{"id":3779,"date":"2018-08-31T15:33:55","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T19:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=3779"},"modified":"2018-08-31T15:33:55","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T19:33:55","slug":"front-lines-workplace-environmental","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2018\/08\/31\/front-lines-workplace-environmental\/","title":{"rendered":"Dispatches from the Front Line of the Battle for Workplace and Environmental Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-large wp-image-3062\" src=\"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Toxic_photo3-1024x664-1024x664.jpg\" alt=\"front line\" width=\"790\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Toxic_photo3-1024x664.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Toxic_photo3-1024x664-300x195.jpg 300w, https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Toxic_photo3-1024x664-768x498.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Toxic_photo3-1024x664-800x519.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 790px) 100vw, 790px\" \/>See No Evil, Radiate No Evil<\/strong>: Nuclear safety advocate and form Department of Energy official Bob Alverez <a href=\"https:\/\/thebulletin.org\/2018\/08\/under-siege-safety-in-the-nuclear-weapons-complex\/\">describes<\/a> how Trump&#8217;s Department of Energy and Republican appointees on the\u00a0Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board\u2014which oversees and reports on safety practices in the US nuclear weapons complex &#8212; is attempting to undermine the agency.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">With an annual budget of $31 million, the board oversees safety at 10 Energy Department sites that employ 110,000 people and occupy a land base larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. These sites store and handle some of the world largest and potentially most dangerous inventories of nuclear materials. Since its inception the board has been largely responsible, among other things, for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Removing and safely packaging large amounts of unsafe nuclear explosive materials from several sites.<\/li>\n<li>Reducing explosion and fire hazards, a dominant concern.<\/li>\n<li>Increasing emergency planning and response to major nuclear accidents.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dnfsb.gov\/board-activities\/recommendations\">Upgrading antiquated safety systems<\/a>\u00a0at nuclear facilities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Meanwhile, New Mexico Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich have <a href=\"https:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/55c4c892e4b0d1ec35bc5efb\/t\/5b8963470e2e72e04694fee0\/1535730503877\/Udall+and+Heinrich+Letter+Re+DOE+Order+140.1.pdf\">written<\/a> Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) asking them to include language in the FY 2019 Appropriations Bill forbidding the agency to reorganize or reduce staff.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Weaponizing Transparency&#8217; Poisoning Children:<\/strong> How do you know if chemicals are hurting people? It&#8217;s not ethical to feed pesticides to kids to see what happens to them, and many people dispute whether rat studies accurate replicate effects on humans.\u00a0 But epidemiology &#8212; the science that studies disease trends in specific groups of people &#8212; has, for example &#8220;linked pesticides sprayed on fruit and vegetable crops with\u00a0<a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/26634937\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">respiratory complications<\/a>,\u00a0<a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/epdf\/10.1111\/j.1742-7843.2007.00171.x\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">developmental disorders<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/28557711\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">lower I.Q.s<\/a>\u00a0among children of farm workers.&#8221; <span class=\"css-1baulvz\">Danny Hakim<\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0<span class=\"css-1baulvz\">Eric Lipton\u00a0at the\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/24\/business\/epa-pesticides-studies-epidemiology.html\">New York Times<\/a> describe how Trump&#8217;s EPA is attempting to discredit epidemiology, thereby weakening efforts to control many of the pesticides and other chemicals the workers, children and the general public are exposed to.<\/p>\n<p>They are undermining the science under the guise of transparency. The EPA&#8217;s proposal, launched under former administrator Scott Pruitt would ban\u00a0many epidemiological studies, and other outside research, unless more data behind the studies was made public. But making that data public would divulge confidential personal information. This is the same strategy used successfully for many years by the tobacco industry. According to GW University Professor (and former OSHA head) David Michaels, &#8220;\u201cThe underlying justification for this \u2018transparency\u2019 proposal is a caricature of how science really works,\u201d Mr. Michaels said at a recent hearing. \u201cThe cynical approach proposed by E.P.A. can be best described as \u2018weaponized transparency.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Foxes Watching the Henhouse:<\/strong> It&#8217;s no surprise the EPA is working hard to ensure the safety of the nation&#8217;s polluters, seeing as Trump has been busy appointing former representatives of the polluting industries to high level positions in the agency that is supposed to be protecting the public from their former clients.\u00a0 The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/19\/us\/politics\/epa-coal-emissions-standards-william-wehrum.html\">New York Times<\/a> Eric Lipton remains hot on the trail of conflicts of interest with an article about EPA&#8217;s top air pollution official, William L. Wehrum, who &#8220;worked for the better part of a decade to weaken air pollution rules by fighting the Environmental Protection Agency in court on behalf of chemical manufacturers, refineries, oil drillers and coal-burning power plants.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Wehrum is now in charge of the &#8220;vast rollback of regulations on emissions from coal plants, including many owned by members of a coal-burning trade association\u00a0<a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" title=\"UTILITY AIR REGULATORY GROUP\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/4776445-EPA-s-William-Wehrum-and-the-Effort-to-Move.html#document\/p162\/a448260\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">that had retained Mr. Wehrum<\/a>\u00a0and his firm as recently as last year to push for the changes.&#8221; How convenient.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Prison Chicken:<\/strong> Michelle Chen at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/prison-labor-on-the-kill-line\/\">The Nation<\/a> reviews a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.splcenter.org\/news\/2018\/07\/26\/kill-line\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)<\/a>\u00a0study that describes how poultry processing companies are hiring inexpensive prison labor to do dangerous jobs in their processing plants. Poultry work is far more dangerous than the average American job, and plant workers &#8212; often imovrished immigrants, many without documentation &#8212; are reluctant to complain.\u00a0 Conditions are no better for prisoners.\u00a0According to state records from Georgia and North Carolina, the SPLC found that \u201cat least two dozen prisoners have been injured at their poultry jobs since 2015.\u201d\u00a0 In Alabama, the state deducts so many fees from the wages that prisoners earn, that they end up getting only 13 cents on the dollar. The state, on the other hand, finds the arrangement highly profitable . Meanwhile, as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on undocumented workers, the demand for prison labor has no where to go but up.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Get the Lead Out:<\/strong> Capital and Main <a href=\"https:\/\/capitalandmain.com\/bay-bridge-dismantling-project-was-a-lead-contamination-site-0815\">reports<\/a> that &#8220;at least 80 companies \u2014 including one that recently dismantled parts of the iconic \u00a0San Francisco\u2013Oakland Bay Bridge \u2014 continue to have\u00a0 workers in California who are lead-poisoned at levels high enough to cause birth defects, tremors and a variety of brain disorders.&#8221; The organization had previously &#8220;hundreds of workers at the former Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon, California, had for decades been exposed to lead poisoning. Even worse, the state\u2019s public health department knew about it but failed to act.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>See No Evil, Radiate No Evil: Nuclear safety advocate and form Department of Energy official Bob Alverez describes how Trump&#8217;s Department of Energy and Republican appointees on the\u00a0Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board\u2014which oversees and reports on safety practices in the US nuclear weapons complex &#8212; is attempting to undermine the agency. With an annual budget [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stuff"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Dispatches from the Front Line of the Battle for Workplace and Environmental Safety - Confined Space<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stories of how corporate American continues to undermine workplace and environental protections.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2018\/08\/31\/front-lines-workplace-environmental\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dispatches from the Front Line of the Battle for Workplace and Environmental Safety - 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