Municipalities should see a red flag when one of its major construction contractors is found willfully and repeatedly violating worker safety standards.
Texas construction workers who’ve lost their lives on unsafe worksites may be gone, but they certainly haven’t been forgotten. Earlier this week, hundreds of Texas workers and their supporters took to the streets to demand legislators do more to stop preventable injury and death on the job.
The White House’s two-year delay of OSHA’s proposed silica rule attracted media attention; West Virginia’s Governor orders mines to undertake a “safety stand-down” after a series of mineworker deaths; and a warming climate will necessitate stricter limits on outdoor work.
Environmental Health
New study lifts the lid on unhealthy kitchen conditions in migrant farmworker housing
For many migrant farmworkers, the health risks don’t stop at the end of the workday. After long, arduous hours in the field, many will return to a home that also poses dangers to their well-being. And quite ironically for a group of workers that harvests our nation’s food, one of those housing risks is poor cooking and eating facilities.
A report about the H-2B guest worker program describes the mistreatment and abuse suffered by workers in the U.S. carnival and fair industry.
Environmental Health
A food safety inspector’s warning about chemicals and bacteria under USDA’s proposed poultry inspection “modernization”
After nearly three decades as a USDA food safety inspector, Stan Painter tells me he now feels like “window dressing standing at the end of the line as product whizzes by.”
Cancer
Obama Administration’s silence on silica is deafening, 2 years and counting for OSHA proposal
Imagine an organization that is given 90 days to complete a task, but after two years still hasn’t finished the job. When you ask them ‘when we’ll you be done?’ they respond with ‘no comment.’ That’s what’s happening with a Labor Dept rule to protect workers from respirable silica.
Infectious Diseases & Vaccines
Our Washington Post local op-ed: DC meals shouldn’t come with a side of the flu
Our Washington Post local opinion piece addresses a problematic exemption in a DC law.
Greg Byers, 43, worked underground at Arch Coal/ICG’s Pocahontas Coal Mine in Beckley, WV. He suffered a serious injury in July 2012 that led to his death. An investigation report explains how common sense–not rocket science–could have prevented his work-related death.
The Family and Medical Leave Act is 20 years old and still doesn’t cover 40% of workers; researchers find evidence of brain damage in five former football players while they’re still alive; and a police officer protecting polio workers in Pakistan was killed.