Environmental Health and Safety

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Retirement security for tens of thousands of retired coal miners and their dependents failed to make it into the $1 trillion+ spending bill recently passed by Congress – an omission that angers the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).

The American Public Health Association (APHA) says it supports the fiscal year 2016 omnibus spending bill – although it’s not happy with everything in it.

The National Safety Council applauds lawmakers for reauthorizing the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, also known as the World Trade Center Health Program, and including it in the omnibus appropriations bill. Continuing to fund the program ensures that the men and women who responded to the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Shanksville, Penn., on Sept. 11, 2001, receive the care and medical coverage they deserve.

An effort to derail OSHA’s silica rule – which is expected to be finalized in February of 2016 – was defeated in the appropriations bill released by Congress this week.

At least four million workers go to work each day in damaging noise environments, ten million people in the U.S. have a noise-related hearing loss, and 22 million workers are exposed to potentially damaging noise each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

OSHA’s fall 2015 semiannual regulatory agenda projects that the final rule for occupational exposure to crystalline silica, which has been in development for more than 15 years, will be completed in February 2016.

Certain workers' compensation (WC) policies explain much of the state-level variation in costs and outcomes of claims for low back pain (LBP), reports a study in the December Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

Responding to a complaint of unsafe working conditions, OSHA inspectors observed employees at an Illinois metal fabricating shop over-exposed to noise and dust hazards while manually powder coating metal products in two of the company’s paint booths.