More than 130 organizations signed a petition (PDF) sent to OSHA, demands for stronger protections for workers exposed to extreme heat. Joining the petition were former OSHA Directors Dr. Eula Bingham and Dr. David Michaels, former California/OSHA Director Ellen Widess, heat illness prevention researcher Dr. Marc Schenker and 89 other individuals.

The Trump administration yesterday announced plans to ease regulations requiring oil and gas companies to repair methane leaks – a move drawing opposition from the industry, as well as environmental groups. Methane is a greenhouse gas and a major contributor to climate change. It is emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil and also results from certain agricultural practices.

Authorities are trying to determine the cause of an accident earlier this week in Riverbank, California that claimed that claimed the life of a sanitation worker. News sources say 30-year-old Ismael Martinez-Huertas, a father of two, was crushed by a hydraulic mechanism on a garbage truck Monday afternoon.

A construction worker who watched two co-workers fall to their deaths at a hotel construction site in Florida last year is suing Marriott and its partner companies for failing to provide sufficient safeguards for workers. News sources say the August 29 incident occurred during construction of a 16-story hotel.

A new analysis of data on more than 900 Baltimore adults by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers has linked stressful life experiences among middle-aged women -- but not men -- to greater memory decline in later life. The researchers say their findings add to evidence that stress hormones play an uneven gender role in brain health, and align with well-documented higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease in women than men.

While vaping appears to be at the root of the growing number of people struck by pulmonary-related illnesses after vaping, the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) investigation into the cluster of illnesses is ongoing. To date, 193 cases of such illnesses have been reported across 22 states, with one death – Illinois. American Lung Association (ALA) Chief Medical Officer Albert Rizzo, M.D. called the developments “alarming.”

While the military is working on weaponizing drones – including equipping them with machine guns – the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is warning the general public that attaching a dangerous weapon to a drone and sending it skyward is illegal. Nonetheless, some drone owners have attached guns, bombs, fireworks and even – according to the FAA – flamethrowers to their drones.

Older workers (those ages 55 and older) bring extensive skills, knowledge, and experience built over the course of a lifespan. On the flip side, their driving may be affected by age-related physical and mental changes – many of them perfectly normal changes. Employers cannot avoid the issue of aging drivers because by the year 2020:

For a huge swath of Northern California, the air suddenly became hazardous last November. Thick smoke from the most destructive wildfire in state history was delivering a secondary blow to nearly ten million Californians, some of whom turned to a new class of consumer air monitors to help keep them safe.