Since we broke the story of the first “popcorn lung” case in a popcorn consumer, many new readers have visited The Pump Handle. We’ve been writing about the hazards of diacetyl for years (here and here, for example). If this is your first visit, you might want to know who we are, where our name […]
Drug resistance is a big news topic this week. Tara Smith at Correlations describes MRSAâs move from hospitals to communities; Mike the Mad Biologist has numbers on the toll of that antibiotic-resistant bug; and Theo Francis at the WSJ Health Blog highlights a shortage of infection-control specialists to help hospitals tackle the problem. Also at […]
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao announced that workplace injury and illness rates for 2006 were the “lowest ever recorded” and noted it was the fourth consecutive year of a rate decline for private sector employers. “The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, showing the lowest rates since the Labor Department began collecting data in 1972, […]
A lot of people who care about the high rates of uninsurance in the U.S. do so because it just seems wrong that the wealthiest country in the world leaves a large swath of its population without healthcare â and, thus, facing employment difficulties, financial ruin, years of unnecessary pain or disability, and an overall […]
The demand for coal is going through the roof. Do giant U.S. energy companies really need a handout? Apparently, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opporunity thinks so. Yesterday, Governor Rod R. Blagojevich announced the awarding of millions of dollars in economic development aid to some of the biggest coal mining companies in the country.Â
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a state law that will require manufacturers to remove six types of phthalates from products intended for children under the age of three. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes the billâs author, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma:
Gold mining is in the news this week after a makeshift gold mine in Colombia collapsed and killed 22. The dead were mostly women, many of them single mothers digging for a few grams of gold that would allow them to feed their families. The Guardianâs Rory Carroll explains, âAn informal agreement with the site’s […]
Just before the House passed legislation last month requiring OSHA to regulate diacetyl, OSHAâs press office went into high gear, announcing the agency was getting to work on just that issue. Two days before the vote, OSHA announced it was initiating rulemaking under section 6(b) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In other words, […]
Youâve probably heard about âcolony collapse disorder,â the mysterious widespread die-off of bees thatâs been worrying commercial beekeepers in recent years. Last month, researchers suggested that Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus was playing a role; parasites and overwork (and mobile phones) have also been suggested as possible causes. But Gina Covina, writing in Terrain magazine (via […]
After reviewing previously undisclosed documents*, the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward writes how a group of notable occupational health scientists and epidemiologists felt DuPont misrepresented the scientific evidence to-date about the health risks associated with PFOA (ammonium perfluorooctanoate, a.k.a. C8).  Ward writes about concerns expressed in private email exchanges among scientists on the firm’s Epidemiology Review Board (ERB), an independent and external committee, when DuPont […]