When workers are exposed to hazardous substances on the job, it can take years for symptoms to appear â and even longer to fight for treatment and compensation (a fight that many workers lose). Recently, news stories have highlighted workers from Ground Zero and from nuclear weapons facilities who are struggling to get help with health problems […]
By David Michaels The Bush Administration has been unsuccessful in convincing Congress to pass legislation rolling back public health and environmental protection, even when both the Senate and the House were controlled by Republicans. Some notable examples: attempts to gut the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act failed miserably. With the Democrats in […]
In continuation of the tradition begun at Jordan Barab’s Confined Space blog, Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 64 workplace deaths, including the following: Janez Case, a 51-year-old EMT who died when the ambulance she was riding […]
By Dick Clapp Late last month, there was a series of news stories about the drop in cancer deaths reported in 2004 as compared to 2003. The Washington Post story ran under the headline âCancer Deaths Decline for Second Straight Year,â and the New York Times headline read âSecond Drop in Cancer Deaths Could Point […]
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the policymakersâ summary of its 2007 report today, and it was at once a momentous occasion and nothing new. Nothing new, that is, to the people whoâve been following the science for the past few decades and had already figured out that humans are causing global warming and […]
By David Michaels The Guardian newspaper reports that The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the think tank/public relations firm, has offered scientists and economists $10,000 to undermine the report on global warming issued today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to the report, AEI âoffered the payments for articles that emphasize the shortcomingsâ […]
In addition to the blogging related to the IPCC (which will be getting its own post), this past week saw lots of discussion on the issue of open-access science journals, following the news that a group of big publishers opposed to open access had hired âthe pit bull of public relations,â Eric Dezenhall. Andrew Leonard […]
Friday, February 2, 2007 (3:30 AM EST): Tune in to listen to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) webcast announcing the Working Group I’s approval of their Fourth Asssessment Report. There’s no doubt the global warming naysayers will critique the IPCC’s report with gusto. But, as Naomi Oreskes writes in “Undeniable Global Warming” in todayâs Washington Post “the chatter of skeptics is distracting us from the real issue: […]
Congressman George Miller (D-CA), Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee says the Secretary of Labor has some explaining to do. Miller asserts that essential provisions of the MINER Act,* signed into law in June 2006 under the watchful and tear-filled eyes of Sago families, have not been implemented promptly or evenly.Â
By Liz Borkowski Last week, Revere at Effect Measure used extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) as an example of why the world needs a resilient and robust public health infrastructure (and just a few days later, an article on an XDR outbreak in South Africa made it to the New York Timesâ list of the […]