Health and Safety from The Center for Public Integrity

Report urges phaseout of deadly acid

2013-04-16T11:09:01-04:00

Oil companies should phase out the use of a highly toxic acid that places millions at risk, a new report from the union representing many refinery workers says.

The report from the United Steelworkers cites data gathered and analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity for a 2011 story that found more than 16 million Americans live in the potential pathway of hydrofluoric acid (HF) if it were released in an accident or a terrorist attack.

The union’s report, drawing on the results of a survey of its local officials at 23 refineries that use the acid, says both regulators and oil companies have failed to ensure that it is handled safely and recommends steps that could protect workers and the public as refineries transition away from HF.

Officials at 18 of the 23 refineries reported a total of 131 accidents or near-misses involving HF during the previous three years.

“There must be a fundamental change in the oil industry’s use of HF,” the report concludes. “[Use of the acid] as it is currently performed in U.S. refineries is a risk too great, but that risk can be reduced and ultimately eliminated.”

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade group, said Monday it had not yet seen the report. However, it said that "refiners have used HF safely for more than 70 years," and "switching from HF may either not be feasible or could simply serve to just shift risk to other parts of the supply chain."

Oil refiners use HF to boost the octane rating of gasoline. The acid is an efficient catalyst, but it also has the potential to form a cloud that can travel long distances, sickening or killing those in its path.

The Center’s 2011 examination found that 50 of the nation’s refineries use HF, despite the existence of safer alternatives. The Steelworkers’ report notes that two options – a solid acid catalyst and an ionic liquid alkylation process – would virtually eliminate the risk. Both have been used in pilot projects, but U.S. companies have yet to adopt either.

Recent HF accidents have sparked concern. Federal investigators have twice deployed to the Citgo refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, since 2009 in response to accidents that unleashed the acid. Last December, a worker at the Valero refinery in Memphis, Tenn., died after being exposed to HF.

The Steelworkers’ survey asked teams of local union officials to evaluate their refineries’ handling of HF and their ability to respond to an accident. “[Local officials’] overwhelming verdict is that the current measures preventing and mitigating a major HF release are simply not good enough,” the report found.

Local officials rated a number of key safety measures as deficient. Equipment wasn’t properly maintained. Information about the danger wasn’t conveyed adequately to workers, especially those outside the specific area using HF. Emergency response systems and training were lacking.

The report also recommends stronger oversight by regulators. Both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency should better use their authority to police facilities using hazardous substances, the report says.

The report suggests the government address HF and other dangerous substances by requiring companies to consider or use “inherently safer technologies” – substituting less risky substances and processes for more hazardous ones. The issue has been the subject of debate for years, with advocates arguing that such substitutions could be mandated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act or by Congress in the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards legislation.

Labor secretary leaves legacy of worker protections and unfinished business

2013-01-10T14:01:09-05:00

With her resignation this week, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis leaves behind a department advocates say has adopted a renewed focus on enforcing worker safety laws but been unable to push through a number of long-sought regulations.

The first Hispanic woman to hold the top post at a Cabinet-level agency, Solis said in a letter to department employees that she planned to return to California, where she grew up.

Labor advocates credit her with restoring the department’s commitment to protecting workers, particularly vulnerable populations, and bringing stronger enforcement of worker safety laws. During her tenure, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration expanded initiatives to crack down on repeat violators of safety and health laws – sometimes drawing the ire of the business community.

Yet the department hasn’t finalized a host of rules to protect workers that many in the labor community view as long overdue.

As the Center for Public Integrity has reported, a surprising resurgence of black lung disease has affected coal miners in Appalachia. For more than 15 years, experts and the government’s own scientists have pushed to lower the standard for exposure to the dust that causes black lung. In 2010, MSHA proposed a rule that would lower the limit, among other things, but it remains unfinished.

Similarly, OSHA announced in 2009 that it was starting the process of issuing a rule to address combustible dust – a hazard that, as the Center has reported, has killed or injured hundreds of workers during the past two decades. Yet rule development remains in the early stages.

OSHA has also been unable to finish rules to protect workers from harmful substances they breathe. Standards to lower exposures to beryllium and silica, both contaminants that can cause severe lung disease, have been in the works for years but remain incomplete.

“Where the administration has been a real disappointment has been in the regulatory department,” said Peg Seminario, director of safety and health for the AFL-CIO. This inability to finalize new rules, she said, is not the fault of Solis, but of a White House reluctant to issue new regulations.

Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat who has long been an outspoken worker advocate, issued a statement praising Solis as “a tireless advocate for all hardworking Americans.” President Obama cited her work in helping working families recover from the financial crisis.

IMPACT: OSHA's 'model workplace' program needs reform, report finds

2012-08-21T17:15:40-04:00

So-called “model workplaces” that won exemptions from regular inspections will now face greater scrutiny, amid concern over deaths and safety breakdowns at some plants held up as industry leaders.

A report suggesting reforms, from a task force of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, comes more than a year after a Center for Public Integrity series revealed that deadly accidents and serious safety violations at these sites had gone largely unpunished by OSHA.

The report about the agency’s Voluntary Protections Programs, known as VPP, recommends that OSHA overhaul its policies for responding to serious accidents at these sites. Regional officials should thoroughly re-evaluate sites that have such problems, the report said, and they should have broader authority to kick out problem workplaces. The agency also should suspend sites while investigations are ongoing, the report recommended.

"This report will serve as a valuable road map for the agency as we continue to address issues present in VPP," Jordan Barab, OSHA's No. 2 official, said in a statement. "In general, we agree with most of the findings of the report, and have already or will be implementing a number of substantive changes to the program based on the recommendations included."

The association representing companies in the “model workplace” program is holding its annual conference in Anaheim, Calif., and no one from the organization could be reached for comment Monday.

The task force, composed almost entirely of regional and local OSHA officials, identified muddled guidance, inaccurate data and regional inconsistencies that have led to problems within the program.

As the Government Accountability Office has noted, OSHA lacks evidence detailing the program’s effectiveness. The task force acknowledged as much, suggesting ways the agency could better gather information on sites in the program.

The report also suggests OSHA should consider abandoning the initiative known as “VPP Corporate,” which allows certified companies to receive streamlined evaluations at all their sites.

One Center story highlighted the initiative and its second participant, the U.S. Postal Service. At the same time one OSHA branch was approving large numbers of postal service sites into VPP, the agency’s enforcement branch was alleging widespread safety problems at all mail processing centers nationwide – an approach one former OSHA official called “schizophrenic.”

The task force’s report is not the final look at VPP: The Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General announced earlier this year that it would also look into the program.

BP to pay $13 million for safety violations at Texas refinery

BP Plc — 2012-07-12T15:46:40-04:00

Oil giant BP has agreed to pay $13 million in fines to settle more than 400 safety violations at a Texas refinery that suffered a catastrophic explosion in 2005, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Thursday.

The violations stemmed from a 2009 inspection of BP’s Texas City refinery by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA conducted the inspection to see if BP had corrected safety problems that led to the 2005 blast, which killed 15 workers and injured at least 170. It hadn't.

The settlement “will help ensure that workers don’t have to sacrifice their lives for their livelihood,” Solis said in a teleconference with reporters. “This agreement will save lives.” BP has promised to fix all the cited problems in Texas City by the end of this year.

Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, said that none of the uncorrected problems is “imminently dangerous.”

BP paid $21 million in fines for violations related to the 2005 explosion. After doing its follow-up inspection in 2009, OSHA cited the company for 270 “failure to abate” violations. BP agreed in 2010 to pay $50.6 million more to resolve those citations.

During the same inspection, OSHA found 439 additional violations and proposed penalties of almost $31 million. The $13 million settlement announced Thursday resolves all but 30 of those violations, which are still being challenged by BP.

BP’s safety performance “significantly improved” after the 2009 inspection and fines, Barab said. “The takeaway is that enforcement works,” he said.

In a press release, Iain Conn, BP’s global head of refining and marketing, said the company aims to be a leader in process safety — the prevention of potentially calamitous fires, explosions and chemical releases. “Today’s agreement represents another milestone in our commitment to safe and compliant operations,” Conn said.

Solis said OSHA intends to “make sure BP lives up to their end of this deal — both to their legal and their moral responsibility to protect the lives of workers who make their company what it is.”

In May 2010, a month after BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and spilling about 5 million barrels of oil, the Center for Public Integrity reported that two BP refineries — in Texas City and Toledo, Ohio — accounted for 97 percent of the flagrant violations cited by OSHA during the previous three years.

OSHA reforms Voluntary Protection Programs

2012-06-29T06:00:01-04:00

Citing a 2011 Center for Public Integrity investigation, a Labor Department official said Thursday that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has reformed a program that rewards workplaces reporting lower-than-average injury and illness rates.

OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP), which exempt “model workplaces” from routine inspections, were established in 1982. VPP tripled in size between 2000 and 2011, as OSHA’s inspection staff diminished and membership requirements were relaxed. The Center’s investigation found that at least 80 workers had died at VPP sites during that period.

At a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Jordan Barab, the Labor Department’s deputy assistant secretary for occupational safety and health, said the department “is committed to VPP. But like every other federal agency, we need to make some very hard decisions about how to allocate our limited resources where we will get the most worker protection bang for our buck.”

After the Center’s investigation, an internal OSHA workgroup reviewed VPP and submitted recommendations for improved management, Barab said. Reforms include increased funding for a program that offers free advice to small businesses on worker safety practices, he said. A whistleblower program has been expanded, with four new laws designed to protect workers from retaliation for reporting potential safety hazards.

Barab also reported a shift away from incentive programs based on keeping injury and illness rates low. Such programs often discourage workers from reporting injuries, he said; OSHA now promotes programs that encourage and reward employee involvement instead.

“We’ve seen companies, for example, offer a pizza party or enter workers into a raffle if they met a goal of not incurring reportable injuries over a specified period of time,” Barab said. “Programs like these, while possibly well intentioned, ultimately discourage workers from reporting injuries. Unreported injuries that are not investigated cannot be used to help prevent future injuries. This is not what we want and ultimately, I do not think it is what VPP participants want, either.”

Because of VPP’s rapid growth, OSHA has accumulated a backlog of reapproval evaluations for participating companies. Instead of easing standards, OSHA will focus on “maintaining the integrity of the program,” aiming to eliminate the backlog by the end of 2012, Barab said.

R. Davis Layne, executive director of the VPP Participants’ Association (VPPPA), disagreed with OSHA’s new approach.

“OSHA did not think out all of the implications of this new policy,” Layne said. He said some member companies had been told that “any incentive program, regardless of its nature,” could jeopardize their VPP status.

Diesel engine exhaust earns 'carcinogenic' label

2012-06-12T14:21:24-04:00

Diesel engine exhaust is “carcinogenic to humans,” an international health body declared Tuesday, bolstering the findings of a controversial study published recently in the United States.

After a weeklong meeting of experts in Lyon, France, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization, said there is “sufficient evidence that exposure [to diesel exhaust] is associated with an increased risk for lung cancer.” IARC also found “limited evidence” that diesel is linked to a heightened risk of bladder cancer.

IARC previously had classified the fumes — emitted from trucks, trains, ships, buses, mining equipment and other sources — as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The IARC finding is consistent with a study of 12,000 U.S. miners published earlier this year by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. That study, publication of which was held up for years by mining industry litigation, found that the lung cancer risk for non-smoking, heavily exposed miners was seven times higher than it was for those exposed to low doses. Some industry-funded scientists have questioned the study’s conclusions.

Both the IARC and the U.S. studies have implications for the general public — especially people who live near ports, highways and rail yards — as well as workers.

In a statement Tuesday, the Diesel Technology Forum, an industry group, said that emissions of two contaminants in diesel exhaust — nitrogen oxides and particulates — from trucks and buses in the U.S. have been reduced by 99 percent as a result of new technologies and cleaner fuels.

“Air pollution is a critically important health issue and the diesel industry takes clean air concerns very seriously,” the group said. “Diesel engine and equipment makers, fuel refiners and emission control technology manufacturers have invested billions of dollars in research in an ongoing effort to develop and deploy technologies and strategies that reduce emissions to meet the increasingly diverse and stringent clean air standards in all nations throughout the world.”

In its own press release, IARC said the experts who considered the latest science on diesel have given regulators “a valuable evidence-base on which to consider environmental standards for diesel exhaust emissions.”

IARC acknowledged the new technologies and stricter diesel standards adopted in Europe and North America over the past two decades. “However,” it said, “while the amount of particulates and chemicals are reduced with these changes, it is not yet clear how the quantitative and qualitative changes may translate into altered health effects…”

Andrea Hricko, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California who has warned for years of diesel’s hazards, said in an email that the IARC decision is “a call to action” for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Environmental Protection Agency “to regulate diesel exposures of workers and environmental exposures for the public.

"We need to further reduce diesel emissions from ships, locomotives, trucks, construction and yard equipment to protect public health," Hricko said. "And it is time for the involved industry sectors to accept the unanimous IARC decision that diesel engine exhaust causes cancer and spend their energies on reducing exposures instead of fighting the scientific evidence as they have been doing for decades.”

OSHA whistleblower wins court victory

2012-05-31T12:55:16-04:00

A whistleblower who was fired by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration after complaining publicly about the poor quality of injury and illness data kept by employers has won a major court victory.

Robert Whitmore, a supervisory economist with OSHA’s Office of Statistical Analysis, lost his job in 2009, ostensibly for insubordination. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that Whitmore was fired in retaliation for telling journalists and Congress about OSHA’s failure to crack down on companies submitting suspect data. OSHA is supposed to use the data to identify potentially unsafe workplaces; accuracy, therefore, is crucial.

The Merit Systems Protection Board upheld Whitmore’s firing, finding that he had acted in a threatening manner toward a supervisor. The appeals court, however, found that OSHA failed to provide “clear and convincing” evidence that Whitmore’s whistleblowing had no bearing on his dismissal. The case will go back to the board for rehearing.

The court found that Whitmore’s airing of concerns about employer recordkeeping, beginning in 2005, led to “increasingly strained relationships with OSHA officials” and “paralleled his increasingly poor performance reviews and adverse personnel actions after decades of exceptional service.”

The court went on: “Despite Robert Whitmore’s highly unprofessional and intimidating conduct, which may well ultimately justify some adverse personnel action, he is nevertheless a bona fide whistleblower.”

Whitmore would like to have his job back, his lawyer, Paula Dinerstein, told the Center for Public Integrity on Thursday. He went public with his concerns because “OSHA for a long time had not been enforcing [recordkeeping] requirements,” said Dinerstein, senior counsel with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which advocates for federal whistleblowers. “In certain industries, [injury and illness] rates were so low that nobody could possibly believe them. OSHA was accepting really low numbers and was actually bragging about them, saying, ‘Look how much progress we’ve made.’”

An OSHA spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Massachusetts workers killed, injured at facilities touted as 'Model Workplaces'

Massachusetts,United States — 2012-05-18T06:00:01-04:00

As federal regulators review a controversial program exempting government designated “model workplaces” from regular safety checks, newly released U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration records detail significant safety risks, injuries and even deaths at the sites across Massachusetts.

OSHA, the federal overseer of workplace safety, has also allowed some Massachusetts employers to retain their “Voluntary Protection Program” (VPP) status even after serious safety problems have been exposed or workers have been killed, according to more than 1,000 documents obtained by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting under a federal Freedom of Information Act request.

The VPP designation frees employers from regular health and safety inspections, and they are largely left to police themselves, a flaw that has contributed to the death of at least two Massachusetts workers, some critics said.

“If you're a VPP program, that should never happen,” said James Lee, a trustee with the American Postal Workers Union Local 497 and a member of the OSHA investigating team that reviewed a horrific 2006 fatal accident at a U.S. Postal facility in Springfield, Mass.

“This would never have occurred if (OSHA) came in more frequently,” Lee said.

OSHA rarely strips VPP sites of their special status, even after violations are found or fatal tragedies occur, like the death of postal worker Robert J. Scanlon in Springfield and the 2004 death of a 34-year-old mother of three who was accidentally sucked into an adhesive coating machine at a Spencer, Mass., manufacturing firm, the OSHA documents show.

Currently 41 Massachusetts employers participate in the highly touted VPP program, including power, chemical and nuclear plants, military and postal facilities and biotechnology firms. Those worksites given the highest VPP rating are subject to OSHA re-evaluations every three to five years; those with lower ratings every 18 months to 2 years, according to the program guidelines.

GE Transportation Aircraft Engines in Lynn has maintained its VPP status, despite a $14,000 fine last year for failing to assess and document the condition of a covered piping system that exposed workers to explosion hazards, OSHA records show.

Workers at defense contractor Raytheon’s Andover plant, a VPP designee since 2009, were exposed to several electrical hazards that could have led to electrical shocks, burns or even death, OSHA inspectors found last year. The hazards were discovered within a year of Raytheon's disclosure in a 2010 company safety report that its Andover facility was one of three Raytheon plants among the company’s U.S. sites with the highest injury rate.

The release of the heavily redacted OSHA records comes in the wake of two recently announced federal reviews of the program, which started in 1982 to reward employers who “achieved exemplary occupational safety and health,” according to OSHA's program description.

More than 80 workers have died at VPP sites since 2000, according to an investigation published last year by the Washington D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity. Following the report, the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Inspector General announced an upcoming audit of the program. OSHA is also conducting its own “top-to-bottom” internal review.

In addition, the federal Government Accounting Office released a report last month faulting OSHA for failing to give clearer guidance to field inspectors about how safety incentive programs for employers like VPP should operate.

Despite numerous requests, OSHA officials did not respond to written questions or return phone calls seeking interviews with NECIR.

Fines slashed following safety violations, including a fatality

Despite at least six “serious” alleged violations — offenses that OSHA believes could cause death or serious injury — against VPP workplaces in Massachusetts since 2001, OSHA has slashed fines in almost all of those cases, including some by as much as 75 percent. Even after finding these problems, though, the agency either approved the site into the program or renewed its status, records show. The OSHA records provide no details about why the fines were reduced.

Laura Pacquette, a 34-year-old mother of three, had worked at FLEXcon, a plastic film and sheet manufacturer in Spencer, Mass., for nine years when she was accidentally pulled into an adhesive coating machine on Dec. 11, 2004. She died of crushing injuries two days later.

OSHA's investigation of the accident found FLEXcon failed to provide adequate guards on the equipment “to protect the operator and other employees from hazards created by a crushing action." The company later corrected the hazard and was fined $6,300, an amount reduced by OSHA to $5,800 just four months later.

FLEXcon was never dropped from the VPP program. Today, with no recorded OSHA violations since that incident, FLEXcon remains part of VPP, a shining example of what Michael Engel, the company's Chief Operating Officer, said in a press release announcing the firm's 15th year as a VPP participant was “proof of the outstanding dedication and commitment of FLEXcon employees in helping to create and maintain a safe and healthful working environment.”

Three other VPP companies in the Bay State — beverage maker Coca Cola in Northampton, defense contractor Raytheon in Andover and chemical manufacturer Solutia Inc. near Springfield — have each been cited for “serious” violations by OSHA since 2003.

All three were ordered to pay fines ranging from $2,275 to $22,000. OSHA later reduced those fines for Coca Cola and Raytheon, in one case by more than 75 percent. The three companies remain on OSHA's VPP list.

Danger and a death at Massachusetts postal facilities

Robert J. Scanlon was 58 when he was crushed to death on Nov. 8, 2006, after being pinned between a truck and a trailer at the Postal Service's Logistics and Distribution Center in Springfield. The now-closed facility was among the 130 postal sites across the country designated as VPP, the largest group of any employer in the U.S.

But before and after Scanlon’s death, there were concerns about safety at the Springfield worksite. Two months before Scanlon's deadly accident, OSHA cited that postal distribution center for two serious health and safety violations. A postal “clean up team” at that facility lacked adequate protective gear and were not properly trained in the use of a chlorine bleach solution when they were called in to mop up a chemical spill. Some of the employees suffered burns and dermatitis as a result of using inadequate protective gloves, OSHA records show. The postal service was fined $975 for those violations.

Two months after Scanlon's death, OSHA again cited the U.S. Postal Service, this time for failing to follow recognized safety practices in connection with the fatality. A $7,000 fine was also imposed. The fine was $3,786.33 below the $10,786.33 average amount assessed to employers in 2006 for safety violations resulting in death, according to a 2007 study conducted by The Massachusetts AFL-CIO, the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health and the Western Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health.

The study, titled “Dying for Work in Massachusetts: The Loss of Life and Limb in Massachusetts Workplaces,” also found that OSHA was so understaffed and underfunded, it would have taken about 117 years for OSHA inspectors to check each workplace under its jurisdiction in Massachusetts alone.

In the aftermath of Scanlon's death, OSHA found several health and safety violations, many of which likely existed beforehand. Among those violations was shoddy record keeping, inadequate employee training, poor lighting conditions, an improperly working intercom system and inadequate safety equipment, said Lee, the union official. Investigators also found that Scanlon was not using safety gear because the required orange vest and flashlight apparently had not been returned to its proper storage area, Lee said.

Scanlon's family did not return several calls requesting comment.

Lee is not alone in his criticism of the program. Other union representatives said the VPP program allows OSHA to exempt businesses from certain evaluations for up to five years, leaving a regulatory gap that can lead to lax safety.

“When VPP first started, the result was extremely positive,” said Timothy Dwyer, president of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union Local 301, rattling off a list of safety improvements that included the purchase of hydraulic equipment designed to lift heavy pallets or large mail-filled bins, easing the physical strain on mail handlers. Dwyer said the union embraced the VPP concept, convinced that it would bring more safety programs into the workplace.

Then several years ago, union officials had second thoughts. With fewer workplace checks by OSHA required under the VPP program, it started to look like safety was being compromised, they said. Regularly scheduled maintenance was being postponed due to budget cutbacks, worrying union officers concerned about accidents. Without the regular OSHA checks, they wondered if safety was being compromised. Soon, unions at the Springfield VPP facility began talking about getting rid of the elite safety program in favor of more conventional OSHA inspections.

“We thought it was a joke,” David Sarnacki, Local 497's maintenance craft director said of the VPP program. "We felt that after a fatality, why were we still part of this?”

It was the economy, rather than the union, however, that finally ended the Springfield facility's VPP program when budget cuts forced a merger with another postal center about two years ago.

Union officials claim they could see the impact cost-cutting measures were having on safety long before that merger as the postal service began grappling with billions of dollars in losses.

Machinery once quickly repaired was not undergoing regular maintenance while staff cuts along with increased demand for quicker mail processing was keeping malfunctioning machines in operation, Dwyer said.

“It's a matter of ignoring procedures because procedures cost money,” he noted. ”An adherence to safety issues is not a high priority for the Postal Service right now.”

Postal officials dispute that contention, however, saying employee health and safety remains a top priority. They declined further comment.

Yet postal workers said they continue to grapple with unsafe conditions, particularly around electrical issues.

Sally Davidow, spokeswoman for the American Postal Workers Union, said beginning in July 2010, OSHA fined the U.S. Postal service more than $6 million after finding that it willfully violated safety standards by exposing workers to serious and potentially fatal shock hazards and burns at 350 processing and distribution centers nationwide. It remains unclear how many of the 29 processing and distribution centers designated as VPP sites were among those plagued by electrical hazards, Davidow said.

Management and union views on VPP effectiveness

Yet despite those violations, many union and company representatives in Massachusetts said participation in the VPP program has made a safer workplace for everyone, provided that management and employees can work cooperatively with OSHA to solve safety issues.

Cindy Raspiller, director of environmental health and safety for Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, including Raytheon's Andover facility, called participation in the VPP program “a transforming process” that has not only produced safer work conditions but also helped contribute to cost savings.

“We had a good, solid compliance program to begin with,” she said. ”What VPP did was take us beyond that.”

Yet just two years before entering the VPP program in 2009, Raytheon's Andover plant faced violations labeled “serious” by OSHA.

In February 2007, an employee at Raytheon's Andover facility lost his fingers while servicing a machine. Just four months later in June 2007, another employee at the same plant suffered burns to his face while uncapping a hot radiator on a lawnmower. Then, in 2009 after gaining VPP status, the Andover facility was cited again for exposing employees to electrical hazards.

Despite those violations, the question for some is not whether the VPP program works, but whether there is a commitment to make it work at all.

“You have to have a full commitment by management and labor to achieve safety,” said.

Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition of Occupational Safety and Health. ”Unless you have a strong union health and safety program, you end up with companies who portray themselves as safer than they naturally are or who are unable to identify the full range of health and safety issues.”

The New England Center for Investigative Reporting is a non-profit newsroom based at Boston University. This story was done in collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity and the Investigative News Network.

Fatal work injuries rose in 2010, new data show

2012-04-25T17:15:46-04:00

The Department of Labor reported today that 4,690 U.S. workers suffered fatal injuries in 2010, a 3 percent increase from 2009.

The higher number in part reflects a string of high-profile disasters in 2010: An explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia that killed 29; BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11; and a blast at the Tesoro Corp.’s oil refinery in Washington State that killed seven.

Even discounting the 47 deaths from those three events, the toll rose in 2010. In 2009, 4,551 workers died, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The fatality rate rose slightly as well, from 3.5 fatal injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers to 3.6.

The number of workers killed in fires or explosions jumped from 113 in 2009 to 191 in 2010. Work-related transportation deaths increased from 1,795 to 1,857, suicides from 263 to 270.

The number of construction-related deaths fell from 834 to 774 — a probable reflection of a weak housing market and a generally rotten economy in 2010.

“It’s disturbing that there hasn’t been any improvement in workplace fatalities in several years,” said Peg Seminario, director of health and safety for the AFL-CIO. “It seems like progress has stalled.”

Seminario said she wouldn’t be surprised to see the 2011 fatality numbers go up, given that the economy began to pick up steam last year. “We’ll be looking carefully not only at the numbers but the rates,” she said.

The BLS data release — an update of preliminary numbers put out last year — comes three days before Workers Memorial Day, an international event, started by labor unions, honoring those who have been killed on the job.

Among those who died in 2010 was 19-year-old Emilio DeLeon, who was electrocuted in a construction accident in Grand Island, Neb. His father, Albert, was in Washington last week to attend a Senate hearing on worker safety and put a statement into the record.

“Our family has been to therapy to help us cope with the loss of our son,” DeLeon’s statement reads. “The pain and loss is present when I go to sleep and is there when I wake up in the morning. I have lost my Dad, Mom and Sister, and I have to tell you that losing my Son is the worst feeling I have ever had to endure.”

The construction company that employed Emilio DeLeon was fined only $16,600 for his death by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, even though OSHA had cited the firm for serious safety violations four months prior to the fatal accident. “They were allowed to continue with business as usual,” Albert DeLeon wrote in his statement.

In an email to the Center for Public Integrity, OSHA said:

"On average more than 12 workers die on the job every day, and that reality continues to drive the work of the Labor Department. When the Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed in 1970, the National Safety Council estimated that 14,000 workers died each year on the job. Now, with a workforce that has doubled in size, the annual number of fatalities has dropped significantly. But it's not enough. We cannot relent from our enforcement of laws that keeps our nation's workers safe. One worker killed or injured on the job is too many."

More detailed BLS fatality data can be found here.

Low doses of some chemicals tied to health effects

2012-04-04T17:06:22-04:00

Small doses can have big health effects.

That is a main finding of a report, three years in the making, published Wednesday by a team of 12 scientists who study hormone-altering chemicals.

Dozens of substances that can mimic or block estrogen, testosterone and other hormones are found in the environment, the food supply and consumer products, including plastics, pesticides and cosmetics. One of the biggest, longest-lasting controversies about these chemicals is whether the tiny doses that most people are exposed to are harmful.

In the new report, researchers led by Tufts University’s Laura Vandenberg concluded after examining hundreds of studies that health effects “are remarkably common” when people or animals are exposed to low doses of endocrine-disrupting compounds. As examples, they provide evidence for several controversial chemicals, including bisphenol A, found in polycarbonate plastic, canned foods and paper receipts, and the pesticide atrazine, used in large volumes mainly on corn.

The scientists concluded that scientific evidence “clearly indicates that low doses cannot be ignored.” They cited evidence of a wide range of health effects in people — from fetuses to aging adults — including links to infertility, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer and other disorders.

“Whether low doses of endocrine-disrupting compounds influence human disorders is no longer conjecture, as epidemiological studies show that environmental exposures are associated with human diseases and disabilities,” they wrote.

In addition, the scientists took on the issue of whether a decades-old strategy for testing most chemicals — exposing lab rodents to high doses then extrapolating down for real-life human exposures — is adequate to protect people.

They concluded that it is not, and so they urged reforms. Some hormone-like chemicals have health effects at low doses that do not occur at high doses.

“Current testing paradigms are missing important, sensitive endpoints” for human health, they said. “The effects of low doses cannot be predicted by the effects observed at high doses. Thus, fundamental changes in chemical testing and safety determination are needed to protect human health.”

The report was published online Wednesday in the scientific journal Endocrine Reviews. Authors include scientists University of Missouri's Frederick vom Saal, who has linked low doses of bisphenol A to a variety of effects, Theo Colborn, who is credited with first spreading the word about hormone-disrupting chemicals in the late 1980s and University of California, Berkeley's Tyrone Hayes, who has documented effects of atrazine on frogs.

The senior author is Pete Myers, the founder of Environmental Health News and chief scientist of Environmental Health Sciences.

Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said the new report is valuable “because it pulls a tremendous amount of information together” about endocrine-disrupting compounds. Her agency is the main one that studies health effects of contaminants in the environment.

Birnbaum said she agrees with their main finding: All chemicals that can disrupt hormones should be tested in ultra-low doses relevant to real human exposures, she said.

In many cases, chemical manufacturers still are asking “old questions” when they test the safety of chemicals even though “science has moved on,” she said. “Some of the testing paradigms have not advanced with the state of the science.”

Nevertheless, for most toxicologists, Birnbaum said the report does not offer a big shift from what they are doing. The NIEHS already conducts low-dose testing of chemicals, including looking for multi-generational effects such as adult diseases that are triggered by fetal exposures.

“Some people keep slamming the toxicologists. But you can’t paint everyone with the same brush,” Birnbaum said.

However, the scientists who wrote the report said that low-dose science "has been disregarded or considered insignificant by many." They seemed to aim much of their findings at the National Toxicology Program and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA in 2008 discounted low-dose studies when it concluded that bisphenol A (BPA) in consumer products was safe. Two years later, the agency shifted its opinion, stating that they now will more closely examine studies showing low-dose effects. The National Toxicology Program in 2008 found that BPA poses “some risks” to human health but rejected other risks because studies were inconsistent.

Several of the report’s authors have been criticized by some other scientists and industry representatives because they have become outspoken advocates for testing, regulating and replacing endocrine-disrupting compounds. The scientists, however, say they feel compelled to speak out because regulatory agencies are slow to act and they are concerned about the health of people, especially infants and children, and wildlife.

Industry representatives say that just because people are exposed to traces of chemicals capable of altering hormones doesn’t mean there are any harmful effects. They say that the studies are often contradictory or inconclusive.

In a statement, the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical companies, said Wednesday that the industry “has committed substantial resources to advancing science to better understand any potential effects of chemical substances on the endocrine system. While we have not had an opportunity to fully review this paper, Michael Kamrin, emeritus professor of Michigan State University, has concluded ‘low dose’ effects have not been proven, and therefore should not be applied to real-world conditions and human exposures.”

"Based on the evidence, it is concluded that these 'low dose' effects have yet to be established [and] that the studies purported to support these cannot be validly extrapolated to humans," Kamrin, a toxicologist, wrote in the International Journal of Toxicology in 2007.

But vom Saal and other scientists have said that tests that do not find low-dose effects of chemicals such as BPA are often industry-funded, and they often have tested the wrong animals or the wrong doses, or don’t expose the animals during the most vulnerable time of fetal growth.

Endocrinologists have long known that infinitesimal amounts of estrogen, testosterone, thyroid hormones and other natural hormones can have big health effects, particularly on fetuses. It comes as no surprise to them that manmade substances with hormonal properties might have big effects, too.

“There truly are no safe doses for chemicals that act like hormones, because the endocrine system is designed to act at very low levels,” Vandenberg, a postdoctoral fellow at Tufts University’s Levin Lab Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology, told Environmental Health News.

But many toxicologists subscribe to “the dose makes the poison” conventional wisdom. In other words, it takes a certain size dose of something to be toxic. They also are accustomed to seeing an effect from chemicals called “monotonic,” which means the responses of an animal or person go up or down with the dose.

The scientists in the new review said neither of those applies to hormone-like chemicals.

“Accepting these phenomena should lead to paradigm shifts in toxicological studies, and will likely also have lasting effects on regulatory science,” they wrote.

In the report, the scientists were concerned that government has determined "safe" levels for “a significant number of endocrine-disrupting compounds” that have never been tested at low levels. They urged “greatly expanded and generalized safety testing.”

“Accepting these phenomena should lead to paradigm shifts in toxicological studies, and will likely also have lasting effects on regulatory science,” the scientists wrote." We suggest setting the lowest dose in the experiment below the range of human exposures, if such a dose is known,” they wrote.

Vandenberg said that there may be no effect or a totally different effect at a high dose of a hormonal substance, while a lower dose may trigger a disease.

The breast cancer drug tamoxifen "provides an excellent example for how high-dose testing cannot be used to predict the effects of low doses," according to the report. At low doses, it stimulates breast cancer growth. At higher ones, it inhibits it.

“Imagine taking 100 individuals that are representative of the American population and lining them up in order of exposure to an EDC [endocrine-disrupting compound] so that the person on the far left has the least exposure and the person on the far right has the most. For many toxic chemicals, individuals with the highest levels of exposure, at the right end of the line, have the highest incidence of disease. But for some EDCs, studies suggest that people in the middle of the line have the highest risk,” Vandenberg said.

She compared hormones, which bind to receptors in the body to trigger functions such as growth of the brain or reproductive organs, to keys in a lock.

“The more keys that are in the locks, the more of an effect that is seen. But at some point, the locks are overwhelmed and stop responding to the keys. Thus, in the lower range, more keys equals more of an effect, but in the higher range, more keys equals less of an effect,” she said.

Vandenberg predicted the report “will start conversations among academic, regulatory and industry scientists about how risk assessments for EDCs can be improved.

"The question is no longer whether these phenomena exist, but how to move forward and deal with them.”