Thanks to a unanimous vote of California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board last Thursday, workers get to hold on to a robust chemical right-to-know rule that puts their health and safety first. The vote also means that California workers will reap the benefits of more meaningful right-to-know rules than those at the federal level.
Recent US events have highlighted how the use of coal for energy can endanger the health of our rivers.
On Tuesday, more than 40 activists were arrested while protesting Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s refusal to accept the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.
Erik Deighton, 23, was crushed last month in a piece of machinery. A police officer commenting about his death called it an accident. There are well-established ways to prevent a worker from being crushed in a machine. When it happens, it is not an accident.
Three years after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, concerns persist about health effects while the cleanup poses ongoing health and safety challenges; workers in three states sue McDonald’s over wage theft; and the Senate passes a bill altering how the military addresses sexual assault allegations.
Over the next three weeks, more than 200 individuals are scheduled to testify at OSHA’s public hearing on its proposed silica regulation. Unlike other regulatory agencies, OSHA’s rulemaking hearings are overseen by an administrative law judge. Those who testify can cross-examine and be cross-examined by other witnesses and agency officials.
Infectious Diseases & Vaccines
Study: Every $1 invested in childhood vaccines saves $10 (and thousands of lives)
It’s not the first study to examine the enormous health and economic benefits of vaccines. But it’s certainly another impressive reminder about the power — and value — of prevention.
Imprecise and potentially shaming terms like “drug abuse” can interfere with treating diseases of addiction, explain Linda Richter and Susan E. Foster in a piece in the Journal of Public Health Policy.
When President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law in 2011, it was described as the most sweeping reform of the nation’s food safety laws in nearly a century. Public health advocates hailed the law for shifting regulatory authority from reaction to prevention. What received less attention was a first-of-its-kind provision that protects workers who expose food safety lawbreakers.
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Chemicals in commerce: Will industry-promoted legislation undermine existing laws?
While the Senate is pressing the EPA to prevent future chemical disasters, legislation has been introduced in Congress that would, if enacted, make it harder for the public to obtain information about chemical hazards, either in industrial storage tanks or consumer products. While state and local governments – and many manufacturers – are responding to growing public is demand for safer chemicals and more information about chemicals used in products – industry trade associations are promoting legislation that appears to counter that progress.