More than two years after an explosion that killed two workers at the Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board released its findings. Federal agencies, particularly the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, that should provide such oversight lack the staff to adequately enforce their own regulations.
Legally required water systems at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia were not functioning properly before the April 5 explosion that killed 29 mineworkers, according to multiple sources familiar with the disaster investigation. Some mine safety experts believe that these safety systems might have helped prevent the explosion if they had been working as designed.
The US Department of the Interior on Monday said it is accepting nominations for a 13-person committee that will advise the agency on offshore drilling technology, oil spill containment and cleanup, and other issues.
With officials from the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission lending an air of urgency, the board that oversees athletic equipment safety finished its annual meeting Saturday vowing to pursue several updates to football helmet standards.
Imagine if you fell off a ladder on the job and broke an elbow, and on the way to the clinic the boss tells you not to say you were hurt at work. He’ll pay the medical bills, he promises. But soon after your surgery, the boss fires you and sticks you with the medical bills. Hard to imagine? Well, it’s the kind of thing that happens among low-wage immigrant workers in Dane County, says a new report by the Workers’ Rights Center in Madison.
Tesoro Corp. is appealing the $2.39 million fine issued by Washington state to an independent board, after the state Department of Labor and Industries affirmed the penalties and violations last month.
Workplace regulators are seeking fines totaling $1.35 million from the operators of two grain elevators in Illinois where three employees suffocated in on-the-job accidents last summer. One of the two workers killed in July at Haasbach LLC’s elevator in Mount Carroll, Ill., was only 14 years old — four years below the minimum age for performing hazardous jobs under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
A federal agency is fining a New Hampshire paper company for intentional safety violations in the death of a 34-year-old worker who was pulled through a paper rolling machine.
Houston-based Greenstar, San Antonio’s recycling processor, claims in a civil lawsuit that it was defrauded by two employees in a scheme involving the disposal of recycling-waste materials.
New York City police and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) are investigating the death of a young worker at a tortilla factory in Brooklyn who fell into a commercial mixer.
