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:
Cancer
Public Health Classics: Assessing air pollution and health in six U.S. cities, researchers’ findings changed the air we breathe
In the 1974, most of us thought that air pollution was something that just looked and smelled bad. But public health researchers had just launched a study to determine whether air pollution shortened people’s lives. Twenty years later they published their results. It forever changed the way we think about and address air pollutants.
At Palm Beach Groves in Lantana, Fla., a small, seasonal business that ships fresh citrus nationwide, employees have regularly voted between getting a raise or keeping their employer-based health insurance. Health coverage always wins, as many employees’ ages and pre-existing conditions would have made it nearly impossible to get coverage on their own. But a new report finds the Affordable Care Act is on target to help prevent this scenario.
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.
Researchers studying workers’ compensation claims have found that almost one in 12 injured workers who begin using opioids were still using the prescription drugs three to six months later. It’s a trend that, not surprisingly, can lead to addiction, increased disability and more work loss – but few doctors are acting to prevent it.
An animation created by the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards shows us the speed at which the USDA is proposing for its inspectors to find fecal contamination on poultry carcasses.
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.
Since 2000, major regulatory activities by OSHA do indeed slow down during a Presidential election year compared to the year preceding it.
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.