Fooled Again

A New York Times article about yet another group of people who unknowingly fell victim to the hazards of the nuclear age and the promise of uranium mining. Now hundreds are dying of lung cancer.

The Diné (pronounced dee-NAY) or "the People," as the Navajo call themselves, have many stories about their origins. One says that as they emerged from the fourth world into the fifth and present world, they were given the choice of two yellow powders. One yellow powder was corn pollen, and that was the one they chose.

The other was the color of the dust that seems to give this land its golden hue, dust the color of yellowcake, the uranium oxide that fueled the nuclear age. So much yellowcake lies below the surface that a mining executive called this place the Saudi Arabia of uranium.

The Spirits said it had to be left alone. But from the late 1940's through the mid-80's, yellowcake was picked and shoveled and blasted and hauled in open-bed trucks, and then dried in mountainous piles at multiple sites in the American West. The Navajo, whose lands extend over western New Mexico, eastern Arizona and southern Utah, were at the epicenter of the uranium-mining boom, and thousands of Navajos worked in the mines. More than 1,000 abandoned mine shafts remain on Navajo land.

The consequences are measured today, decades after the mines closed, in continuing health problems and degraded land.

***
Mr. Desiderio tells us he worked off and on in the mines from 1953 to 1981 in a variety of jobs. Many miners worked in "dog holes," primitive tunnels with no ventilation that men crawled through to dig uranium ore by hand. "Mom-and-pop operations," Dr. Strumminger calls them.

The larger mines were frequently no better, with substandard ventilation, no face masks for workers and little or no information or education about the long-term health risks.

But never fear....

Hydro Resources Inc., a subsidiary of Uranium Resources Inc. of Dallas, wants to begin a new mining effort in Crownpoint and nearby Church Rock using a process called in situ leach mining. In the process, a mixture of water, dissolved oxygen and sodium bicarbonate is pumped deep into underground uranium beds. The mixture dissolves uranium, and when the liquid is pumped back to the surface, the uranium can be removed, dried and processed.

The water for the leaching would come from the Westwater Canyon Aquifer under Crownpoint, the sole source of drinking water for Crownpoint and its surrounding area.

Hydro Resources plans to provide uranium for the nuclear power industry, create jobs and leave the aquifer safe for drinking.

Won't Get Fooled Again

But the Navajo aren't buying it this time. Mitchell Capitan, a former mining technician and president of the Crownpoint chapter of the Eastern Navajo Agency, the Navajo equivalent of a mayor, founded Endaum, Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining.

The unemployment rate in the area is almost 70 percent, but there is little sentiment that mining jobs are worth the risk. Endaum has the support of all 31 chapters in the Eastern Navajo Agency Council, as well as the new president of the Navajo Nation, Joe Shirley Jr....."This uranium impacts on our water, our air and our cultural identity," Captain said. "We've already had enough uranium."

It's nice to see that sometimes job blackmail doesn't work.

Frontline McWane Series to be Repeated

My faithful Philadelphia correspondants have informed me that many public television stations will be repeating the Frontline series on McWane Industries Thursday night. McWane, you will recall, was the subject of the Frontline presentation and a three part NY Times story describing a shockingly high death and injury rate at their plants. Check your local listing for times.

Deep 'Deception'

Placerville author puts human face on deadly effects of asbestos exposure

This is an article about Michael Bowker, author of Fatal Deception:How Big Business is Still Killing Us with Asbestos, a story of how the W.R. Grace Company knowingly exposed its workers to asbestos.

Libby, set in a valley along the Kootenai River in northwest Montana, is a town of about 12,000 people that for years was deeply tied to the W.R. Grace mine, where miners unearthed tremolite asbestos as they extracted vermiculite, a mineral used in insulation and other products.

But then people started getting sick. And not just the miners. Some of their wives, too, developed lung illnesses, exposed only to the miners and the clothing they came home in every day. So did children, many of whom played on baseball fields contaminated by tremolite.

In 1999, nine years after W.R. Grace closed the mine, the Environmental Protection Agency sent experts to study the problem. What they found astonished them.

A town was slowly dying.

Bush-Rumsfeld Hit the Jackpot

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Not finding WMDs doesn’t mean there are none. “We haven’t found Saddam Hussein yet,” says a senior Bush administration official. “Does that mean he didn’t exist?”

This article about the US failure to secure potential nuclear and biological weapons sites in Iraq has everything. It’s a terrorism, foreign policy, environmental, human and worker catastrophe all wrapped up in one neat package.

“I saw empty uranium-oxide barrels lying around, and children playing with them,” says Fadil Mohsen Abed, head of the medical-isotopes department. Stainless-steel uranium canisters had been stolen. Some were later found in local markets and in villagers’ homes. “We saw people using them for milking cows and carrying drinking water,” says Ibrahim. The looted materials could not make a nuclear bomb, but IAEA officials worry that terrorists could build plenty of dirty bombs with some of the isotopes that may have gone missing.(Article Source: Tapped)

U.S. to World: “Nevermind”

The Washington Post carried an article yesterday stating that we’ve given up on trying to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The disturbing thing is that while focusing on what seems to be a wild goose chase searching for weapons of MASS destruction, we’ve let the “dirty bomb” horse leave the barn without even trying to close the door. Well, I feel a lot safer now.

I swear to God, I’m starting to believe we really don’t know what we’re doing out there….

OK. All Together Now: Let’s Trash Unions!

My good buddy Eric Alterman, upon whom I showered praise Friday morning (and whom I’ve never met, but he did nicely reference my Workers Memorial Day post in his WebLog, Altercation) took a rare wrong turn Friday afernoon trashing the NY city unions as "irresponsible" for not sacrificing more to ease the city’s fiscal crisis. He cites this article by Steven Greenhouse in the New York Times.

Greenhouse’s article starts out:

Shoppers will soon pay more in sales taxes, and smokers more in cigarette taxes. Property owners are already paying more in real estate taxes, and upper-income New Yorkers are staring at a surcharge on their income taxes. Subway and bus fares are up. So are rents.

The only ones who seem immune from the pain of the city's and state's budget deals are New York's powerful labor unions.

Immune? Hello? Who, exactly are “the city’s powerful labor unions?” The unions are institutions that represent their members. The members, who work for the city, are also citizens of the city; the same shoppers, smokers, property owners (or renters), subway and bus riders (more than upper-income New Yorkers) who are already making the sacrifices that Greenhouse – and Alterman – are accusing them of somehow being immune from. (This point is briefly made in Greenhouse’s article by teacher’s union president Randi Weingarten, but it’s buried at the end of the article.) Then, on top of that, they are expected to be "responsible" and sacrifice their health care benefits?

And then we get this from Alterman:

Yes, (the NYT-endorsed right-winger) Pataki’s the worst, and the commuters suck too, but the unions in New York City are just almost as irresponsible. I know I said this yesterday, but [the Greenhouse] piece makes the point in more detail. The leadership would rather lose jobs and services than offer up any sacrifice and this from people with totally free medical care. I mean, I’m all for totally free medical care. But why are NYC unions the only people entitled to it?

This is just one example of how public employees are seen as lesser human beings -- especially if they belong to unions. And it's a story being repeated right now in every city and in every county and in every state in this nation where public employees are organized. (Another example of how public employees are treated as second class citizens is the fact that most public employees in this country are not covered by OSHA – they do some of the most dangerous work in this country and have no right to a safe workplace. But that’s a story for a different time.)

Actually, public employees bleed like everyone else. So why are NYC unions -- workers -- the only people entitled to free medical care? To the extent they are paid decently (many still aren’t) and receive decent benefits (which are being cut nationwide), it’s not because NYC public employees are more selfish than everyyone else. It's because, unlike most of the rest of America, they are organized and politically active, which is the way the rest of progressive America – not just workers – should be. Then we wouldn’t have to deal with these destructive tax cuts and tragic wars. We wouldn't have a country that “is headed to hell in a handbasket from so many directions one can barely keep track,” to quote…Eric Alterman.

Hog Hell

Check out this article in the New York Times today about the horrific health and environmental problems being created by the waste from huge industrial hog farms. The source may be a relatively new phenominon -- industrial hog farms -- but we've seen the health effects, the industrial denials, the regulatory and enforcement retreats too many times before.

PAULDING, Ohio, May 8 — Robert Thornell says that five years ago an invisible swirling poison invaded his family farm and the house he had built with his hands. It robbed him of his memory, his balance and his ability to work. It left him with mood swings, a stutter and fistfuls of pills. He went from doctor to doctor, unable to understand what was happening to him.

The 14th doctor finally said he knew the source of the maladies: cesspools the size of football fields belonging to the industrial hog farm a half-mile from the Thornell home.

***

A growing number of scientists and public health officials around the country say they have traced a variety of health problems faced by neighbors of huge industrial farms to vast amounts of concentrated animal waste, which emit toxic gases while collecting in open-air cesspools or evaporating through sprays. The gases, hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, are poisonous.

And where have we heard this before?

The agricultural industry, backed by some government officials, contends that these health effects are at best poorly documented. They say that scientific studies have relied too much on the testimony of the people with medical problems, and that there is no way to prove that those problems are directly attributable to the farms.

And, true to form....

Bush administration officials are negotiating with lobbyists for the large farms to establish voluntary monitoring of air pollution, which will give farm operators amnesty for any Clean Air Act violations while generating data that will enable regulators to track the type and source of pollutants more accurately.

***

Former Environmental Protection Agency prosecutors said they started looking at air pollution from factory farms in 1998, but political appointees issued a directive in early 2002 that effectively stymied new cases.... "You had decisions about enforcement that were being made on the political level without any input from the enforcement," said Michele Merkel, a prosecutor who resigned from the agency in protest.

Eric Schaeffer, the former director of civil enforcement at the environmental agency, said Agriculture Department officials tried to exert influence to protect the industrial farms. "They essentially wanted veto power," he said.

And if this is happening to the neighbors a half mile away, what's happening to the workers in these facilities?

The War at Home

VDOT Worker on Overpass Struck, Killed

Victim Hit on Bridge by Car, Then Again After Fall to I-395

Washington Post
Saturday, May 10, 2003; Page B02

James Richard Cameron died yesterday trying to make the roads a little safer.

The 58-year-old father of two was hit by a car while working on the Duke Street overpass in Alexandria. He fell over the side of the bridge onto Interstate 395, where he was struck by three vehicles in the northbound lanes.

Cameron, a Virginia Department of Transportation employee for 13 years, was doing bridge deck repairs at 10:29 a.m. when a car drove straight at him before he could react, Virginia State Police said.

***

Highway work zone accidents are a serious problem in Virginia, VDOT spokeswoman Joan Morris said. Last year, seven employees were killed and more than 350 were injured, she said.

***

"VDOT takes great pride in setting up work zones properly," Morris said. "People have got to expect the unexpected. Watch for those large orange signs. Look for those flaggers, and follow those directions. This is such a tragedy, because our workers are out there to make the roads safer for everyone. These accidents usually can be avoided if people would simply pay attention."

Well, not exactly. It's true that people need to drive more carefully and pay better attention. And fines for speeding in a workzone need to be stiffer. But just as workplace safety cannot depend simply on workers "being careful," highway construction zone safety can't depend on drivers just paying attention. The driver that killed Cameron was 89 years old. I wouldn' t want my life to depend on how well an 89 year old driver is paying attention.

Better lighting, warnings and barriers can prevent many more highway workzone deaths. Click here or here for more information on highway workzone safety.

Good News and Bad News on Ergonomics (Remember Ergonomics?)

First the bad news.

Connecticut says no.

The Connecticut appropriations committee failed to schedule a vote on an ergonomics bill, according to the Bureau of National affairs. "The bill--introduced Jan. 23--would have required all state employers to identify existing or potential ergonomics hazards and develop a written ergonomics policy to abate such hazards. The state's Labor and Public Employees Committee had passed the bill after holding hearings Feb. 7 and 11."

Maybe next year.

More bad news...

Minnesota says no.

A bill that would have created an ergonomics standard for the state also failed to be taken up by the Commerce, Jobs, and Economic Development Committee.

Such is life.

Now, some good news.

Washington says no.

That's good, because the Washington State House Commerce and Labor Committee was considering a bill passed by the Senate that would have turned the state's ergonomics standard into voluntary guidelines. The Committee never acted on the bill.

The BNA reports that "Under the bill (ESB 5161), Washington's ergonomics rule would have had no force or effect, but remain in place only as voluntary guidelines. The bill would not have allowed the state Labor and Industries Department to adopt or amend any similar rules dealing with musculoskeletal disorders in the workplace."

OK, people, this is where we are on ergonomics. Federal OSHA is a disaster: weak guidelines, minimal enforcement with low fines, and a do-nothing ergo advisory committee. There are only two states with ergonomics standards: California and Washington State. California's is so weak, it's almost unenforceable, although there are efforts under way by the labor movement to strengthen it.

Washington's is good, too good for the business community which has spent the last few years trying every which way to kill it -- the legislature every year, the courts...so far to no avail. But they'll keep trying because if they can kill the Washington standard, there's very little chance that any other state will ever pass a standard.

So get ready for next year. If we are ever going to protect this nations' workers and eventually get a national ergonomics standard again, we need to create the momentum on the state level. Keep bringing it up in the legislatures. Bring it up in the upcoming elections. Make it an issue. Go forth and legislate....and agitate.

More Hazards

New issue of Hazards Magazine out on the cyber-news stands today.Information on workplace smoking. Working conditions in the global textile, garment and leather industries. Bush embarrassed into safety action . It's enforcement, but not as we knew it. No jail after Japanese nuke deaths. Losing the war on cancer and much, much more health and safety news from Europe, the U.S. and the world.....

CONFINED SPACE SAFETY INFORMATION

UPDATE: GENERAL CONFINED SPACE INFORMATION CAN NOW BE FOUND HERE.

I’ve noticed that many people find this web page while doing searches for confined space hazards. Many are probably disappointed when they quickly learn that this is not a web page concerned primarily with confined space safety. (Although hopefully, some of you find some valuable information here anyway.)

Nevertheless, because you found your way here under false pretenses, I figure the least I can do is provide you with some links to good confined space resources. (If you know of others, e-mail me.)

OSHA: Confined Spaces

AFSCME Fact Sheet on Confined Spaces

CalOSHA: Is It Safe to Enter a Confined Space

Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety

Communications Workers of America Confined Spaces Fact Sheet

Electronic Library of Construction Occupational Safety and Health (ELCOSH)

Manitoba Labor Department, Workplace Safety and Health Division:

National Agricultural Safety Database, Confined Space Hazards a Threat to Farmers

NIOSH, Worker Deaths In Confined Spaces, January, 1994, DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 94-103

Oklahoma State University's Confined Space Links web page

WorkSafe B.C.


I've also written about a number of individual confined space incidents which you can find by doing a search of this website. Click on "Search" on the upper right hand corner.

By the way, for enquiring minds who want to know why I’ve called this WebLog “Confined Space,” it's because I often feel (politically) shut in a small space where the air is toxic and stinks, there’s little freedom of movement, I can’t get out, and I’m not sure if rescue will arrive before it’s too late.