It took six years of going from doctor to doctor to doctor for Penney Cowan to finally receive a diagnosis for her chronic pain: fibromyalgia. Doctors had told her she’d just have to learn to live with the pain — a condition that some days made it hard to lift a cup of coffee. So when she decided to join the pain program at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic, she didn’t have high hopes. She says she expected the effort to fail.
Now that the Presidential election is over, it’s time for the Labor Department to kick into high gear expand workers’ rights and ensuring workers’ lives and health are protected. Here’s my wish list of tasks for the Labor Department to accomplish in the next 6 months:
Earlier this year, federal officials put their foot down: New Hampshire could no longer use federal preparedness money to supports its poison control efforts. The directive sent state lawmakers scrambling to find extra funds. Without new money, New Hampshire callers to the Northern New England Poison Center would get a recording telling them to call 911 or go to the emergency room.
Injury Control & Violence
Explosion in January at Oklahoma oil rig hospitalized four workers, employer pays $6,700 OSHA penalty
Several workers were injured when a January explosion rocked El Dorado Drilling’s Logan Rig #7 in Logan County, Oklahoma. The company said “these things happen,” but accident investigators know otherwise.
It really is a chemical world, which is bad news for people with asthma. According to a recent report, at this very moment from where I write, I’m surrounded by objects and materials that contain chemicals that are known or suspected asthmagens — substances that can act as asthma triggers if inhaled.
In the final section of our new report “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety,” we end on a high note. We profile a number of new laws at the state and local levels to improve working conditions for Americans and protect them from serious health and safety hazards.
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.
Injury Control & Violence
A different kind of Texas-style justice: Two nights at Austin’s Workers Defense Project
It’s Tuesday evening and as usual, the small parking lot outside the Workers Defense Project on Austin’s eastside is packed. The dusty lot is strewn with cars and pick-up trucks parked wherever they can fit and get in off the road. I’ve arrived well before the night’s activities begin, so I easily secure a spot. But my gracious guide and translator, a college intern named Alan Garcia, warns me that I might get blocked in. It happens all the time, he says.
Injury Control & Violence
No shortage of ideas from OSHA staff to improve oversight of agency’s Voluntary Protection Program
An internal OSHA report on the agency’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) was submitted to agency leadership nine months ago, and released to the public this week. The group made 34 recommendations to improve the program, including several addressing fatalities occurring at VPP sites.
The newly unveiled granite memorial in Whitesville, WV is a visible reminder of the 29 miners who were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine, but the truest measure of our recognition of their sacrifice is what we do in their memory to protect the living.