March 2010 - The Pump Handle - The Network of Care

A Bureaucratic Assault on CalOSHA Staff

By Jack Oudiz Pump Handle readers may recall the “Exit Interview” I posted here in June 2009 upon my retirement from Cal/OSHA after nearly 25 years of service. In that letter, I testified about the many ways that Cal/OSHA was failing to carry out its...

Published Thu, Mar 11 2010 5:04 PM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Uncategorized

Agenda available for Latino Action Summit on Worker Health and Safety

Earlier this week, I wrote about the countdown on OSHA’s website to the National Action Summit for Latino Worker Health and Safety (April 14-15) but noted the paucity of information about the what will actually occur at the event. I’m pleased...

Published Fri, Mar 05 2010 3:33 PM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Occupational Health & Safety, Confined Space @ TPH, OSHA

OSHA Listens

Today, OSHA is holding “a public meeting to solicit comments and suggestions from OSHA stakeholders on key issues facing the agency.” Judging by the event web page, OSHA thinks one of the key problems to address is the inexcusable fact that...

Published Thu, Mar 04 2010 7:39 AM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: OSHA

The Nation on the New DOL

The latest issue of The Nation features a laudatory portrait of the Department of Labor under Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis by Esther Kaplan. The piece highlights the stark difference between the new DOL leaders and those of the Bush era. Here’s...

Published Fri, Mar 26 2010 1:30 PM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Occupational Health & Safety

Obama Picks Two CSB Members

We’ve raised concerns before about the vacant seats on the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, so it’s welcome news that President Obama has announced his picks to fill those spots. Yesterday, the White House announced the president’s...

Published Tue, Mar 23 2010 11:44 AM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Occupational Health & Safety

Reaction to OSHA testimony on PAWA

The subcommittee on Workforce Protections of the House Education and Labor Committee heard testimony today on the “Protecting America’s Workers Act” (PAWA) (H.R. 2067) from OSHA assistant secretary David Michaels. In the Obama/Solis’...

Published Tue, Mar 16 2010 11:15 AM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Occupational Health & Safety, Confined Space @ TPH, OSHA

UCLA (employer) vs Cal-OSHA

On the heels of Ben Elgin’s Business Week story yesterday about employers failing to comply with rules for reporting worker injuries, it appears large public sector employers have trouble obeying the law as well. The LA Times is reporting that the...

Published Mon, Mar 15 2010 1:55 PM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Safety, Chemicals Policy, OSHA

Science versus theology

by Sarah Vogel If you thought the scientific debate about bisphenol A was over or even quieting down, you haven’t been reading the latest issues of Toxicological Sciences. (What are you doing with your spare time?) Last month in an editorial piece published...

Published Tue, Mar 02 2010 7:26 AM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Environmental Health

Systematising the evidence base: a key strategy for bringing more environmental health science into clinical practice and public health policy

By Paul Whaley As a society we could do much better at incorporating environmental health science into clinical advice and policy recommendations. Take formaldehyde: In the early 1980s multiple studies in rats were showing that exposure to formaldehyde...

Published Tue, Mar 09 2010 7:18 AM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Research, Environmental Health

Getting down to brass tacks: Defining differences in positions on TSCA reform

By Richard Denison, cross-posted from Environmental Defense Fund As the long-awaited introduction of TSCA reform legislation at last appears to be about to happen (how’s that for being definitively vague?), the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families (SCHF...

Published Wed, Mar 31 2010 1:39 PM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Chemicals Policy

The Katrina chronicles: Formaldehyde-laced trailers set to claim another set of victims

by Richard Denison, PhD, cross-posted from EDF Blog The Washington Post ran a front-page article Saturday, written by Spencer Hsu, which reported the auction sale by FEMA of most of the 120,000 notorious formaldehyde-tainted trailers it had purchased...

Published Mon, Mar 15 2010 7:00 AM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Environmental Protection Agency, Uncategorized, Chemicals Policy, Cancer, Reproductive health

Federal No. 2 Coal Mine: Hilda Solis and Joe Main speak

by Ken Ward Jr., cross-posted from Coal Tattoo After she visited Patriot Coal’s Federal No. 2 Mine in Monongalia County, W.Va., last year, Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis couldn’t say enough about the operation, its great labor-management relations...

Published Fri, Mar 05 2010 6:16 AM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Occupational Health & Safety, Confined Space @ TPH, Regulation, Mining, Safety

Better Stoves for Better Health

Two recent articles (via the Above the Fold newsletter) have encouraging news about the respiratory and climate problems caused by polluting stoves used in much of the developing world. In Environmental Health Perspectives, Tina Adler focuses on a new...

Published Wed, Mar 10 2010 1:25 PM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Environmental Health

Chamber of Commerce and their snowstorm excuse

Yesterday OSHA announced a 15-day extension on the due date to submit comments on its proposed changes to the OSHA 300 injury/illness log. In the agency’s Federal Register notice, OSHA says it: “received requests from several entities, including...

Published Wed, Mar 10 2010 3:11 PM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Occupational Health & Safety, Confined Space @ TPH, Regulation, OSHA

Flu vaccines, herd immunity and randomized trials

by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure The latest study on flu vaccine effectiveness in children has been well discussed in the MSM and the flu blogs, so I’ll point you to those excellent pieces (Branswell, crof, Mike Coston at Avian Flu Diary...

Published Thu, Mar 11 2010 6:32 AM by The Pump Handle

Filed under: Influenza, Research

March 2010 - The Pump Handle

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