January 25, 2007 The Pump Handle 2Comment

Yesterday, Jordan Barab mothballed his blog Confined Space, and workers and worker advocates lost a powerful online resource. The good news is that we’ve gained a political resource, since Jordan’s departure from the blogosphere is due to his new staff position on the US House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor. Still, we’ll all miss the combination of up-to-the-minute news, biting commentary, and ceaseless advocacy for worker health and safety that have characterized Confined Space since its inception in 2003. (See Revere’s post yesterday for more on how much Jordan has contributed.)

While we know that we can’t duplicate Jordan’s work at Confined Space, we’re going to try to fill some of the void that his departure has left in the blogosphere. Jordan has instructed us in his methods for keeping up on worker health and safety news, and we’ll be bringing some of that news to our readers as part of our occupational health blogging.

There’s also a great deal of interest in continuing the Weekly Toll feature in which Jordan and his tireless blogging partner – Tammy Miser, who runs United Support & Memorial for Workplace Fatalities – compile a list of workers who’ve died while on the job. This feature puts a human face on the issue of worker health and safety. It reminds us why it’s crucial to keep fighting for safe workplaces. We hope that Tammy and others will keep publishing the Weekly Toll, and that we can help bring it to the blogosphere.

As a service to the thousands of readers who’ve come to rely on Confined Space, we’re creating a special category of posts. It’ll be a slice of Confined Space at The Pump Handle – or “Confined Space @ TPH” for short. Of course, we also invite Confined Space readers to check out our Occupational Health category and to read our posts on other areas of public health and the environment – and you can keep up-to-date by getting our RSS feed, or subscribing to our weekly e-mail digest. Confined Space archives will continue to be available on Jordan’s old site, and our posts will probably keep linking back to his past coverage.

Thanks to Jordan Barab for his tireless dedication to keeping us informed and fired up about worker health and safety. We’ll be watching for further greatness in his career.

2 thoughts on “Introducing Confined Space @ TPH

  1. It’s great that there will still be a go-to blog space on occupational safety and health. BTW, I’ve added The Pump Handle to my own blogroll and I hope to come by regularly. Congratulations on a good looking site.

  2. There’s no substitute for information and knowledge. They are true power. This country needs to know about what atrocities are committed in our own back yard. I get comments from folks I know on the street and at church about the news articles I’ve written concerning the workers comp system and OSHA. Their responses are mostly “I didn’t know that!”. I think CS and TPH are great avenues for transmitting knowledge about these things. Be looking for an article in the Houston Chronicle soon. A reporter has requested an interview with me on the Texas comp system, the upcoming legislative session materials on possible law change, and how this affects the people. Thanks to Jordan I feel I’ve drawn courage to stand up and say “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

    More in the times to come…

    Donald Coit Smith

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