Monday 24 September 2012

EWG releases Online Guide to Healthy Cleaning

Even if you don't get headaches from conventional cleaning products, the chemicals used in them aren't good for the environment and they aren't good for your health – especially if you have allergies. To help out people who want to use healthier ...

See all stories on this topic »

Mother Nature Network (blog)

This is our opinion and feelings about the the posts added to this blog by ourselves and writers who have asked to write on our blog network and does not necessarily represent our agreement or disagreement with the writers concerned.Tweet at #AceHealthNews and email your " News & Views" to our "Ace News Desk" be published in featured posts.

Thank you, Ian [Editor]

Miners’ Rights at the Forefront

When I arrived at the Mine Safety and Health Administration in October 2009, one of my top priorities was to educate miners about their rights and responsibilities in the workplace, specifically those rights that pertain to their safety and health.  According to Section 105(c) of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, a miner cannot be discharged, discriminated against or interfered with in the exercise of statutory rights because he or she has filed a complaint alleging a health or safety violation.
Some mine operators, however, have disregarded this law, suspending, laying off or taking adverse action against a miner who became too vocal about mining conditions.  In fact, issues relating to fears of discrimination and retaliation came to light during congressional hearings held in the wake of the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster. Statements from miners and family members of the miners who died indicated that mine employees had been reluctant to speak out about safety conditions in existence prior to the April 2010 explosion, fearing retaliation by management.
Thus, the critical need to better educate miners about their rights and to promptly and thoroughly investigate discrimination complaints.  Those efforts are working.  The number of requests for temporary reinstatements the Labor Department submitted on behalf of miners who filed discrimination complaints more than tripled from the period of fiscal years 2007-2009 to the period of FY 2010-2012 (through July 31, 2012), increasing from 22 to 71. Furthermore, the Labor Department filed 70 complaints alleging mine safety discrimination during the period of FY 2010-2012 (through July 31, 2012), up from 39 from FY 2007-2009.
In June 2011, MSHA released new Web-based training tools to help miners better understand their rights and responsibilities, including “A Guide to Miners’ Rights and Responsibilities“; an electronic form for filing an anonymous hazard complaint; a discrimination complaint packet; information about black lung benefits and resources; and a compendium of online videos addressing miners’ concerns about unsafe working conditions, hiring decisions, how to refuse unsafe work, the role of supervisors and the role of miners’ representatives who travel with federal inspectors.
MSHA has instituted other measures to enhance enforcement of miners’ rights, including a reorganization of the Office of Assessments, Accountability, Special Enforcement and Investigations to provide enhanced efficiency, staffing, oversight and training of special investigators.
A guide for miners’ representatives explaining their rights under the Mine Act is slated for completion this fall. The publication will include information on inspections and investigations, filing a hazardous condition complaint, accessing information using MSHA’s Data Retrieval System and becoming a miners’ representative.
All miners have the right to a safe workplace, and the right to identify hazardous conditions and refuse unsafe work without fear of discrimination or retaliation.  We at MSHA take the rights of miners and our responsibility to enforce them very seriously, and will continue to work to ensure they are upheld.
Joseph Main is the assistant secretary for mine safety and health.

This is our opinion and feelings about the the posts added to this blog by ourselves and writers who have asked to write on our blog network and does not necessarily represent our agreement or disagreement with the writers concerned.Tweet at #AceHealthNews and email your " News & Views" to our "Ace News Desk" be published in featured posts.

Thank you, Ian [Editor]

Awareness Raising Works

Awareness Raising Works:

A young Beninese girl, approximately 6 years old, carries stones across a quarry.
Educating parents and communities can help protect children from the worst forms of child labor – work that threatens their health, thwarts their education and limits their futures. This tale of three villages in Benin, a country in West Africa, shows how effective raising awareness can be.
All three villages are poor, and in all three, people earn their living working in quarries. And in all three, the Department of Labor is funding a project called “ECOWAS II.”
Ask parents in these villages what they think of their children – some as young as three – breaking rocks with pick axes, breathing heavy dust and straining to carry heavy loads of rubble, and you will get three different answers.
In the first village, where awareness raising under the project began just this month, parents say, “They are not in danger. Sure, they should go to school, but we can’t afford that.”
In the second village, where awareness raising efforts have had more time to take root, you hear a different story: “I am so happy my children are in school and not in the quarries where it is dangerous.” Yet, parents still ask, “What am I supposed to do when the project leaves?”
Beninese Boys
Two young Beninese boys work together to move a stone to the appropriate stone pile in a quarry.
In Lokossa, a village where the project has been in place for nine months and children regularly attend school, parents are adamant that they want their children in school where they are safe.  Even if the project ends, they say, their children will not work in quarries. They are even organizing “neighborhood watch” groups to guard against it.
Like many projects supported by the Labor Department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, ECOWAS II uses a variety of strategies to protect vulnerable children. It improves access to school and helps parents increase their incomes so that they no longer need to rely on their children’s earnings. But in Benin, as elsewhere, raising awareness is key. The more parents are informed, the better choices they make for their children.

A project partner discusses the hazards of quarrying with parents and their children in a stone quarry in Zakpota, Benin.
Approximately 1 million children work in mines or quarries worldwide. In Benin, as in many other countries, such activity is illegal and underreported.  But the problem and its dangers, though often hidden, are very real. In the quarries, children inhale dust from the rocks, which causes a chronic and potentially fatal respiratory illness. Some fall into pits or get injured lifting rocks; others are crushed under falling stones.
Parents may put their children in harm’s way for lack of better alternatives. In Benin, where nearly half the population lives on less than $1.25 a day, stone quarrying is a family affair, employing the father to dislodge the rocks and the mother to sift out the dirt. Leaving small children at home is not an option, and schools are typically too expensive and may be too far away. Many families are so poor that they need the extra hand.

Beninese children and their mothers use grates to sift stones from dirt.
Projects like ECOWAS II – which supports children in Benin, Nigeria, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire – aim to break this cycle of poverty. They educate families, businesses and communities about the hidden dangers of quarrying and lasting value of sending children to school. And they bring that education within reach for poor families, by paying for books, uniforms and other expenses. The project has also produced a documentary shown on local television and it will soon begin helping parents raise their incomes without their children’s help.

The Labor Department supports these children in Zakpota, who are able to attend school and have learned the importance of education.
As a result, children in Benin are beginning to move from lifting rocks to toting schoolbooks, from a life steeped in hazard to one empowered through awareness.

This is our opinion and feelings about the the posts added to this blog by ourselves and writers who have asked to write on our blog network and does not necessarily represent our agreement or disagreement with the writers concerned.Tweet at #AceHealthNews and email your " News & Views" to our "Ace News Desk" be published in featured posts.

Thank you, Ian [Editor]

The End of a Long, Hot Summer

The End of a Long, Hot Summer:
While my colleagues here at the Labor Department were busy honoring the legacy of America’s working men and women this Labor Day, for many Americans, the holiday meant putting away our summer clothes and writing the last chapter of another summer come and gone.
This year, for the second year in a row, OSHA conducted a summerlong campaign to educate workers and employers about the risks of working outdoors in extreme heat. Looking back on the summer, there were an astonishing number of heat-related weather emergencies across the country: the hottest month in U.S. history, local temperature records broken by the thousand, wildfires and drought.
From the very first day of the summer, the OSHA began getting the word out about the dangers associated with this type of weather. On June 20, I joined Secretary Solis and representatives from the National Weather Service on a teleconference with dozens of television and radio weather broadcasters to discuss just how deadly extreme heat can be for outdoor workers and to urge them to spread the message about heat’s dangers to outdoor worker and their families. NWS meteorologist Eli Jacks previewed the extended heat outlook for the summer, accurately characterizing the scorching months to come.
OSHA’s outreach continued through a grueling July and August with hundreds of events in which OSHA field staff brought the message to their communities by attending worker events and appearing on radio and television. In Texas, OSHA staffed live, Spanish-language phone banks on Univision affiliates to answer questions from the public on heat illness prevention. OSHA also posted more than 100 “Water. Rest. Shade.” billboards across four states to educate employers and workers about the primary ways for outdoor workers to protect themselves in hot weather. The billboards appeared in Arkansas, Florida, Texas and Illinois – the four states with the highest number of occupational heat-related fatalities in 2010.
Since the beginning of the last year’s campaign, OSHA has distributed more than half a million educational posters, fact sheets, tools and other resources through our network of local offices, worker representatives and employer organizations – targeting the workers and industries that need them most. Secretary Solis, along with labor pioneer (and recent Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) Dolores Huerta, recorded television and radio Public Service Announcements in English and Spanish that were broadcast in the hottest parts of the country, like Texas, Arizona and Nevada.
We were especially concerned about hard-to-reach, vulnerable workers who may have limited English proficiency or may work in remote areas in industries like agriculture or construction.  We noted that these workers increasingly rely on mobile communications for information. That’s why OSHA created the OSHA Heat Safety Tool, a mobile smartphone application that provides vital safety information whenever and wherever you need it. As of this week, the app has been downloaded more than 54,000 times in English and Spanish on the iPhone, and Android and some Blackberry devices.
It is difficult – if not impossible – to measure the number of workers who are alive and well this September because employers took common-sense steps to reduce the risk of becoming seriously ill by allowing them to acclimatize to the heat. We can’t count the number of workers who recognized the signs of heat stroke or heat exhaustion in a co-worker and took action to get life-saving medical help. There is no telling what might have happened to the workers whose employers conducted comprehensive heat illness prevention training, and who – as a result – stayed hydrated and took frequent breaks in the shade during the summer’s most unforgiving days.
Sadly, we do know of workers who perished this summer from the effects of heat-related illnesses. Reports of these tragedies make perfectly clear what havoc extreme heat can wreak on the human body without the proper precautions. When word of these fatalities reaches us at OSHA’s national office during our videoconferences with our regional administrators, the room goes silent, and all of us share the sense of loss. We grieve for the loved ones of these workers and resolve to keep fighting. It will be months before we learn the estimated number of heat-related fatalities in 2012 from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, but not one worker’s life should be endangered by these entirely preventable illnesses.
Still, there are parts of the country where the weather will continue to pose a risk of heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Even in September and beyond, it is critical to remember three little words: Water. Rest. Shade. The work can’t get done without them.
Dr. David Michaels is the assistant secretary for occupational safety and health.

The posts and articles provided by our news desk are not always representative of our personal views of the story.Tweet at #AceHealthNews or email to News & Views

Thank you, Ian [Editor]