Environmental Health and Safety

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As high school and college students get ready to put away the books and start summer jobs, OSHA hopes its #MySafeSummerJob program will help keep them safe in their new endeavors. #MySafeSummerJob offers information for both employers and employees about occupational safety for young people – who generally have less experience and training and a lower awareness of hazards than older workers.

Legal wrangling over hazardous pesticides – such as the recent lawsuit against the maker of Roundup – are not limited to the United States. The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) is accusing senior European Commission officials of behind-the-scenes machinations that are enabling dangerous pesticides to continue being sold on the European market.

It is not new news that agriculture has excessive worker injury rates. Nor that senior farmers and adult farmers in the South experience some of the highest occupational injury and mortality in the nation. There were an estimated 58,385 work-related adult farm injuries (more than six every hour) in 2014. In 2016, 417 farmers and farm workers died from a work-related injury.

The latest lawsuit against the manufacturer of a popular weed killer has resulted in a $2 billion award for a husband and wife who claimed Roundup caused them both to contract cancer. The California jury award against Monsanto, maker of the glyphosate-based herbicide, is the third recent court decision of its kind – and the largest. An Alameda County jury ruled that the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma of Alva and Alberta Pilliod of Livermore, Calif. was due to their use of Roundup.

Hope to see you at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference & Expo (AIHce) in Minneapolis, May 20-22! Stop by booth 1402 for the latest in gas detection, including a sneak preview of the ALTAIR io360.

A Kansas aircraft manufacturer exposed its employees to hexavalent chromium and failed to monitor exposure levels, according to OSHA, which has assessed citations and fines against Spirit Aerosystems Inc. According to OSHA inspectors, the Wichita-based company failed to implement feasible engineering controls to limit employee exposure to hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen...

The EPA has issued a final rule that closes a regulatory loophole for asbestos by prohibiting discontinued uses of the substance by being re-introduced to the marketplace without an agency review. Restrictions on Discontinued Uses of Asbestos; Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) is effective June 24, 2019. The restricted significant new uses of asbestos (including as part of an article) is manufacturing (including importing) or processing for uses that are neither ongoing nor already prohibited under TSCA.

For Peggy Frank, a Los Angeles letter carrier, any federal or California safety rule ordering her employer—and all other firms—to protect workers from the hazards of excess heat didn’t work. Frank, a 63-year-old grandmother, collapsed and died from California’s monstrously high heat while delivering the mail in Woodland Hills, a section of Los Angeles, last summer. The temperature in that particular neighborhood the day she died? 107 degrees.

Advocates in Florida are pushing for tougher standards for growers to protect their employees, arguing that rising global temperatures will make outdoor work unsustainable without the proper regulations. Florida’s agriculture and construction employers could soon be required to train outdoor workers and managers on avoiding heat-related illnesses under proposed legislation. The heat illness prevention bill, sponsored by Orlando Democrat Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, would set a statewide standard for all outdoor workers to be given plenty of drinking water, access to shade and ten-minute rest breaks enforced after every two hours of outside labor.