Imagine an organization that is given 90 days to complete a task, but after two years still hasn’t finished the job. When you ask them ‘when we’ll you be done?’ they respond with ‘no comment.’ That’s what’s happening with a Labor Dept rule to protect workers from respirable silica.
A new report by the European Environment Agency offers more than a dozen case studies for us to examine the question: could we have taken action earlier to prevent harm to human health or the environment?
Dr. Paul Demers says he frequently finds himself having to make the case for why studying workplace exposures to carcinogens is important. Oftentimes, he says, people believe such occupational dangers are a thing of the past. But a new four-year study he’s leading could change all that.
With five days left in calendar year 2012, the Obama Administration released its current regulatory plan and agenda, including new rules addressing health and safety hazards in workplaces. Neither OSHA nor MSHA have a good track record predicting when such rules will actually be completed.
Two recently published papers funded by the federal agency Health Canada report on excess risk of breast cancer among auto plastics workers and the chemical compounds and processes used that are the likely culprits.
Seven new worker safety regulations–both proposed and final rules—are stuck in the Obama White House. One proposed rule has been “under review” for 645 days.
Now that the Presidential election is over, it’s time for the Labor Department to kick into high gear expand workers’ rights and ensuring workers’ lives and health are protected. Here’s my wish list of tasks for the Labor Department to accomplish in the next 6 months:
At last week’s American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting its Governing Council adopted about a dozen new policies to guide the Association’s advocacy activities.
In the 1974, most of us thought that air pollution was something that just looked and smelled bad. But public health researchers had just launched a study to determine whether air pollution shortened people’s lives. Twenty years later they published their results. It forever changed the way we think about and address air pollutants.
Canceling a hotel contract for a major conference is no small feat, but the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization did just that to support hotel workers call for a global boycott of Hyatt Hotels.