A newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues
Methylene chloride kills. We wrote about 21-year old Kevin Hartley last June. He died last April 29 — Workers Memorial Day — while when he was overcome by methylene chloride while stripping a bath tub. Seventeen workers have died from over-exposure to methylene chloride between 2000 and 2015, and probably at least as many consumers.…
OSHA may have strong principles about not issuing press releases that might embarrass companies that endanger or kill workers, but they’re gung-ho about press releases publicizing their cozy relationships with industry associations, especially where those relationships are actually helping those industry associations fight off regulatory activity in another state that would protect workers and consumers.…
We read the painful stories in the Sunday papers so you don’t have to. Today a story about the corporate takeover of the Environmental Protection agency. It’s common for pundits to ridicule the Trump administration and Congress for pretty much zero major accomplishments over the past six months aside from a new Supreme Court justice.…
Attached here is an article I wrote for Law 360 about OSHA’s painfully slow process for issuing standards that protect workers, and how the Trump administration is trying to make it even slower. OSHA’s law, court decisions and OMB Executive Orders have already slowed the process to a crawl, but Trump’s Executive Order requiring one…
Seventeen workers dying between 2000 and 2015 isn’t enough to convince the methylene chloride industry that more is needed than just labels on a can to prevent the needless deaths of worker stripping bathtubs. The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed ban of methylene chloride as a paint stripper is a “blatant and raw power grab” of authority…
On April 28, while thousands of Americans were commemorating Workers Memorial Day, 21 year old Kevin Hartley was hard at work stripping a bathtub. Co-workers found Kevin unconscious and rushed him to the hospital where he died later that afternoon of cardiac arrest. Harley’s death wasn’t caused by a rare congenital disorder or a freak accident. He…
Representatives of the construction industry, as well as general industry have petitioned Labor Secretary Alex Acosta to reopen the silica standard, workplace safeguards that would save over 600 lives and prevent more than 900 new cases of silicosis each year. This means that for every day implementation of the standard is delayed, almost two workers will die…
The fact that most OSHA chemical standards are old, outdated and don’t protect workers very well is something that government, labor and industry can generally agree on. There is less agreement, however, on what needs to be done about that problem. But it’s a question that needs to be addressed, as an estimated 50,000 workers…