In 1998, an historic landmark legal settlement between 46 states and the major tobacco companies, – along with individual settlements with four other states – required the companies to pay more than $246 billion over time as compensation for tobacco-related health care costs.

A ten-year spike in workplace deaths is unacceptable and calls for urgent action, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) said today. “As we prepare to gather with our families this holiday season, everyone who is committed to workplace safety will be thinking about the 5,250 U.S. workers who will never see their loved ones again,” said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, co-executive director of National COSH.

Data released last week by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) showed highway crash fatalities in the U.S. down 2.2 percent for the first 9 months of 2019 compared to the first 9 months of 2018. An estimated 26,730 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes through September 30, making the third quarter of 2019 the eighth consecutive year-to-year quarterly decline in fatalities since the fourth quarter of 2017.

A whistleblower investigation by the OSHA has found that Bouchard Transportation Company Inc., B. No. 272 Corp – a petroleum barge company based in Melville, New York – and its officers violated the whistleblower protection provisions of the Seaman’s Protection Act (SPA) when it retaliated against a seaman who cooperated with U.S. Coast Guard (USCG).

The flight that crashed in Chamberlain, South Dakota last month, killing nine people and injuring three others, lasted all of two minutes. At least that’s when the airplane’s data recorder stopped functioning, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which released a preliminary report into the November 30th incident.

From an outbreak of mysterious lung-injury deaths to America’s near loss of measles elimination status, the beginning of the end of the U.S. HIV epidemic to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), CDC worked around the clock – and around the globe – to protect Americans from domestic and global health threats in 2019.

Machine guarding solutions, a chemical tank cover and work boots for women in the trades were the top occupational safety and health products featured this week on ISHN.com.

Occupational fatalities in the U.S. increased last year, a lawsuit follows an assembly line death and the NTSB identifies safety issue behind devastating pipeline explosion. These were among the stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

The National Safety Council (NSC) estimates that 115 people may be killed on the roadways during the Christmas holiday driving period, and an additional 163 may be killed during the New Year’s holiday driving period. That number would likely be significantly higher if not for seat belts. This low-tech, highly effective motor vehicle safety feature is estimated to save 245 lives over the same driving periods.

Two of the country’s largest commuter rail operators recently enhanced the safety of their systems by implementing safety recommendations on the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) 2019-2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements.