When I asked Teresa Schnorr why we should be worried about the loss of a little-known occupational health data gathering program, she quoted a popular saying in the field of surveillance: “What gets counted, gets done.”
The US Chemical Safety Board has been criticized for not doing more to press recipients of its recommendations to implement them. At a public meeting later this month, the Board will consider classifying OSHA’s response to several recommendations as “Open-Unacceptable.”
It was only his third day on the job when Christopher Michael Cantu, 22, suffered a fatal work-related injury. The company has a history of violating workplace safety regulations, including ones that may have contributed to the young worker’s death.
In a recent study comparing workers at industrial livestock operations and those employed at antibiotic-free livestock operations, researchers found that industrial workers were much more likely to carry livestock-associated strains of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, more commonly and scarily known as MRSA.
After a temp worker was killed in August 2012 at Bacardi’s bottling facility in Jacksonville, Florida, OSHA proposed willful violations and a $192,000 penalty. Did the rum producer own up and pay the penalty?
A construction industry trade association in British Columbia urged the province’s regulatory body to issue a proposed rule to protect silica-exposed workers. The proposal was issued this month. Where’s the U.S. equivalent of a group of high-road construction employers insisting on rules to protect workers’ health and safety?
When most of us pass by a new high-rise or drive down a new road, we rarely think: Did the builders and planners consider my health? However, a new report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers evidence that certain types of land use and transportation decisions can indeed limit the human health and environmental impacts of development.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 cases of elevated blood lead levels from workplace exposures are reported each year to state health departments. In California, where the workforce is 36 percent Hispanic, the proportion of individuals with elevated blood-lead who also had Hispanic surnames was 64-70 percent.
Every week, the Austin-based Workers Defense Project welcomes standing room-only crowds to its Workers in Action meetings. And once a month, a local OSHA representative would join the meeting, giving some of Texas’ most vulnerable workers the chance to meet face-to-face with the agency. Unfortunately, due to the federal sequester, OSHA has had to indefinitely suspend its participation. It’s a significant loss.
Earlier this month, Florida lawmakers wrapped up their latest legislative session. And nearly 500 miles south of Tallahassee in Miami-Dade County, workers’ rights advocates breathed yet another sigh of relief.