Environmental Health and Safety

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At least 17 large fires are burning across California, and dozens more throughout other Western states, destroying hundreds of thousands of acres, sending toxic pollutants into the air and contaminating water supplies. The air quality in certain areas — particularly near California's massive Mendocino Complex Fire in the northern part of the state — is among the worst officials have ever seen.

The Environmental Protection Agency has a proposal on the drawing board that critics say could expand the use of asbestos — an industrial material known to cause cancer and lung disease. Since the health hazards of asbestos emerged 40 years ago, use of the material has dropped dramatically across the globe. By 2013, more than 60 countries had implemented partial or full bans of asbestos.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued a statewide air quality alert in early August due to smoke spreading across northern Minnesota and southern Minnesota. Smoke from wildfires in western Canada will continue to affect Minnesota. Air Quality Indices in the orange category spread eastward across northern Minnesota Friday, making air quality unhealthy for sensitive groups.

Fuel economy standards intended to combat climate change by reducing gas emissions are in for a rollback, if a proposal announced today by the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration goes into effect. Passed during the Obama administration, the standards were scheduled to become progressively tougher over time for new vehicles. The Trump administration proposal would freeze the standards at their 2020 levels for six years.

The history and motivation behind the efforts NIOSH is putting into expanding and improving occupational safety and health in Wikipedia was discussed in earlier NIOSH Science Blogs (May 19,2015 and July 25, 2018) and thru the NIOSH January 2017 eNews.

Contractor gets fined $250K in worker’s death, OSHA makes changes to electronic recordkeeping rule and New Yorkers found that they had more to fear than steam from a burst pipe in Manhattan. These were among the top stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

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.