Articles Tagged with ''occupational diseases''

The comment period is now open for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed objectives for Healthy People (HP) 2030. This includes proposed core objectives for Occupational Safety and Health (OSH).

Work-related cancers cost between €270 ($343) and €610 ($776) billion a year in the EU-28 (the European Union including the United Kingdom, which is soon to become a non-member), according to a new book from the European Trade Union Institute.

Coal mining is an important part of the U.S. economy. In 2017, about 30% of our electricity was generated by coal-fired power plants. Coal is also used to make steel and in manufacturing many types of products. And anyone who watches the news knows how important the jobs and income provided by coal mining are to our country’s coal mining regions.

More than 95,000 signatures will be on a petition delivered to Congress tomorrow, urging the EPA to “Ban Asbestos in the U.S. Now, Without Loopholes or Exemptions.” That delivery is timed for Mesothelioma Awareness Day, an effort to bring attention to mesothelioma, a lung disease caused by exposure to asbestos and the inhalation of asbestos particles.

Back when Nixon was in office, asbestos was one of the first carcinogens regulated under the Clean Air Act of 1973. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush largely banned use of asbestos in the United States.

Recent studies show that the occurrence of Pneumoconiosis, or Black Lung disease, among coal miners across the Nation has skyrocketed beyond anything ever seen before in the industry. Younger, less experienced miners are contracting the disease at an earlier age, subjecting them to a shortened and debilitating existence until they ultimately succumb to the ravages of the illness.

One in five working coal miners in central Appalachia who have worked at least 25 years now suffer from the coal miners' disease black lung. That's the finding from the latest study tracking an epidemic of the incurable and fatal sickness.

After reaching a low point in the late 1990s, the national prevalence of coal worker’s pneumoconiosis (black lung) in miners with 25 years or more of tenure now exceeds 10 percent and in some areas is much higher than that, according to a study published in the American Public Health Association’s American Journal of Public Health.