March 9, 2007 The Pump Handle

One of the great things about the blogosphere is that even when several bloggers are writing about the same story, they’re covering different angles. Here are a couple of examples of posts that complement our posts from the past week: As a complement to Revere’s post on the FDA’s cefquinome decision, check out The Olive […]

March 9, 2007 The Pump Handle

CBS News correspodent Bob Simon traveled to eastern Kentucky to investigate the hazards faced by underground coal miners.  His conversation with women who lost their husbands in the May 2006 Darby Mine disaster will air on this Sunday, March 11 at 7:00 PM (EST).

March 8, 2007 The Pump Handle 1Comment

by Les Boden For the past several years, Nevada employers and insurers could avoid paying workers’ compensation benefits to workers who had positive drug tests. According to an article in Occupational Hazards, this led to the denial of 10%-12% of claims filed in Nevada. But there’s a loophole that the Nevada legislature is considering closing. […]

March 8, 2007 The Pump Handle 3Comment

by Liz Borkowski  It’s International Women’s Day, and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is holding its 51st session with the theme of “the elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child.” Elisha Dunn-Georgiou at RH Reality Check reports that this theme, which you’d expect to get broad […]

March 7, 2007 The Pump Handle 2Comment

by Liz Borkowski  On Sunday, Marla Cone of the LA Times wrote about a federal health center contracting out the work of assessing potentially dangerous chemicals to a company with chemical-industry ties (see David Michaels’s post for reasons to be wary of this particular contractor). Her story in today’s paper shows that shining a light […]

March 7, 2007 The Pump Handle

Worker issues were in the spotlight on Capitol Hill this past week. Senator Patty Murray of Washington state introduced legislation to ban asbestos, and the hearing on the bill featured testimony from John Thayer, head of a crew that works in the tunnels running beneath the U.S. Capitol. He explained that he and his crew […]

March 6, 2007 The Pump Handle

by Revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure While finishing drafting a series of posts on how Tamiflu resistant virus might spread as a result of intense use for influenza control, Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway posted this to remind us that drug resistant organisms spread for reasons much less useful than trying to […]

March 5, 2007 The Pump Handle

An article in yesterday’s Financial Times reveals that prior to the deadly explosion at its Texas City refinery, BP successfully lobbied against environmental regulations that could have mitigated– if not prevented– the catastrophe from having taken place in the first place.

March 5, 2007 The Pump Handle

In continuation of the tradition begun at Jordan Barab’s Confined Space blog, Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 81 workplace deaths, including the following: Eric Jones, a 34-year-old Burlington, Wisconsin resident who fell 90 feet from the […]

March 5, 2007 The Pump Handle 2Comment

By David Michaels Marla Cone, in the Los Angeles Times, reports on a complaint raised by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that the National Toxicology Program’s Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) is being run not by federal scientists but by a consulting firm that also works for manufacturers of chemicals […]