The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward amazes me with his tenacious attention to worker safety, his watchdog instincts, and his exceptional commitment to follow-up.  One of Ward’s practices that I especially appreciate is his detailed reporting of worker fatalities in West Virginia. Take for example, the death in March 2008 of Ricky Collins Sr., 44, a truck driver for […]
The official figure for cholera deaths in Zimbabwe is 565, but The Independent cites a senior health officialâs report that the death toll is closer to 3,000. On Wednesday, riot police in Harare used batons to disperse and beat a group of doctors and nurses expressing anger over the outbreak. Barry Bearak summarizes the countryâs […]
In most of the worker deaths we cover, itâs clear what could have been done to prevent the tragedy â fall protection, cleanup of combustible dust, better crane inspections â and what kinds of regulations are needed to keep such disasters from occurring again. In the death of Jdimytai Damour, though, I canât summon much […]
From the President who brought you “Clean Skies (cough)” and “Healthy Forests (not)” comes a slashing of the “Buffer Zone” rule which is supposed to prohibit mining companies from dumping waste rock—created by mountaintop removal to extract coal—within 100 feet of streams. As we all know from 3rd grade science class, these small streams flow into larger streams, […]
Itâs nice to finally be able to report that the Bush administration EPA has issued what appears to be a strong pollution-curbing rule on medical waste incineration. Although medical waste incinerators account for a relatively small amount of overall air pollution, they can have significant effects in the 57 communities where theyâre currently located. EPA […]
Today is the 20th annual World AIDS Day, and World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan reflects on what the global community has achieved over the past two decades:
by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure A story on the wires about a paper in the journal Epidemiology this month (November) confirms what other work has shown: those beautiful flowers we buy in American florist shops have an added price attached to them, paid by the children of Central America. Epidemiology is one of the […]
Nearly 1,300 people have been killed in the Mexican city of Juarez so far this year, and journalists are among those targeted by the mafia. On November 13, Armando Rodriguez, a 40-year-old reporter for El Diaro de Juarez, was gunned down as he sat in his car in his driveway. Two other reporters have received […]
We’ve mentioned before that the Obama administration will soon be focusing on developing new approaches to consumer-product safety. It’s worth remembering some of the solutions that have been proposed over the past couple of years, as high-profile problems with contaminated food and drugs have raised concerns about the ability of the Food and Drug Administration […]
Labor Secretary Chao issued her semi-annual regulatory today, listing allegedly the Department’s “regulations that have been selected for review or development during the coming year.” It all might seem kind of pointless (given that she won’t have a say after Jan 20) but the document is in fact enlightening for what it doesn’t mention. There’s no peep about […]