A newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues
I’m back after a couple of weeks of travel and instead of focusing about what happened over the last couple of week, what didn’t happen is probably more significant. What Happened Six months into Fiscal Year 2018, Congress finally passed the FY 2018 budget. Congress essentially ignored the President’s request to slash worker safety and health…
Black Lung is Back: After almost being eradicated in the late 1990, black lung is back, with a vengeance. Epidemiologists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health say they’ve identified the largest cluster of advanced black lung disease ever reported, according to an NPR story. “When I first implemented this clinic back in 1990, you…
Earlier this week, President Trump submitted his Fiscal Year 2019 budget proposal. This is his second budget proposal, and like the first, although it left OSHA’s budget fairly flat, it once again proposes to slash or eliminate important safety and health programs and agencies. And this is Trump’s second OSHA budget that has been proposed…
Seems like no matter how well a government report describes, some reporters persist in blaming workers’ “mistakes” and “gaffes” for chemical releases and other incidents. Last week, the Chemical Safety Board released a final report on a major chemical release at MGPI Processing Inc., in Atchison Kansas in October 2016, due to the inadvertent mixing…
More information is coming out about the chemical releases at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby Texas following last summer’s flooding in the Houston area as a result of Hurricane Harvey. To refresh your memory, rising floodwaters disabled the plant’s power supply, the emergency generators and finally the cooling mechanisms in temporary truck storage, allowing…
In a 3-1 vote, the Chemical Safety Board voted yesterday to withdraw recommendations calling for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) to strengthen worker participation requirements and to take measures to prohibit retaliation against workers who use their rights. Chair Vanessa Sutherland, joined by members Manny Ehrlich and Kristen Kulinowski voted to rescind the recommendations despite…
The Chemical Safety Board may be preparing to take a significant step backwards in its advocacy for worker participation in preventing chemical facility incidents, including catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In April, 2016 the CSB unanimously approved a 4-volume “Macondo Investigation Report” in response to the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon blowout that killed 11…
The New York Times discussed yesterday how prepared the chemical industry is for natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey. Today the Houston Chronicle picks up on that theme today, focusing on the other end of that problem — how the hundreds of chemical facilities in the Gulf that shut down in response to Harvey can start…
I have a feeling we ain’t seen nothing yet about the effects of Hurricane Harvey on the chemical industry in the Gulf States — and those who live near chemical facilities. Although the loss of control over chemicals at the Crosby Arkema chemical plant seems to have fallen out of the news in favor of…
The Department of Labor yesterday announced a number of initiatives to address the impact of Hurricane Harvey. Among those was an announcement that OSHA will cease conducting programmed enforcement actions in the affected areas to avoid disrupting recovery operations. This makes sense, sort of. “Programmed inspections” are “optional,” to the extent they are not legally…