Wal-Mart and OSHA reached an agreement to resolve a number of safety problems at 2,857 of the retailer’s stores. OSHA’s meager budget hardly allows it to do follow-up inspections at all of these sites. Wal-Mart will arrange for third-party monitors to assess their compliance with the settlement agreement.
“If you don’t understand why something is harmful, the best you can do is stay away from it,” Paul Anastas said to me a few years ago, explaining the basis of the United States’ risk-based chemicals management policies. “We currently deal with chemical security through guns, guards and gates rather than by redesigning materials,” continued […]
After years of hearing about alarming increases in states’ obesity rates, it was nice to get some good news: CDC reports that the percentage of low-income preschool children classified as obese has declined in 19 states.
Three months after a WV coal miner is killed on the job, the company decides to install safety equipment that could have saved his life.
Fast-food workers hold one-day strikes for better wages; President Obama issues an executive order directing federal agencies to cooperate on chemical-facility risks; and a new study finds the potential for dangerous levels of formaldehyde exposure with a popular hair-straightening treatment.
Fair working standards for construction workers and financial profit for developers aren’t incompatible, according to a new report from Texas’ Workers Defense Project. In fact, consumers are actually willing to pay more to live in places built on principles of safety, economic justice and dignity.
The newly created Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Action held today its first hearing. Witnesses described the toll on public health and safety when the regulatory process is paralyzed by powerful interests and required analyses with no proven benefits.
A few recent pieces worth a look
Pilgrim’s Pride is the world’s second largest poultry producer. The firm’s repeat violations of chemical process safety management should earn them OSHA’s severe violator label.
Throughout a meeting in which it criticized OSHA action on several workplace hazards, the Chemical Safety Board was careful to acknowledge the progress OSHA had made in addressing the hazards, the factors that impede effective OSHA action, and the preventability of explosions and other chemical incidents that kill workers and leave families and communities devastated.