After leading the National Transportation Safety Board for
four and a half years, Mark V. Rosenker has announced that
he will resign his position as acting chairman and member.
He submitted his letter of resignation to President Obama yesterday, according to an NTSB press statement.
EPA’s Climate Leaders program announced yesterday that three more of its industry partners are being recognized for meeting their greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction goals. Exelon Corp., Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) and Raytheon Co. have found cleaner sources of energy, reduced energy consumption, increased production of renewable energy and retired old equipment, all in an effort to reduce their contribution to climate change.
Competition between employer-based health insurance plans and a government-sponsored public plan will not fix the U.S. health care system, according to the majority of employers responding to a Health Care Reform Survey, conducted by Aon Consulting, the global human capital consulting organization of Aon Corporation. What will help fix the system is a focus on wellness programs, evidence-based medicine guidelines, improving quality of care and increasing the ability of patients to be better health care consumers, the survey found.
The United Kingdom’s Chemical Business Association (CBA) recently signed a commitment on behalf of its member companies to the Principles of Safety Leadership, according to a press release.
Do you know how long you need to cook a hamburger on the grill until it’s safe to eat? Can you really tell if meat is done just by looking at the color? The answers to these questions and more can be found in the food safety fact sheets available from NSF International at, a not-for-profit organization committed to protecting and improving public health.
On July 14, 2009, representatives from the Voluntary Protection Programs Participants’ Association, Inc. (VPPPA) met with the Acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA Jordan Barab to discuss how the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report would affect the future of OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP), according to an association press release. Representatives from the VPPPA National Board of Directors, as well as several Union and employer representatives, provided Barab with insight into the benefits that VPP brings to their sites.
BOHS announced in a recent press release that its latest Bedford Prize has been awarded to a team from the University of Leuven in Belgium for a paper about the protection of pharmaceutical production workers from the potential harmful effects of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The “Thomas Bedford Memorial Prize” is BOHS’s oldest award, presented to lead authors of the most outstanding paper published in the Society’s journal, Annals of Occupational Hygiene. Sadly, the lead author of this paper, Nadine Van Nimmen, died of cancer at the age of 42, and was awarded her Ph.D. posthumously. The paper was based on part of this work; the Bedford Prize, which would have been presented to her at the BOHS Annual Conference in 2009, was sent to her family, also posthumously.
According to a recent press release from The National Office of Citizen Corps, FEMA Community Preparedness Division, the Obama Administration has sent a strong message to the nation that it is time to start planning and preparing for the fall flu season and the ongoing H1N1 flu outbreak and that the federal government is prepared to commit resources, training, and new tools to help state and local governments and America’s families get ready.
OSHA has come down hard on Metro North Railroad (which provides daily rail service between New York City and points in Connecticut) with a proposed $300,000 punitive damages following whistleblower investigations that found the railroad retaliated against four workers for reporting injuries on the job, according to the agency.
ASTM International Committee F32 on Search and Rescue is currently developing a number of proposed new standards. Two of the proposed standards under the jurisdiction of Subcommittee F32.02 on Management and Operations are WK23984, Guide for Level 1 (Basic) Mounted Search and Rescue (MSAR) Responder, and WK24699, Guide for Training for Land SAR as a Level 1 Out of Area Disaster Responder. Interested parties are welcome to join in the standards developing activities of Committee F32.