If the recommendations of the just published President’s Cancer Panel report, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, become of a comprehensive national policy agenda, the United States will have a remarkable new cancer prevention strategy – one that includes aggressive efforts to reduce and eliminate chemical exposures that can lead to and cause cancer, including those in the workplace.
The country’s 130,000 miners are not strangers to dangerous working conditions, faulty equipment and air filled with coal dust and other hazardous inhalants. While the accident at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, W.Va., that recently killed 25 miners received international attention, thousands of miners are dying more quietly.
By official count, the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill now involves 27,400 civilian and military personnel, 11,000 volunteers, more than 1040 boats, dozens of aircraft, and multiple offshore drilling units.
OSHA says once these bad actor employers are identified, it will conduct inspections at other worksites controlled by the same employer where similar hazards may be present. A good idea, right? It depends on whether you agree with OSHA’s narrow definition of a “severe violator.”
As the initial waves of the newly passed healthcare reform law begin to ripple out, safety committee members should consider how the changes could affect environment of care and occupational health concerns.
As the first “named plaintiff” in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the ordained Baptist minister also is the face of the largest gender bias class action lawsuit in U.S. history – one that could cost the world’s largest private employer billions.
Lady Gaga recently made an unexpected appearance at the Westin Saint Francis hotel in San Francisco—in the form of a flash mob singing a pro-worker version of lyrics to her “Bad Romance.” Replete with tuba, trombone, snare drum and a couple dozen dancing activists, the group materialized in the hotel’s lobby to denounce the chain’s poor treatment of its employees and urge people to “Boycott, boycott,” this “bad, bad hotel.”
About 15 hours after Massey CEO Don Blankenship told Congress that worker safety is the company’s top priority, another Massey miner died in West Virginia, The Associated Press reports.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has proposed $201,500 in penalties for the 29 health and safety citations it issued against Elyria, Ohio, Foundry earlier this week.
Car washes across California were hit with $771,050 in fines after a two-day crackdown by investigators from the state labor commissioner’s office. A total of 247 inspections produced 129 citations against 96 businesses, according to the Department of Industrial Relations.
