A newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues
Dan Zak of the Washington Post has written a long feature article on the impact and aftermath of the West fertilizer explosion that killed 15 people, injured 252 and damaged or destroyed 500 buildings in the small town of West Texas on April 17, 2013. The article does a great job of describing the impact of…
The trial of three rail employees blamed for the deaths of 47 people due to a train carrying 73 cars of highly combustible crude oil derailed in the small Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic is in its second week. Three former employees of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA), Thomas Harding, 56, Richard Labrie, 59, and Jean Demaitre, 53, are being tried…
Just got back from a couple of weeks away and thought I’d spend some time catching up on what’s been happening. And as long as I’m doing that, you should benefit from it as well. Here’s some of the things that have been going on over the last few weeks that you may have missed.…
Maybe it’s because I’m a creature of Washington, but it occurs to me that if 60 people were killed as a result of: — Terrorism — A Coal Mine Collapse — An Ebola outbreak — Food poisoning — Faulty brakes — A chemical plant explosion — A high rise fire — Altered drugs — Sharks…
An unmanned, half-mile long train “bomb train” carrying tank-cars full of highly explosive crude oil barrels toward a city where it is doomed to derail on a curve, killing everyone in its wake. Luckily, Denzel Washington and Chris Pine show up to save the city at the last second. Everyone lives happily every after. That…
Tim Craig has written a very good, if disturbing article in the Washington Post about hazardous conditions for dairy farm workers in Idaho. Alberto Navarro Munoz had been working on the farm for only two weeks when he encountered one of the most gruesome hazards that a dairy worker can face. His tractor tipped over…
One of the free services we provide here at Confined Space world headquarter is helping journalists write better articles. Here we have a news outlet doing the right thing: “News4 I-Team’s Lindsay Bramson started watching construction sites after learning 12 construction workers have died in the past two years.” And, not surprisingly, finding some serious…
For a couple of weeks… Blogging will be light over the next couple of weeks as I head out on “sabbatical” to, uh, study working conditions in other countries. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I’ve pre-written a few things that I’ll post along the way so you don’t forget me. And I’ve left the dogs at…
68-year-old man killed in workplace accident in Hall County Atlanta, GA — The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating. A 68-year-old man was killed Friday in a workplace accident in Hall County, the sheriff’s office said. The man was identified Saturday as Jake Sanders of Flowery Branch, sheriff’s spokesman Stephen Wilbanks said. Sanders, an…
Ricky Nombrano, part of the Ballinger, Texas city work crew was killed earlier this week “while operating heavy equipment.” We know nothing about what caused Nombrano’s death, except that it was not due to natural causes. What’s so special about Nombrano’s death when 12 of his co-workers somewhere in the country also died that day?…