In Forbes (via Gristmill), Megha Bahree reports on child labor in India. Children chisel stones, weave carpets, and work in fields for low wages, with little time off. Bahree notes that there’s a particular demand for cheap labor and small, nimble fingers in crops that require manual pollination, like Monsanto’s high-tech cotton. The biotech giant tries to […]
Environmentalism sometimes gets treated as a luxury, something that countries can pursue once theyâve attained a certain GDP. In China, though, galloping economic growth has created an unprecedented environmental crisis, and citizens are organizing to stop industrial pollution, even though they know it might mean fewer jobs. In todayâs Washington Post, Edward Coody reports that […]
The State of Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services recently released a report on work-related lead poisoning over the last 12 years (1995-2006). I was shocked to read that 94 percent of the workers (289 men) with blood-lead levels above 25 ug/dL were employed in the mining industry. A follow-up story by Elizabeth Bluemink […]
OSHA’s Assistant Secretary Edwin Foulke is expected to travel to Port Wentworth, Georgia today, more than 3 weeks after a horrific combustible dust explosion at Imperial Sugar took 12 workers’ lives. Another 11 workers remain in critical condition at a burn treatment center in Augusta. Apparently, pressure from Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) and Senator Johnny Isakson […]
The Health Affairs Blog has put up links to its top 10 most-read blog posts of 2007, which gave me a chance to read one Iâd missed when it was first posted: Linda Aikenâs myth-busting about the nursing shortage. She starts with the grim statistics: Currently, the United States is short an estimated 150,000 nurses. […]
For the first time, beginning on April 29, it will be unlawful for employers in the mining industry to expose workers to asbestos concentrations higher than 0.1 fiber (per cubic meter of air) over an 8-hour shift. MSHA published today a new exposure limit for asbestos to replace a 2.0 fiber limit which has been on the books since 1978 when the agency […]
The safety and sustainability of the worldâs food supply has been on peopleâs minds lately. Andrew Schneider at Secret Ingredients reminds us of the tainted food problems weâve had here over the past several years, from E.Coli-contaminated spinach and salmonella-tainted pot pies to the latest record-breaking beef recall. Tom Philpott at Gristmill brings us up […]
Weâve written before about the problems with conflicts of interest on EPA scientific advisory panels. In particular, we think scientists working for product defense firms, whose money comes from clients seeking to avoid regulation of their products, ought to be barred from such panels. Now, a group is raising concerns about bias on an EPA […]
I wrote last week about how the FDAâs mixup with Chinese factory names kept it from inspecting the Chinese facility producing the main ingredient for Baxterâs heparin; this problem came to light after the drug was implicated in four deaths. (To date, more than 400 adverse reactions have been reported.) Today, articles in the New […]
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled that Californiaâs regulation of pollution from ships using its port is pre-empted by the Clean Air Act, and thus requires a waiver from the EPA. This is bad news for the state, since the last time it requested a waiver from EPA, the […]