Three years after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, concerns persist about health effects while the cleanup poses ongoing health and safety challenges; workers in three states sue McDonald’s over wage theft; and the Senate passes a bill altering how the military addresses sexual assault allegations.
Anniversaries of two deadly workplace disasters remind us of the hazards of combustible dust and gas blows; a former Cal/OSHA employee warns that the agency is dangerously understaffed; and CDC uses sugar-industry money to fund studies into the epidemic of chronic kidney disease striking Central American sugarcane workers.
EHS Today tackles Bangladesh factory safety; federal employees get paid for shutdown days, but thousands of contractors don’t; and health ministers from across the Americas pledge funds to address chronic kidney disease that’s killing agricultural workers.
Agrochemical bans have passed or are under consideration in some countries where young, previously healthy agricultural workers are developing chronic kidney disease at alarming rates; a study of cleanup workers who worked on Gulf of Mexico beaches and marshes following the 2010 BP oil spill finds “significantly altered blood profiles” associated with higher risk of some cancers; and OSHA cites a waste company and its temp labor provider following a workers’ death from heat stress.
Warehouse workers employed by Walmart subcontractors march 50 miles to LA for safer working conditions; researchers investigate an alarming incidence of kidney disease among Sri Lankan farmers; and Washington, DC doesn’t know if employers are complying with its law requiring paid sick leave.