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.
If combustible dust played a role in the January 20 disaster at International Nutrition which killed two workers, will Labor Secretary Tom Perez get the ball rolling on a regulation to address this deadly hazard?
Throughout a meeting in which it criticized OSHA action on several workplace hazards, the Chemical Safety Board was careful to acknowledge the progress OSHA had made in addressing the hazards, the factors that impede effective OSHA action, and the preventability of explosions and other chemical incidents that kill workers and leave families and communities devastated.
In our new report “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety,” we devote one section to key activities by the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress.
Workers keep dying from combustible dust explosions, even though there’s plenty of knowledge about how to prevent them; three farm workers were found dead in a manure pit; and the list of environmental activists killed in India keeps getting longer.
The Labor Department provided an update on January 20, 2012 to its regulatory agenda, including revised target dates for improved workplace safety and health standards. Several of the rules OSHA now expects to publish in 2012 are regulations the agency previously said would be issued one or two years ago. Missed deadlines, however, are nothing […]
The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has warned about the dangers of combustible dust before, and its new report on a series of disasters at the Hoeganaes facility in Gallatin, Tennessee once again highlights how deadly this hazard can be. In three separate incidents at the Hoeganaes powdered metals plant, fires killed a […]