By Peter Dooley The stories of injury and illness among workers at the Toyota Georgetown plant (reported in the Washington Post story this past week) remind us all about the plight of workers without representation in their workplace. Facing termination after an injury, being transferred to a less desirable job or being discriminated against for standing up for basic rights […]
The editors at the Charleston Gazette and the Louisville Courier-Journal deserve a pat on the back for allowing their reporters to follow-up on worker safety and health stories.  Ken Ward at the Charleston Gazette is still covering important matters related to MSHA and the Sago mine, more than 15 months after the terrible January 2, 2006 disaster.  In “MSHA […]
When a man with extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is told not to board a plane and then does so anyway, you have to expect the public health bloggers to come out in force. Tara C. Smith at Aetiology has been on top of this from the start, first laying out the story, then explaining its implications, and […]
Caution: Put down your fork before reading this post. In a recent op-ed published in the Baltimore Sun, colleagues at Johns Hopkins University put in perspective the recent revelations about contaminated animal feed imported from China. …we should be at least as concerned about the “business as usual” ingredients that are routinely fed to the […]
“On January 11, 2006, my husband and best friend, Clyde Jones, was taken from me and the children, family, friends and community…  He went to work one morning for the City that he loved to a job that he loved.  He never came home.” These are the words of Casey Jones, yet another heart-broken wife left widowed by a preventable […]
Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 57 workplace deaths, including the following: * David Kessler, Jr., a 27-year-old communications worker from Marysville, Washington, died of severe shock after coming into contact with an electrical wire at the […]
President Bush has nominated Dr. James W. Holsinger, Jr. to be U.S. Surgeon General. Here’s the short item from the Associated Press: President Bush has nominated a Kentucky cardiologist who is interested in fighting childhood obesity to be the next surgeon general, the White House announced. The nominee, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., a professor […]
By David Michaels Chris Cillizza of WashingtonPost.com’s The Fix blog reports that former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) is “growing more and more serious about a run for president” – in fact, he’s chosen a “campaign manager in waiting.” Tom Collamore, a former vice president of public affairs at Altria, has been leading the behind-the […]
Manuel Roig-Franzia at the Washington Post reports that over the past six years, more than 30 journalists have been killed in Mexico, and countless more have been kidnapped. Grenades have been thrown into newspaper offices in Cancun, Hermosillo and Nuevo Laredo, and last week, a newspaper in Sonora announced that it was temporarily shutting down […]
The Bush administration isnât the first to expand executive branch influence over the activities of federal regulatory agencies (like FDA, EPA, and OSHA), but it has taken the practice to a new level. Now that the Democrats are controlling Congress, though, moves by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that would erect […]