President Obama issued the following press statement regarding the death of two miners in an accident at the Dotiki Mine in western Kentucky late Wednesday:
A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to an agency press release, encourages all states to implement coordinated, high-impact strategies to end the stall in the decline of U.S. smoking rates — a move that will prevent millions of smoking-related heart attacks, cancers, strokes, and deaths.
Heat waves, storms, sea levels, glaciers, and wildlife migrations are just a few of the environmental indicators that show measurable signs of climate change, according to an EPA press release. An EPA report, “Climate Change Indicators in the United States,” looks at 24 key indicators that show how climate change impacts the health and environment of the nation’s citizens.
EPA is making it easier to find chemical information online, according to an agency press release. EPA is releasing a database, called ToxRefDB, which allows scientists and the interested public to search and download thousands of toxicity testing results on hundreds of chemicals. ToxRefDB captures 30 years and $2 billion of testing results.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) this week learned of a tragic accident in New London, Texas. Two 24-year-olds – a man and a woman, both members of the public – were socializing in the vicinity of an unattended oil and gas production site located in a rural area of Texas when an explosion killed one of the individuals and seriously injured the other. The CSB has learned that this particular site was unsecured and unmanned.
U.S. Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, has “introduced bipartisan legislation to protect a key voluntary workplace safety program cut out of the administration’s budget proposal,” according to a press release issued by his office.
“It's back to Eula Bingham,” says one consultant, who is quoted anonymously here because he corresponded with ISHN in a private email exchange. “Confrontation city all over again. ‘Don't come in here complaining about what I do — this is the Department of Labor, not business,’ she is reported to have said.
“It has been four decades since the Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act,” said Peg Seminario, the AFL-CIO’s national director of safety and health at a Senate hearing in late April.
Here, courtesy of a post on ORC Worldwide’s web site, is the line-up of OSHA standard-setting actions, issued by the Department of Labor in late April. ORC Worldwide is a global environmental health and safety consultancy based in Washington, DC.