It was bad enough when the Obama Administration withdrew a proposed rule to protect the most vulnerable workers in our country—children employed on farms—-but somebody told the Labor Department staff to delete all evidence of the proposal from the Labor Department’s website.
UCLA Professor Rick Brown was a champion of public health who passed away suddenly last month. His colleagues, former students and friends are remembering and celebrating his tremendous contributions to improve occupational health, children’s health, and families’ access to health care services.
I’ve written before (here and here) about some of the research that’s been demonstrating the importance of avoiding long stretches of sedentary time. (The Sedentary Behavior Research Network has proposed that “sedentary” refer to waking time spent sitting or lying down and expending little energy, while “inactive” refer to people with low levels of overall […]
Earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report on the snail’s pace of the OSHA process of issuing new rules to protect workers from health and safety hazards on-the-job. One telling table in the document showed the agency issued about 20 new major regulations in each of the previous two decades (i.e., […]
by Kim Krisberg It was a lucky winter for Becky Belmont. The weather was on her side. As the director of energy and weatherization at West Central Minnesota Communities Action Inc., Belmont was sure the agency would run out of energy assistance funds to help all those in need. But fortunately, a mild Minnesota winter […]
By Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPRBlog Yesterday evening, when press coverage had ebbed for the day, the Department of Labor issued a short, four-paragraph press release announcing it was withdrawing a rule on child labor on farms. The withdrawal came after energetic attacks by the American Farm Bureau, Republicans in Congress, Sarah Palin, and–shockingly–Al Franken […]
Gabriel Thompson writes today in The Nation about a summer job he had a few years back, working on the assembly line at a Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant in Alabama. The chickens flew by on hooks at 90 birds-per-minute as he sliced and cut the meat non-stop. It didn’t take long for him to meet […]
Today is World Malaria Day, and the World Health Organization has launched a new initiative, dubbed T3: Test, Treat, Track. It urges countries where malaria is endemic to test every suspected malaria case, treat every confirmed case with anti-malarial medicine, and track the disease with “timely and accurate surveillance systems.” The good news is that […]
Just as Republican lawmakers have been hyping the virtues of purchasing private health insurance—-versus the evils of “Obamacare”—-my husband Jim and I needed to do just that. I had been writing a check for $659 each month to maintain health insurance coverage under my former employer’s plan, as provided by COBRA. After 18 months, it […]
by Elizabeth Grossman One might assume that when a government agency awards a private company a contract to do construction work – for bridge or sewer work or other public utility repairs, for example – evaluating the company’s safety and health record would be a prerequisite. This is, however, not the case. As the government […]