At a public meeting in June in Portland, Connecticut, the Chemical Safety Board voted to issue 18 urgent recommendations to various recipients, including OSHA, aimed at halting the dangerous practice of releasing large quantities of flammable gas in the presence of workers and ignition sources during cleaning operations.
“In a July 19 letter to OSHA staff, Assistant Secretary David Michaels wrote: "After forty years, OSHA needs a fundamental transformation in the way we address workplace hazards, and in our relationship to employers and workers." His letter outlined the goals (identified by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis) for which OSHA shares responsibility with other Department of Labor agencies, i.e., securing safe and healthy workplaces, particularly in high-risk industries; and ensuring workers' voice in the workplace, and attached a list of strategies formulated by the Secretary for reforming worker protection at the Labor Department.”
This week a panel of government scientists released a report which said that the vast majority of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed much of which is in the process of being degraded. A significant amount of this is the direct result of the federal government’s aggressive response to the spill, according to Heather Zichal, the deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change
OSHA today cited three construction companies and 14 site contractors for 371 alleged workplace safety violations, and proposed $16.6 million dollars in penalties, following an investigation into the causes of February's deadly natural gas explosion at the Kleen Energy Systems LLC power plant construction site in Middletown, Conn. The explosion took the lives of six workers and injured 50 others.
OSHA has proposed fines of $721,000 against Cooperative Plus Inc. in Burlington for violations of federal workplace safety standards, according to an agency press release. OSHA alleges that this employer, a farmer owned cooperative, exposed workers to the risk of being engulfed and suffocated in grain storage bins without proper equipment and procedures. In a near tragedy that occurred in February, a worker was trapped in soybeans up to his chest in 25 degree weather and ultimately rescued after a four-hour ordeal.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in a press statement that it has released peer-reviewed results from the second phase of its independent toxicity testing on mixtures of eight oil dispersants with Louisiana Sweet Crude Oil. EPA conducted the tests as part of an effort to ensure that EPA decisions remain grounded in the best available science and data.
The American College of Emergency Physician’s (ACEP), according to a press release, has created a list of medical priorities that should go right along with those lists that include buying pencils, notebooks and backpacks:
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