A 10-member go-team from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) arrived in Sissonville, W. Virginia last night, ready to investigate the natural gas transmission pipeline rupture on Tuesday that destroyed four homes and sent several people to the hospital for smoke inhalation.
NIOSH researchers involved in an effort to characterize chemical hazards in the oil and gas extraction industry have found elevated levels of silica exposure during hydraulic fracturing operations.
In the wake of a recent train derailment in NJ released toxins and forced widespread evacuations, environmental groups are urging the Obama administration to use its power under the Clean Air Act to reduce chemical disaster risks.
A dramatic increase in oil and natural gas production in the U.S. has been accompanied by a rise in the fatality rate among industry workers, according to NIOSH Director Dr. John Howard, who says a new NIOSH study finds a direct relationship between the number of drilling rigs and the industry’s fatality rate.
A company in Nebraska that allowed workers to enter grain bins while sweep augers were operating has been cited by OSHA for three safety violations. CPI-Lansing LLC, a grain storage facility in Red Cloud, was inspected in May under OSHA’s grain handling local emphasis program. Proposed penalties total $144,400.
Words fail at times like this – another garment factory fire in Bangladesh; 112 dead and 150 injured; another round of despair and anguish for the workers and their families; another round of denials by international garment brands that they bear any responsibility; another round of promises by the brands and their contractors that they will “do better” while refusing to acknowledge that it is their “profits first and foremost” production system that has led to fire after fire after fire.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is issuing a Request for Information to initiate the fourth phase of its Standards Improvement Project (SIP). The purpose of SIP-IV is to improve and streamline existing OSHA construction standards by removing or revising requirements that are confusing or outdated, or that duplicate, or are inconsistent with, other standards.
New health research gives hope to workers and residents exposed to toxic dust and fumes after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. A study finds that some of those people have shown gradual improvement in lung function, indicating that airway injury is reversible in at least some cases.
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