Workplace Safety and Health
By Stuart Silverstein on November 14, 2017
New California rules aimed at curbing the surprising amount of pollution coming from leaf blowers, lawn mowers and other small gas-powered machines cleared a final hurdle Monday, and are set to take effect on Jan. 1. The requirements mark another step in the state’s long-running battle to reduce emissions from a category of small engines…
Posted in FairWarning Reports | Tagged Air Pollution/Toxic Exposure, Environmental Safety and Health, Workplace Safety and Health |
By Stuart Silverstein on September 19, 2017
Leaf blowers can make an infernal racket, and environmental officials say that exhaust from blowers and other gas-powered lawn and garden equipment is a surprisingly big source of air pollution. But are landscaping workers who use the equipment day in and day out exposed to potentially harmful emissions? A 2006 study by the U.S. Environmental…
| Tagged Air Pollution/Toxic Exposure, Environmental Safety and Health, Workplace, Workplace Safety and Health |
Leaf Blowers Flagged as Prodigious Polluters -- And Possible Health Threat
By Stuart Silverstein and Anna Boiko-Weyrauch on September 19, 2017
Five years after starting his first job with a landscaping crew in the suburbs of Seattle, Fredi Dubon decided he had enough and called it quits. The work days were long, sometimes 12 hours, but a bigger problem was having to inhale exhaust from his gas-powered leaf blower.
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Environmental Safety and Health, Workplace Safety and Health |
By Paul Feldman on May 30, 2017
In the four months since President Trump took office, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued four news releases announcing penalties for job safety violations. By the end of May last year, it had issued 199. The recent reticence has spurred six U.S. senators, all Democrats, to ask what’s up at OSHA. In…
Posted in FairWarning Reports | Tagged Environmental Safety and Health, Workplace, Workplace Safety and Health |
By Paul Feldman on March 2, 2017
Editor's note: See update at bottom of story.
In November, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced fines against businesses with workers who were killed when they were pulled into a wood chipper, burned in a refinery fire and crushed in collapsing grain bins and construction trenches. In all, OSHA issued 33 enforcement news releases that month, and over 50 more from…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Whistleblowers, Workplace, Workplace Safety and Health |
By Paul Feldman on February 23, 2017
More than 4,800 American workers are killed on the job each year. But in states that were carried by Donald Trump, the chances of dying at work are higher than in states that Hillary Clinton won. With a single exception, the states that voted Republican had at least three job-related deaths per 100,000 workers, according…
Posted in FairWarning Reports | Tagged Workplace, Workplace Safety and Health |
With Limited Staff, Agency Targets 'Severe Violators'
By Paul Feldman and Stuart Silverstein on December 19, 2016
Soon after beginning their cleanup of a fume-filled tanker car at an Omaha, Neb., rail maintenance yard, Adrian LaPour and Dallas Foulk were dead. An explosion that April 2015 afternoon trapped LaPour in a flash fire inside the car and hurled Foulk out the top to his death. Six months later their employer, Nebraska Railcar…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Workplace Safety and Health |
Big Companies in Legal Scrapes Turn to Science-for-Hire Giant Exponent
By Myron Levin and Paul Feldman on December 13, 2016
The Fall of Icarus is the Greek myth about a youth who gets a pair of wax-and-feather wings but soars too close to the sun–melting the wings and casting him into the sea. In the 1990s, a consulting firm called Failure Analysis Associates ran tongue-in-cheek ads aimed at corporate lawyers that retold the myth as…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Air Pollution/Toxic Exposure, Auto and Highway Safety, Aviation Safety, Consumer Protection, Environmental Safety and Health, Food Supply, Product Hazards and Recalls, Smoking and Tobacco Industry, Workplace Safety and Health |
By Rena Steinzor and Katherine Tracy on May 31, 2016
When we hear about shootings, bank robberies, or home invasions, we expect the perpetrators to be arrested, tried, and punished appropriately if they are found guilty. When a drunk driver kills an innocent bystander, we treat that death as a criminal act punishable with fines and jail time. When an employer ignores workplace safety and…
Posted in Commentary | Tagged Workplace, Workplace Safety and Health |
By Brian Joseph on April 12, 2016
Darkness had enveloped the Newell Recycling yard by the time Erik Hilario climbed into a front-end loader on a cold evening in January 2011. Just 19 years old, Hilario, an undocumented immigrant, had followed his father from Mexico to an industrial park in East Point, Ga., near Atlanta, where they worked as low-skilled laborers amid…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Workplace, Workplace Safety and Health |
When a Workplace Tragedy is Also a Crime
By Rena Steinzor and Katherine Tracy on May 31, 2016
When we hear about shootings, bank robberies, or home invasions, we expect the perpetrators to be arrested, tried, and punished appropriately if they are found guilty. When a drunk driver kills an innocent bystander, we treat that death as a criminal act punishable with fines and jail time. When an employer ignores workplace safety and…
Posted in Commentary | Tagged Workplace, Workplace Safety and Health | 6 Comments