Items Tagged with 'California'

California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, aka Proposition 65 (Prop 65) was revised August 30, 2018. The revised Prop 65 requires a warning label, example shown below, for any consumer product containing any of the more than 950 chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer or birth defects.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane… no, it’s a Squishy Robot, dropped from a helicopter or a drone to transmit crucial environmental data to emergency responders at disaster scenes.

The most populous state – and some would argue, the most progressive when it comes to worker safety issues – has a compliance officer-to-worker ratio well below that of federal OSHA.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released its final count of workplace fatalities for 2013 (the latest year calculated) showing California’s death toll that year to be 396 — more than one worker killed every day — with 21 more fatalities than in 2012. The 2013 figure is the highest number of deaths since 2009.

The construction industry  and homeowners are reevaluating the safety of materials distributed by a top supplier after a scathing report by CBS News program “60 Minutes.”

Hazardous waste generators in California recently received an alert from the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) by mail. The DTSC’s letter addresses a growing problem with Hazardous Waste Manifests: DTSC finds mistakes on many of the roughly 500,000 Manifests it receives and compiles in the Hazardous Waste Tracking System (HWTS) each year.

September 2014 marks the one-year anniversary of the forced resignation of Cal/OSHA Chief Ellen Widess and the start of direct rule by Department of Industrial Relations Director Christine Baker. A year later there is no permanent leadership team, the roster is riddled with vacancies, and policy decisions have lurched between “political spin” crises and administrative diktats in response.