July 4, 2008 The Pump Handle

The United Steelworkers, North America’s largest private sector union with 1.2 million members, and Unite the Union, the largest labor organization in the United Kingdom and Ireland with 2 million members, signed an agreement to create the world’s first global union called Workers Uniting.  The announcement was made at the USW’s 2008 Constitutional Convention. In a […]

July 3, 2008 The Pump Handle 9Comment

The six-year term of John Howard, MD as director of the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety is coming to an end.  An annoucement today from CDC’s Media Relations office said: “Dr. Julie Gerberding met with Dr. John Howard and let him know that HHS/CDC will begin a search for a new NIOSH director.” That was […]

July 3, 2008 The Pump Handle 1Comment

Obviously, the economy and Iraq are big issues on voters’ minds, but a new poll from Scientists and Engineers for America shows that candidates would also be smart to demonstrate their support for science. In fact, SEA’s Michael Stebbins reports that although the organization expected positive answers to their questions, they were stunned by the […]

July 3, 2008 The Pump Handle 2Comment

The Chipotle restaurant chain’s corporate philosophy is “Food with Integrity”: “we can always do better in terms of the food we buy.  And …we mean better in every sense of the word—better tasting, coming from better sources, better for the environment, better for the animals, and better for the farmers who raise the animals and grow […]

July 2, 2008 The Pump Handle

For PBS, Bill Moyers’ Journal and Exposé: America’s Investigative Reports went to the Charlotte Observer to learn more about their excellent series on injured poultry workers, The Cruelest Cuts. Reporters actually stumbled on the story in 2005, when they were reporting on avian influenza. Poultry workers told them that, yes, an avian flu outbreak would […]

July 2, 2008 The Pump Handle 3Comment

The State of Rhode Island’s efforts, which began in 1999, to force lead-paint manufacturers to clean-up contaminated homes received a mortal blow when the State’s Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s 2006 decision.  (Full decision from 7/1/2008)  This early ruling was a result of the longest civil jury trial in Rhode Island history, with the decision going against the […]

July 1, 2008 The Pump Handle 2Comment

Did Brush Wellman, the world’s largest producer of beryllium products, hire Hill and Knowlton, the public relations giant behind Big Tobacco’s campaign to fool the public about the hazards of smoking, to help Brush refute reports of beryllium’s toxicity? Brush says no, but we have the smoking guns — memos and invoices — that say […]

July 1, 2008 The Pump Handle 2Comment

Update: 7/1 (4:00 pm): The link is fixed!  It was two reps of the National Association of Home Builders, four staff of OMB and one from the Dept of Labor’s Solicitor’s Office.  Hmmm…no one from OSHA attended the meeting.  On June 18 we reported here that OSHA had submitted to OMB’s Office of Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) […]

July 1, 2008 The Pump Handle 1Comment

by revere, cross posted at Effect Measure As the tomato Salmonella outbreak heads past the 800 case level, it’s time to ask some questions about why we don’t know the source of what is the largest produce associated disease outbreak on record. CDC has its own explanation, namely, that figuring out where tomatoes come from […]