space shuttle, space: 2006_09_01_spewingforth

PERMALINK Posted 6:18 PM by Jordan

ACOEM: Embarrassing Themselves Yet Again

It's almost Labor Day, and once again that time of year for the

American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) to

drive me crazy. ACOEM is the professional organization representing

the country's physicians and other health care professionals who in

the field of occupational and environmental medicine.

Every year, as an organization representing physicians whose main

field of activity is the workplace, ACOEM identifies a topic for its

"Labor Day Checklist" which is designed to provide "'quick tips' to

assist both employers, employees, and the general public in improving

the health and safety of workers and the workplace." Two years ago, I

blasted them for making obesity their Labor Day checklist.

It was true, I pointed out, that being fat is not very healthy for

anyone, and thinner workers are better, healthier workers. And it's

certainly not a bad thing to educate people about how to eat better.

But, I wrote,

That shouldn't be the central focus of an association that is first

and formost "devoted to prevention and management of occupational

and environmental injury, illness and disability."

Especially, with all of the other exclusive workplace problems that

ACOEM could have been bringing to the nation's attention:

We have an epidemic of immigrant worker death, injury and illness.

Asbestos-related illness remains a serious nationwide problem, and

millions of workers face harmful exposure to toxic chemicals about

which we know very little. Year after year, OSHA "enforces" the

same forty year old chemical standards for a tiny fraction of the

chemicals used in this country. Meanwhile, OSHA, the only

government agency charged with enforcing safe workplace conditions

is rapidly turning into a poorly funded business consulting

association while thousands of workers die every year from

perfectly preventable "accidents."

Last year, ACOEM's checklist focused on the hazards of airline travel

-- bloodclots, food poisoning, and dry eyes -- most certainly threats

that subset of workers who fly a lot, though nothing that seems to

ever make OSHA's top ten (or top 1,000) list of things that kill

workers. Somehow, that "checklist" failed to make it onto my radar

screen (or anyone else's as far as I could tell.) Hazards faced by

flight attendants and ground crews, on the other hand, might have had

more impact.

Now, let's fast-forward to Labor Day 2006. This year's theme is

"Controlling Cancer In The Workplace." Aha! I thought, they're back on

the track of real workplace hazards. Look at the epidemic workers who

are still dying of asbestos-related cancers and other carcinogens that

they were exposed to decades ago. Look at all the farm workers who are

being exposed to cancer causing pesticides, high-tech workers being

exposed to poorly tested, high tech chemicals, hospital workers being

exposed to "chemo" drugs, and the hundreds of known or suspected

carcinogens that haven't been regulated by OSHA.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and

Health,

Based on well-documented associations between occupational

exposures and cancer, it is estimated that approximately 20,000

cancer deaths and 40,000 new cases of cancer each year in the U.S.

are attributable to occupation.

Millions of U.S. workers are exposed to substances that have tested

as carcinogens in animal studies.

Less than 2% of chemicals in commerce have been tested for

carcinogenicity.

Hazards Magazine has an excellent report on occupational cancer that

includes a handy list of occupational carcinogens from a September

2005 University of Massachusetts Lowell report that illustrates the

scope of the problem (click to make it larger),

So imagine my [DEL: surprise :DEL] horror when I read further about

ACOEM's checklist, which, it turns out

was developed in conjunction with the CEO Roundtable on Cancer,

which has developed the CEO Cancer Gold Standard(TM)

(http://www.cancergoldstandard.org/), a series of cancer-related

recommendations for employers to fight cancer.

An then there was this:

The identification of occupational cancers and the reduction of

occupational cancer rates in the United States due to uncontrolled

exposures has been a major public health success and how to do it

is well known, but more remains to be done," said ACOEM President

Tee L. Guidotti, MD, MPH, FACOEM.

Yeah, well I'd wager there are more than a few workers out there who

might not share that optimism.

On the other hand, we can probably all agree to this (at least with

the exception of the last phrase):

"Cancer remains a leading cause of lost productive and otherwise

vital years, including among younger workers. We know that many

cancers are not recognized as arising out of work because they

occur years after exposure, often after retirement. We need to

recommit ourselves to prevent cancer and to make work as safe as it

can be, and this year's Checklist is a first step" he continued.

But check out the actual checklist that purports to deal with cancer

in the workplace. Under "prevention," we have (in the following

order): don't smoke, get more exercise and eat better. Then there are

recommendations to get checkups (early detection), get access to

quality care and clinical trials ("To be certain that you receive the

best available care should a cancer diagnosis become a reality,") and

last (and apparently least), "reduce exposure to workplace

carcinogens." And why, you may ask, is reducing exposure to workplace

carcinogens not listed in the "prevention" category, instead of being

tossed in at the end, more or less as an afterthought?

The answer to that question may lie in the checklist's "General

Guidance," to learn about and implement the CEO Cancer Gold

Standard(TM). At first superficial glance, based on the individuals

highlighted on the home page and the "Accredited Companies," the CEO

Cancer Gold Standard(TM) seems to be some kind of spawn of the

pharmaceutical industry.

But let's look deeper.

The CEO Cancer Gold Standard(TM) defines what CEOs and their

organizations can do to prevent cancer, to detect it early, and to

ensure access to the best available treatment for those who are

diagnosed with cancer. (emphasis added)

"For those who are diagnosed with cancer." So much for prevention. The

CEO Cancer Gold Standard(TM) is apparently only for the losers of the

great cancer lottery.

But not so fast. Clicking a bit deeper, we find that they are, in

fact, concerned with "risk reduction." In fact, the first three

"pillars" of The CEO Cancer Standard(TM) are those three same cancer

fighting Musketeers that we just read about: smoking, eating and

exercising, followed by early detection and access to quality care.

Only one thing missing: reducing exposure to workplace carcinogens.

Also missing from the "Resources" page are any mention of OSHA, NIOSH

or EPA. How could the CEO's have missed them? I'm shocked, SHOCKED.

Alls of which brings me back to pretty much the same conclusion that I

wore two years ago, only replacing "obesity" with "tobacco use (and

exercise and nutrition.)"

Again, I'm not saying that discouraging smoking and encouraging better

diets and exercise are bad things. In fact, they're good things to

advocate and they're not necessarily inconsistent with the rest of

ACOEM's mission, to promote the "health and productivity of workers,

their families, and communities."

But the question is whether this is where ACOEM should be putting its

emphasis, particularly on Labor Day. There is not shortage of

institutions -- public and private -- promoting the war against

smoking or the benefits of excersize and good nutrition, whereas

almost no one (with the exception of labor unions and a handful of

health and safety activists and enterprising reporters) is making any

serious attempt to focus the public's attention on the continuing

carnage in America's workplaces, the continuing threat of workplace

cancer, the attempt of corporate America and their Republican allies

in Congress to take any information about chemicals causing cancer off

of Material Safety Data Sheets.

Instead of spending their time and resources telling people they smoke

too much and don't eat well, occupational physicians, organized by

ACOEM, could use this opportunity to call attention to real threats in

the workplace, and the sick, injured and dead workers that almost no

one else in this country seems to know or care about. For a workplace

health organization like ACOEM to just melt into the throngs and

choose smoking and diet as the main focus of their anti-cancer

campaign this Labor Day is once again, as one occupational physician

put it two years ago, "an embarrassment to occupational medicine."

What a waste(TM).

PERMALINK Posted 3:31 PM by Jordan

OSHA Revises Respirator Standard -- To Industry's Liking Rather Than Employee

Protection

ALERT!

OSHA has issued a standard -- or at least revised part of a standard.

This increasingly rare phenomenon happened on August 23 when Assistant

Secretary Ed Foulke announced that new Assigned Protection Factors

(APFs) for respiratory protection programs are being incorporated into

OSHA's respiratory protection standard. But lest you think that OSHA

has turned the corner and has decided to issue truly protective

standards, this one (like the previously issued hexavalent chromium

standard) is yet another cave-in to industry.

What are APF's and what are we talking about?

The use of respirators has always been controversial. Considered the

least effective form of protection (less than "engineering controls"

like ventilation or separating the worker from the chemical, for

example), the use of respirators have often been preferred by

employers because they are seen as cheaper and easier than installing

ventilation systems. OSHA chemical standards list respiratory

protection as a last resort while engineering controls are being

installed or where engineering controls just aren't practical.

Part of the problem is that employers often "forget" that respirators

have to be "fit tested" to ensure that they fit different shapes of

faces without leaking, and that employees have to be trained and

receive a medical examination before being issued a respirator.

Employees generally don't like respirators because they're hot and

uncomfortable, especially if they have to be worn all day.

Another important respirator issue is how well they work. In other

words, how high a concentration of chemical is allowable when wearing

different kinds of respirators. There are a number of different types

of respirators that work in different ways and have different levels

of effectiveness. The most effective would be a Self Contained

Breathing Apparatus (SCBA), where workers breathe through full face

masks from tanks of breathable air. On the other end of the spectrum

are the respirators that you see most often: traditional rubber

(elastomeric) masks with cartridge filters and new paper masks

(filtering facepieces) that breathe through the entire mask surface

(see photos below, courtesy of the Laborers International Union)

The question that APF's attempt to answer is what type of respirator

you need to protect yourself, given a certain level of chemical in

your environment. That's where APF's come in. If you know what level

of a toxic chemical is in the air you're breathing, you can use APF's

to let you know what kind of respirator is adequate.

It's all a bit complicated, but an article in the Laborers Lifelines

magazine attempts to explain it:

The respirator supplied in various situations is based on the

hazard faced (e.g. dust respirators for exposures to dusts and gas

and vapor respirators for exposures to gases) and the expected

level of exposure. The goal, according to OSHA, is to make sure

exposure inside the mask does not get above the OSHA permissible

exposure limits (PELs). Thus, if a standard allows exposures to 1

mg/m3 of dust and exposures are expected to be less than 10 mg/m3,

then a mask with an APF of 10 should provide enough protection.

The Lifelines article also explains how this new announcement is a

sell-out to industry:

The most controversial part of the new APFs is the lack of any

distinction between traditional rubber (elastomeric) masks with

cartridge filters and new paper masks (filtering facepieces) that

breathe through the entire mask surface. Both are given an APF of

10. This decision was based primarily on data from the respirator

manufacturers. Labor unions, including LIUNA, and many other groups

testified that filtering facepiece masks should only get an APF of

5 because they do not seal as well against the face to keep out

contaminants. A 5 would mean they only protect half as well. Yet,

OSHA sided with the manufacturers who have been promoting the

filtering facepiece masks which have become a larger share of their

business.

Yeah, yeah, so what else is new.

Read the whole article. It also contains Laborers Health and Safety

Director Scott Schneider's "7 Deadly Sins of Respirator Assigned

Protection Factors," which explain how you can't completely trust APFs

-- or respirators -- anyway because full protection depend on things

like always wearing respirators correctly, knowing the accurate

concentration of chemicals outside the mask and assuming that the

amount you're exposed to is steady all the times, without high peaks.

And, of course, it all depends on whether we trust OSHA's Permissible

Exposure Limits for hazardous chemicals to be protective --

remembering that the vast majority of them are based on research from

the 1950's and 1960's. But that's another long, sad story.

More on using respirators properly here, and more on the APF

controversy here.

PERMALINK Posted 1:29 PM by Jordan

Sham "Union Facts"-- Bad For Public's Health And Safety

My old boss, AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee, has gone after

Richard Berman's sham, corporate backed, union hating, worker

loathingUnion "Facts" (sic) in an article in the Huffington Post. (And

he even quotes my previous piece on Berman.)

Berman's original goal was to kill the Employee Free Choice Act

(EFCA), which would allow for card-check recognition of unions rather

than the traditional bankrupt NLRB elections. But McEntee points out

Berman's current round of attacks against public employees is targeted

at states where voters are considering so-called "Taxpayer Bill of

Rights," or TABOR, measures.

TABOR is Grover Norquist's latest attempt to fulfill his promise to

cut government "down to the size where we can drown it in the

bathtub" by starving public services of tax dollars. TABOR puts

mandatory draconian caps on public spending, making it nearly

impossible to meet health and safety needs.

The measure has had a disastrous effect in Colorado, where TABOR

has stifled spending on highways and programs for the elderly. And

the percentage of uninsured children has nearly doubled. That's why

voters suspended it when they finally had their say on the measure

in 2005; the Wisconsin legislature rejected it just this year.

But the right wing brigade marches on, trying to institute TABOR in

other states. And working Americans are fighting to stop them. So

is it any wonder why Mr. Berman is going after public employees?

Here are the real union facts: Mr. Berman's attacks on public

employees only serve to weaken our public health and safety. We

won't let him do it.

You can check our the real facts in this critical analysis of one of

the ads. If you live in Nevada, Montana, Oregon or Michigan, watch

out.

Labels: Employee Free Choice Act, Union Busting

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