For an index to all NYCOSH in the News articles, click here.

• Post-9/11 Screenings Increase - Disaster News Network, March 29, 2004
  
  
• N.Y. Firm Guilty of Reckless Endangerment Stemming From 2002 Chemical Explosion - Daily Environment Reporter, March 26, 2004
  
  
• The New New Yorkers: at Salons, Trouble Is in the Air: Effects of Exposure to Toxic Chemicals Will Be Examined in a Survey of Korean Nail Workers - Newsday, March 24, 2004
  
  
• Pataki Pushes to Stop Lifetime Workers' Comp - Newsday, March 24, 2004
  
  
• Outreach Focuses on Workers' Rights, Safety: Work Place Health Disparities Increasing among Hispanics - The Nation's Health, March 2004
  
  
• Bill Would Save Firms Billions - St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 31, 2004
  
  
• Faculty Union Insists on Safe Mold Cleanup - New York Teacher, January 28, 2004
  
  
• Henshaw, Shufro, Respond to Times' Series - Occupational Hazards.com, January 7, 2004
  
  
• Open Season on OSHA: New York Times Series Sparks Outrage - Industrial Safety & Hygiene News, January 2, 2004
  

By Heather Moyer
Disaster News Network
March 29, 2004

http://www.disasternews.net/news/news.php?articleid=2188

NEW YORK — The last two weeks have been busy for Sept. 11 recovery workers, lower Manhattan residents, and the organizations doing their health screenings.

Early last week, the Department Health and Human Services (DHHS) awarded $81 million in grants to organizations helping Sept. 11 rescue workers determine if the air they breathed around Ground Zero was toxic.

Today, a bill will be introduced in Congress that could help residents and office workers in Manhattan undergo health screenings in relation to the Ground Zero air quality. The bill would also make funds available for medicines and treatments.

And this Wednesday is the first meeting of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) new panel on cleaning apartments around Ground Zero.

The eight grants will go toward a five-year health-screening plan of those Ground Zero rescue and recovery workers. The DHHS awarded the grants to the New York City Fire Department, Long Island Occupational and Environmental Health Center, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, City University of New York's, Queens College, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Diane Stein, Director of Outreach and Education for Mt. Sinai's World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program, said this new grant allows them to continue their screening work. After Sept. 11, she said, many local relief workers showed up at Mt. Sinai's occupational health clinic because of health issues.

"The clinic realized right away that only four doctors were not enough," said Stein. "They were going to need more help with the screenings, so they applied for this funding."

Florence Coppola, executive of the United Church of Christ's (UCC) National Disaster Ministries, said the UCC, New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine have been working together since 9-11 on the technological disaster of Ground Zero air quality. They set up a registry of screened workers. Coppola added that Mt. Sinai had an initial grant for screening but it wasn't enough money for any medicine or treatments for the workers.

"We realized that the feds wouldn't fund treatment, and we knew we couldn't leave it like that," said Stein. "So we sought out private funding."

According to Coppola, the UCC 'Hope from the Rubble' campaign gave Mt. Sinai $100,000 to help with the medications and treatment.

Coppola's reactions to the grant news are mixed. "I'm glad to hear that there is this additional funding to help," she said. "But I think what's most important should be an acknowledgement from the Environmental Protection Agency that its research on Ground Zero air quality was faulty from the beginning."

Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) also sees problems with this new plan. "We think these grants are great – but it pays only for screenings," he said. "This does not pay for medicine or treatment, and there is still a whole group of people not covered by these screenings: residents."

Mt. Sinai's Stein agrees with Shufro and Coppola. "The details of the grant aren't entirely worked out yet," she said. "But it does leave out residents and does not include treatments, which is unfortunate."

The new Congressional bill being introduced Monday focuses on those issues. Rep. Carolyn Mahoney of Manhattan and Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays cosponsored it.

"The bill would be great," said Stein. "We're supportive of it because it makes sense – our director is out there now at a press conference rallying for it."

The coalition of NYCOSH, UCC, and Mt. Sinai also challenged the EPA on its early statements that the air around Ground Zero was safe and on its methods of cleaning homes and offices in the area.

"People didn't know how to clean their offices and residences properly," said Coppola. She said people weren't equipped to remove the toxic dust on their own. The panel meeting Wednesday formed in response to that criticism.

The pressure is on that panel to determine new testing and cleaning procedures for the residences in lower Manhattan.

---------------------------------

‘I think what's most important should be an acknowledgement from the Environmental Protection Agency that its research on Ground Zero air quality was faulty from the beginning.'

—Florence Coppola

By John Herzfeld
Daily Environment Reporter
March 26, 2004

NEW YORK--A New York City architectural sign manufacturing company pleaded guilty to criminal charges of reckless endangerment in connection with an April 2002 explosion that injured 37 people in a densely populated section of Manhattan, prosecutors announced March 24 (People v. Kaltech Industries Group Inc., N.Y. Sup. Ct., No. 2004/23843, 3/24/04 ).

Federal investigators concluded in September 2003 that the cause of the explosion--which destroyed part of a 10-story mixed-use building in the Chelsea section of the city and led to serious injuries among workers, bystanders, and firefighters--was the failure of Kaltech Industries Group Inc. to follow basic safety requirements when its employees mixed two incompatible waste chemicals in a basement work room.

The New York City Council is working to revise the city fire code in response to findings by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board that stronger requirements and oversight might have prevented the blast.

Chemicals Pumped Into Drum

In announcing the guilty plea, prosecutors said that a hazardous waste disposal company had removed 13 drums of hazardous waste from Kaltech without incident the morning of the explosion. Kaltech workers subsequently used an electric pump to transfer the contents of some dozen smaller containers holding chemicals into a 55-gallon drum for later disposal. The mixing of incompatible chemicals caused the drum to explode, they added.

Prosecutors said that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Kaltech's owners or employees knew that the combination of the chemicals during disposal was likely to produce the explosion. But the company was charged with failing to properly train employees in the safe use of hazardous chemicals, they said.

The company failed to provide basic safety training to its workers, even though they used hazardous chemicals daily, prosecutors said. The service used by the company to dispose of hazardous waste had offered on three occasions in 2000 and 2001 to train the employees, but Kaltech refused the offers, they charged.

As a result of the guilty plea, Kaltech will be required to provide a comprehensive training program resulting in Occupational Safety and Health Administration certification for all attending employees of sign manufacturers in the New York City area who use chemical processes in their work, prosecutors said.

Kaltech to Offer Training

All employees of Kaltech and other sign and chemical companies owned by Kaltech's principals will be required to attend, they added. At least 26 companies in the city, Long Island, and New Jersey will also be invited to participate, they said. The training sessions are to be advertised and offered free of charge to all eligible employees, they said.

A spokesman for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a union and public interest coalition, said that the resolution of the case demonstrates "the shortcomings of criminal prosecution." Despite an "egregious violation of the law" resulting in numerous injuries, some of them critical, company officials face no jail time and no fine beyond a $44,000 civil penalty levied by OSHA, the spokesman complained.

The plea agreement, NYCOSH said, "does little but reinforce the widespread employer belief that training is a form of punishment."

An attorney for Kaltech, Shamin Ahmed, declined to comment on the case.

By Petra Bartosiewicz
Newsday
March 24, 2004

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-dailynabe3720773mar24,0,4135689.story

It began with a runny nose and red, irritated eyes, but then came the coughing. Before long, Soonok Kim was having trouble breathing.

A doctor diagnosed her with severe asthma, which she believes was likely the product of more than a decade spent working at nail salons with little ventilation and lots of chemicals.

"My chest felt a lot of pain. My body felt weak," said Kim, 37, of Flushing, who worked as a nail technician for 11 years after immigrating to New York City from Seoul in the Republic of Korea in 1989.

"I felt like I'd be dead sooner or later," Kim said.

Now, a survey of more than 100 Korean nail salon workers aims to prevent others from falling ill like Kim. The survey, which is scheduled to be distributed starting today, may shed light on the health effects of chronic chemical exposure in the city's nail salons.

"Occupational safety is pretty new to the Korean community," said Young Sook Na, a program director at the Young Korean American Service & Education Center, a nonprofit community advocacy group in Flushing that is assembling and distributing the survey, which asks questions about workplace conditions.

"The worst thing is many of the workers don't even know they're being exposed," Na said.

The survey is the first of its kind to address chemical workplace hazards in the nearly 4,000 Korean-owned nail salons across New York City, Long Island and Westchester, according to the center.

The survey will be passed out to about 100 workers and its findings will be unveiled next month.

Lured by a better salary

Long a thriving niche industry in New York City largely run and staffed by Koreans and Korean-Americans, nail salons provide thousands of jobs each year for new immigrants, according to the Korean American Nail Salon Association in Flushing. Many are women eager to work at salons, which typically pay more than other labor-intensive jobs and which are open to new arrivals with few English skills. According to Kim, starting nail salon workers can make up to $80 a day with tips.

But between applying coats of "Rum Raisin Red" and "Breezy Coral," the constant exposure to toxic solvents such as concentrated nail glue and polish removers can exact a heavy toll.

Evidence of illness has been mostly anecdotal, with workers relating symptoms such as asthma, skin rashes, burns and severe allergic reactions. Though the city's more modern salons have ventilation equipment and provide employees with face masks and gloves, Na said most salons remain packed into tiny, poorly ventilated spaces, providing little relief for workers.

Perilous working conditions

Salon employees often work 10 hours a day with their heads bent inches away from a client's hands and feet, Kim described. Breaks come only when business is slow. Lunch is eaten next to trays of toxic nail polish removers and other chemicals.

"It's a workforce that no one pays attention to in an industry that's not really regulated," said Beverly Tillery of the Manhattan-based New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit coalition of unions, workers, physicians, and health and safety activists. The committee is partially funding the survey.

In New York City, there are some 13,000 licensed nail workers, according to the New York Department of State, which licenses the workers.

Workers say those with sensitive skin sometimes experience rashes when owners purchase cheaper products with higher chemical concentrations, such as pure acetone nail polish remover. Another common complaint is itchiness around the eyes from the constant nail dust floating through the air.

But the real damage may come from chemicals most workers don't even know they handle on a daily basis. Some of the chemicals commonly found in nail polish have been linked to liver and reproductive damage, according to Tillery.

It took five years for Kim to recover from her severe asthma, she said. She was prescribed medication that made her sleepy and used an inhaler for years before she finally quit her job and found a lower-paying position as a translator for the New York City Board of Elections.

Now, her asthma is gone, but she misses the money she once earned. She's planning on opening her own salon in May.

"I'm a little afraid," Kim said. "But I'm going to train my workers."

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

By Jordan Rau
Albany Bureau Chief
Andrew Metz of the Albany Bureau contributed to this story.
Newsday
March 24, 2004

http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-stwork243720913mar24,0,7149046.story

ALBANY - Gov. George Pataki yesterday proposed ending lifetime workers' compensation for people who suffered permanent partial injuries at their jobs.

Pataki's plan also would increase the maximum weekly benefits paid to workers from $400 to $500. The benefit rates have not been increased since 1992, and business and labor groups agree they are too low.

The plan, which Pataki said would save employers 15 percent on their workers' compensation insurance, is sure to be hotly debated in the legislature. Top among the planks drawing immediate criticism was Pataki's plan to limit the length of time people who have lifelong disabilities for partial injuries can collect benefits to 9 years and 8 months at most.

Workers are considered to have permanent partial injuries when part of the wage-earning capacity has been permanently lost on the job.

"The goal of workers' comp should not be to say to someone, 'Well, you're injured, and we're going to support you for life,'" Pataki said at a news conference. "It should be to say, 'If you are injured on the job, we're going to make sure you are fairly compensated, and you are rehabilitated, so you can go back to work and continue to be a productive member of our society.'"

Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a grassroots labor group, said Pataki's plan would eviscerate the spirit of the workers' compensation law, designed to shield employers from lawsuits in exchange forthem ensuring that injured workers are provided for. He said the limits would force people who suffer permanent partial disabilities onto federal Supplemental Security Incomeor welfare.

"This is a bill which gives to the business community tremendous advantage," Shufro said. "The benefit increase he is proposing is minuscule and does not bring us up to even two-thirds of the other states."

Pataki's aides said other states have been able to offer higher benefits because they limited how long permanently injured workers can collect benefits.

Matthew Maguire, spokesman for the Business Council of New York State, said: "New York State right now is a high-cost and relatively low-benefit state. Anything that would reduce employers' costs by 15 percent would be welcome."

The topics Pataki addressed in his proposal never were resolved during the last major overhaul of New York's welfare compensation laws in 1996.

Assemb. Susan John (D-Rochester), chairwoman of the Assembly Labor Committee, said the weekly benefit increase was "too little" and that the limit on collecting disability was "not something we're looking for" in this package.

The Senate Labor Committee already had scheduled a hearing today on workers' compensation.

Andrew Metz of the Albany Bureau contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

For an archive of articles and documents concerning workers' compensation and injured workers, click here.

By Kim Krisberg
The Nation's Health
March 2004

http://www.apha.org/private/thenationshealth/tnhmarch04stories
/hispanicdisparity0304.htm

[For an archive of articles and documents concerning occupational and environmental safety and health of immigrant and other vulnerable workers, visit http://www.nycosh.org/linktopics/immigrant-vulnerable.html]

Third in an in-depth series on health disparities in the United States in conjunction with APHA's National Public Health Week 2004. The event, which will be held April 5-11, 2004, focuses on "Eliminating Health Disparities: Communities Moving From Statistics to Solutions."

While rates of occupational injuries, illnesses and fatalities have been falling in the United States for most populations, such incidents continue to rise for Hispanic workers, particularly immigrants. The issue is especially difficult to tackle, as such workers confront numerous barriers to standing up for their health and rights as workers.

Since 1992, occupational deaths among Hispanic workers in the United States have increased by more than 50 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Work-related fatalities among Hispanic workers rose by 12 percent in 2000 alone, especially among those in the construction industry. Laws and agencies, such as the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, are inadequate, according to several labor and workers' rights groups, and the United States lacks a reliable system of accurately tracking occupational disease and injury, especially data pertaining to certain ethnic and racial minorities. For many Hispanic workers, attempts to enforce available laws are often clouded by language barriers, immigration status, unfamiliarity with U.S. legal and health systems and high rates of uninsurance.

Hispanic immigrants working in the agricultural sector face additional problems. According to "Fields of Poison 2002: California Farmworkers and Pesticides," a study conducted by Californians for Pesticide Reform, agricultural workers face the greatest threats of pesticide-related illnesses, including long-term effects such as cancer and birth defects. Most agricultural work in the United States is performed by ethnic and racial minorities, and the large majority of migrant and seasonal farm workers are of Hispanic origin. According to CDC, Hispanics face high exposure rates to toxic substances, including chemicals in the work place.

"Farmworkers are pretty much at the bottom of the barrel in terms of the working poor - they are among the poorest," said Virginia Ruiz, environmental health coordinator at the Farmworker Justice Fund, which has been working for more than 20 years to improve living and working conditions for migrant seasonal farm workers and their families in the United States.

Ruiz's organization works with local organizations along the U.S./Mexico border to recruit people within farm worker communities, giving them information on environmental health and training them on how to conduct outreach work within their communities. The Clean Environment for Healthy Kids project operates in border communities on the U.S. side, training and supervising about 40 lay health promoters per year. The project also trains professional health promoters in the region on environmental health.

The lay health promoters try to educate about 20 people per month, Ruiz said, and keep in contact with the Farmworker Justice Fund, which attempts to track the number of people reached through the project. In terms of occupational health, lay health workers are taught how to prevent exposure to pesticides, how to prevent bringing home some of the toxins to their families and about their rights to a safe workplace. Ruiz said that some of the training also looks at toxic sources coming from Mexico, with the hope that the information finds its way across the border.

"The border is a such a fluid area that it makes sense to try to do outreach to both countries," she told The Nation's Health.

For example, according to Ruiz, in El Paso, Texas, the Farmworker Justice Fund is working with health authorities to warn people about using pesticides indoors. In Mexico, it's easier to buy dangerous pesticides, which are then brought across the border and used indoors to kill insects, she said.

When Ruiz talks to farm workers along the border, she often hears complaints such as lack of pesticide safety training, not being provided with handwashing equipment, not being told when or where pesticides have been applied and, occasionally, stories of being directly exposed to pesticides. Ruiz noted that a good portion of the work force are indigenous people from Mexico and parts of Central America, for whom Spanish is a second language, and they are often given the hardest and most difficult work.

Although farm workers are entitled to certain rights under the law, many Hispanic workers don't come forward for fear of being fired or retaliated against by an employer, Ruiz said. Many are also undocumented and fear that their immigration status will be used against them.

"In general, the state laws are very weak and there's little enforcement," she said. "Even if there were a problem, the fines that employers have to pay are minimal. There's not a lot of incentive for employers to comply (with the law)."

Unfortunately, according to Erik Nicholson, Pacific Northwest regional director for United Farmworkers, a part of the AFL-CIO, agricultural workers are not provided many of the same legal protections as other workers. While most workers are covered under OSHA, agricultural workers are the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency. Also, agricultural work is not covered by the National Labor Relations Act, said Nicholson, who is also a member of the Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee, an advisory committee to EPA's pesticide program. In fact, Nicholson's organization, along with a host of other groups, filed suit in January challenging EPA's approval of the use of two pesticides known to poison humans.

"Farmworkers work in a place where toxins are intentionally introduced, and what we see time and time again is that the standards that are set up to protect the workers are insufficient," he told The Nation's Health. "What adds insult to injury is that farm workers are seen and used as laboratory animals."

To fill the gaps overlooked by regulations, United Farmworkers, which has been working with agricultural workers for more than 30 years, conducts worker house visits, educating workers, the majority of whom are Hispanic, on the long-term chronic effects of pesticides, as well as trying to identify the kinds of pesticides that are being used in the workplace, Nicholson said. Providing misinformation to farm workers is far from new, he noted. For example, many workers actually use the Spanish word for "medicine" when talking about pesticides because they've heard their employers characterize pesticides as medicines for plants, Nicholson said.

"We know that parents can bring the pesticides back into the house - that kids and parents are eating products treated with pesticides," he said.

The United Farmworkers union also operates the Radio Campesina Network, a chain of Spanish-language radio stations along the West Coast originally designed to reach farm workers even in the most isolated regions. The stations, which mostly broadcast music, also communicate occasional educational programming on pesticide use.

Nicholson called on health care professionals who serve agricultural workers to educate themselves on the occupational hazards of farm work. Many times, he said, providers will treat the symptoms of occupational disease and not ask when or how the patient got sick.

"Racism is alive and well in this country, and if a lot of things were happening to white people that are happening to Hispanics, this country would be in an uproar," Nicholson said.

Urban work settings pose dangers as well

For Hispanic immigrants working outside the agricultural sector, work conditions are just as grim. According to Amy Vruno, JD, an Equal Justice Works fellow at the D.C. Employment Justice Center, about 12 percent of the center's overall clientele come in about a workplace injury, although among the overall Hispanic clientele, it's closer to 25 percent. The D.C. Employment Justice Center, which was founded in 2000, works to secure and enforce the rights of low-wage workers in Washington, D.C.

The main spine of the organization is the Workers' Rights Clinic, which sees about 1,500 workers every year via a free, walk-in legal clinic. About 25 percent of those who visit the clinic are Spanish-speaking, many of whom are day laborers with complaints about unpaid wages and questions about workers' compensation, Vruno said. About 80 percent of Hispanics who visit the clinic have no health insurance, so the "stakes for getting workers' compensation are much higher," she said.

"When it comes to health and safety, they're some of the most difficult areas for workers to exercise their rights...and the enforcement is really dismal," Vruno told The Nation's Health.

To advocate for workers, "el Comite de Defense de los Trabajadores," or the Committee for the Defense of Workers, was formed about one year ago and consists of about 30 members, mostly Hispanic workers. Some employers assume they can exploit immigrant workers, who may not know their rights and are too afraid to stand up to an employer, Vruno said. The committee provides a place for workers to come together to try to improve the working conditions in Washington, D.C., by engaging rogue employers and putting pressure on them to abide by the law.

The D.C. Employment Justice Center is also home to "El teatro de trabajadores," or Workers' Theatre, a troupe of low-wage, Spanish-speaking workers. Troupe members re-enact real stories they've heard through friends or the legal clinic at venues most likely to reach low-wage workers. After performances, the actors engage the audience about what they would do in certain work situations, Vruno said.

"Employers know this is a vulnerable work force - many of (the workers) have families at home dependent on this money - but employers assume that they can hold immigration status over people's heads," she said.

In New York City, the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health has been advocating for safe and healthy work places since 1976. The committee, a coalition of unions and health professionals, provides training to about 4,000 to 5,000 workers a year on occupational safety and workers' rights under the law and monitors the implementation of laws on the city, state, national and federal levels, according to APHA member Joel Shufro, PhD, the committee's executive director.

"The level of enforcement of OSHA generally is so poor...so it is not able to enforce its standards in a rigorous manner, especially when it comes to day laborers," Shufro told The Nation's Health.

The committee recently became part of a pilot program called the Queens Occupational Injury Prevention Project in collaboration with Queens College and Elmhurst Hospital. The initial phase of the project will target Hispanic immigrant workers living in Queens and will offer free occupational health screenings via a medical mobile unit. The project, which is slated to begin soon, grew out of an earlier project involving workers near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, Shufro said.

During the clean-up efforts, a van was placed near the location of the former World Trade Center towers to monitor the health and safety of workers, mainly immigrant day laborers, who were cleaning buildings that were near the trade center towers. Investigations found that some workers were not being provided with respiratory equipment, not being trained on how to safely conduct clean-up and were not being paid, according to Shufro. About 400 workers went through the screening program near the towers site and about 99 percent of the workers, most of whom were Hispanic and living in Queens, had respiratory problems as a result of exposure to post-Sept. 11 clean-up. The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health is still trying to obtain workers' compensation for those clean-up workers, according to Shufro.

Knowing that many of those workers were living in Queens and were doing some of the most dangerous and dirty work in New York City, the committee wanted to continue providing health screenings, thus the conception of the Queens mobile clinic project. New York City's Elmhurst Hospital is providing a van two days per week as well as paying for an occupational health doctor to accompany the project, while staff from Shufro's organization educate participants on occupational health and the law and how to access workers' compensation.

"For Queens, where 65 percent of the workers are foreign-born, this is a major issue," Shufro said.

The committee also operates the Immigrant Worker Project, which began about four years ago, developing partnerships with community organizations that serve low-wage workers and day laborers, according to Beverly Tillery, coordinator of the project. For example, the project works with English-as-a-second-language teachers to develop curricula on occupational health and safety.

Tillery also works with community-based worker centers, places that often provide day-laborer pick-up sites - a mechanism used to bring day laborers together to organize standards around work conditions and control the market to get a fair wage. The Immigrant Worker Project works with such centers to integrate occupational health and safety training into their programs, Tillery said.

"Once workers get to talk collectively, they realize that the problems are systemic," she told The Nation's Health. Tillery said OSHA does not conduct nearly enough inspections, particularly at places where immigrants work. Common complaints she hears from day laborers are working without protections such as hard hats and gloves, working with chemicals in areas with no ventilation and working without respirators or safety training.

"You shouldn't be in a situation where you have to choose between your health and your job, but that's really where a lot of workers are at," Tillery said. "The reality is that the employers are not doing what they need to do to protect workers and they know they can get away with it."

For more information on disparities in occupational and environmental health among Hispanics, visit <www.cdc.gov>, <www.fwjustice.org> or <www.nycosh.org>.

Coordinators for APHA's National Public Health Week 2004 are now collecting profiles of community-based projects by local public health and health care organizations that are combating health disparities. Compiled profiles will be published on the APHA Web site. For more information, visit <www.apha.org/nphw/solutions>.

By Andrew Schneider
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
January 31, 2004

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/NewsWatch
/84594E4E495D57C586256E2C003830BC?OpenDocument

WASHINGTON - As Congress returns to work, the White House is cranking up pressure for legislation that would save major corporations billions of dollars by barring thousands afflicted with asbestos disease from suing for damages.

While the debate bounces between the Oval Office and congressional hearing rooms, federal agencies continue to document that asbestos remains a problem in this country.

Most of the industrialized world has banned the use of what were once called "miracle fibers" for their fireproof properties. But Commerce Department figures show that U.S. importation of asbestos has increased 300 percent in the last decade, with much of the cancer-causing material being used in automotive brakes.

The Environmental Protection Agency has cautioned millions of homeowners who may have vermiculite insulation contaminated with asbestos to stay out of their attics.

And federal health investigators have begun a survey of 250 plants that handled asbestos-contaminated products from a vermiculite mine in Montana. They are warning people that were involved with the operations in any way to see their physicians.

President Bush has repeatedly expressed concern that some of America's largest corporations have been the targets of hundreds of thousands of lawsuits from people exposed to asbestos in their plants or in the products they manufacture. In his Dec. 15 press conference on the capture of Saddam Hussein, Bush also talked about the need for pro-growth-actions to help the economy.

"It was a mistake not to get asbestos reform," Bush said, adding, "we need more regulatory relief."

The legislation that Bush wants would create a government-operated trust fund to which those suffering from asbestos disease would apply for relief rather than suing company that used asbestos. The legislation was first introduced in 2000 and called the "Asbestos Fairness Act," but Republicans couldn't muster enough support to get it to the floor for a vote.

Last year, Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, reintroduced the legislation, this time calling it the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act.

Passage of the bill would severely limit the number of people who could file claims and corporations would save billions in payouts of settlements to which they'd already agreed.

Opponents of the bill call it a corporate bailout.

Suits are rampant

Thousands of asbestos damage suits have overloaded courthouse dockets throughout the country. The Rand Corp. reported that 600,000 people have filed suit. It often takes years for people to get their day in court. Many die before their case is heard.

There is strong evidence that that many of those suits are without merit. They are brought by dozens of law firms across the country who target thousands of retired automotive, aviation, construction and electrical workers. They use questionable medical screening techniques in an effort to show that their clients have asbestos disease. These firms file suits on behalf of clients who show little or no sign of disease.

Those supporting the legislation push the belief that these fraudulent suits are the norm and attempt to demonize all the trial lawyers involved.

But an examination of court records and bankruptcy filings of companies plagued with asbestos complaints shows that thousands of suits are filed on behalf of former workers or family members who are clinically sick, disabled or have died from asbestos poisoning. Many of these people have or had asbestosis, where the lungs harden like a football, so they can no longer breathe and often drown in their own fluids. Others have lung cancer or mesothelioma, an always fatal, rapidly-spreading cancer of the outer lining of the lungs that is caused only by exposure to asbestos.

While some of the targets are small companies that may have used asbestos in something they sold, most of the defendants are among the nation's largest corporations. Tens of thousands of pages of internal documents show that many of the companies knew for years that their workers were being killed or sickened by asbestos and did little or nothing to warn them.

Critics of the suits say that huge law firms stamp out claims in cookie-cutter fashion, with little real care for the injured client they represent. But many lawyers, some from small firms in small towns, will often work for months or years to gather enough evidence to bring a case to court, which is often the only hope these people have.

The legislation

The White House-backed legislation proposes that a "national trust," be created and corporations that used asbestos and their insurance companies donate $120 billion over the next 20 years. This money will go into a government-monitored fund which would pay awards to those injured by asbestos. Critics, including some in the insurance industry, say the fund would be far too small to cover the claims.

The major sticking point is debate over what medical criteria would be used to identify those afflicted with the disease.

The American Bar Association surprised almost everyone last February, when Dennis Archer, then the president-elect of the group, said he would take it upon himself to gather experts to provide medical criteria to Congress for inclusion in the legislation.

Archer, who was mayor of Detroit for eight years, was then chairman a 200-person Detroit-based law firm which defended several corporations against asbestos suits. He collected a group of physicians, some from industry and some who were leading private practitioners from universities and major medical centers.

Archer said that all views were sought. But the final medical criteria endorsed by the bar association and embraced by Hatch's legislation ignored almost all the input from nonindustry backed physicians, said members of the American Thoracic Society who were on the panel. They are the physicians most experienced in detecting and treating asbestos-related disease.

"The criteria they adopted excluded almost all the recommendations made by those of us without ties to industry. What remains is criteria that excludes thousands and thousands of people actually ill with asbestos-related disease," said Dr. Mike Harbut, one of the nation's leading asbestos specialists.

As originally written, the criteria exclude thousands of people in Libby, Mont., whom federal testing showed had clinical signs of asbestos disease from a contaminated vermiculite mine. It would have excluded a Libby woman on her death bed in a Seattle hospital, because Hatch's act only allows those with occupational exposure to bring suit. The fact that the woman had been contaminated with asbestos that her late husband had carried home from the W.R. Grace mine would have made no difference.

Harbut, who has treated thousands of patients with asbestos disease, agrees that the present system of adjudicating asbestos claims is in need of repair. But, he says, "To deny people who have contracted asbestosis or cancer simply by living in a house where it was dumped in as insulation or washing a spouse's clothing or by living in a neighborhood where a vermiculite processing plant is located is just plain wrong."

Bad for business?

The White House and other supporters say the legislation must be passed because 60 or more companies have been forced into bankruptcy, and unemployment is soaring because of it.

"The torrent of asbestos litigation has wreaked havoc on asbestos victims, on American jobs, and this havoc has extended into our economy," said Senate leader Bill Frist. The Tennessee Republican added he has "made it a personal priority" that the Senate pass the legislation.

Few dispute that the bankruptcies have caused a problem. But the claims of disruption to jobs and sales have been exaggerated in many cases.

The Post-Dispatch found that a different picture emerges in Securities and Exchange Commission filings and press releases from the five largest asbestos targets who have filed for bankruptcy. The most recent reports from Armstrong, W.R. Grace, Federal Mogul, Owens Corning and U.S. Gypsum show that with a single exception, all have increased sales and have the same or a greater number of employees than before they filed Chapter 11.

Hatch's act not only would prevent most future suits against enormous corporations, it also would put some of them billions of dollars ahead of the game.

For example, in December, 2002, the Halliburton Corp. reached a settlement of $3.6 billion with thousands of people with asbestos diseases who had sued one of its subsidiaries.

Documents submitted to the Judiciary Committee say that under the proposed fairness legislation, no company would be forced to pay more than $25 million per year for 27 years into the compensation fund. Thus, the most a corporation would have to shell out would be $675 million. In Halliburton's case, it would have saved nearly $3 billion if the legislation goes into effect.

Fair to whom?

On Statehouse steps in Denver, Little Rock, Ark., Providence, R.I., and three other cities, union members held demonstrations last month to tell their senators and representatives to vote against the bill.

"The bill is grossly unfair to people whose exposure to asbestos did not occur at work and to tens of thousands of workers with asbestos-related injuries that do not meet the bill's arbitrary definition of asbestos disease," said Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.

Shufro, whose organization is supported by 400 unions and provides health and safety training, said he is concerned about the thousands of people who lived downwind from one of Grace's hundreds of vermiculite processing plants or those caught in the dust cloud that enveloped Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11.

"Don't forget the rescue and recovery workers at the World Trade Center. All of these people will be completely ineligible for any compensation if they develop asbestos-related disease," he said. "If you don't meet the bill's arbitrary standards, you have no recourse."

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, told the Post-Dispatch, "Any bill that short-changes victims should not and will not pass.

"To be fair, a national trust fund has to be sufficiently funded by contributions from defendants and insurers, and must provide victims with adequate compensation for their diseases."

Asbestos still imported

Many members of Congress say it's bizarre to be considering legislation to ban suits from asbestos exposure while the material is still being imported.

Asbestos is banned in most of the industrialized world, but not in the United States. Sixteen years ago, the EPA issued a ban, but less than two years later, an appellate court, responding to a suit brought by the American and Canadian asbestos industries, overturned it on a technicality.

For the past three years, Washington Sen. Patty Murray has tried to introduce the "Ban Asbestos in America Act." The Democrat's hearings have been dramatic and emotional, but, so far, no Republicans have agreed to co-sponsor Murray's bill as written.

"It would be irresponsible for Congress to consider a bill addressing the fallout from asbestos exposure that does not include a ban on its future use," said Leahy, who co-sponsored Murray's bill. "Too many innocent people have been poisoned by asbestos already."

Hatch - in his latest bill - accepted part of Murray's bill as a peace offering to Democrats opposed to the Fairness Act. But Hatch gutted Murray's provisions that would protect people like the miners in Libby, and at the talc and taconite mines elsewhere in the country, who are also exposed to asbestos contamination.

Frist said last week that he hopes Hatch's bill will reach the floor for a vote "shortly." But some judiciary committee staffers says the presidential race is getting hot and the louder the unions object to the bill, the less likely it is that Republicans will allow the asbestos bill to the floor for a vote before the fall elections.

Post-Dispatch editor Andrew Schneider has investigated environmental issues throughout the country.

Andrew Schneider
E-mail: aschneider@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8101

By Liza Frenette
New York Teacher
January 28, 2004

http://www.nysut.org/newyorkteacher/2003-2004/040128safety.html

As a mold problem in several buildings at Westchester Community College spreads into its second year, the faculty union is pressing for a campus-wide inspection and the hiring of an industrial hygienist.

The Virginia Marx Children's Center was closed two months ago, and is not scheduled to reopen until April, said Anne D'Orazio, president of the Westchester CC Federation of Teachers. Children and staff have been relocated from the daycare center.

During the recent winter break, more offices and classrooms were closed again for additional work. All secretaries in the Classroom Building had to be relocated and faculty were not able to get into their offices, said D'Orazio.

"It's a very active building," she said. "This was a very disruptive process."

When the federation formed a Health and Safety Committee in 2001, little did members know how much they would be needed: Mold was on the way. Last summer, several federation members returned from their vacations to find mold covering potpourri in their desks, and gray mold sliming their waste baskets.

Multiple offices were then closed in the Classroom Building and the new library on the Valhalla campus after mold was found in rooms, ducts, insulation and piping.

"Men came in in space suits and said,'Get out immediately, don't take anything,'" said D'Orazio. By the middle of August, staffers were showing symptoms, primarily headaches.

The roof of the college's executive hall is also being worked on because of mold problems, D'Orazio added.

The growth of mold indoors is caused by the presence of moisture. Whether dead or alive, mold is allergenic. Some molds may be toxic; all molds are potential sources of health problems, said Wendy Hord, health and safety specialist for New York State United Teachers.

The federation's health and safety committee has been a funnel for information and complaints. In the fall, it joined with the campus labor-management health and safety committee to hold a campus-wide informational meeting with guest speaker Dave Newman, an industrial hygienist from the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. NYCOSH is a coalition of local unions and health and safety professionals advocating for safer workplaces.

The Westchester CCFT has reported to its members that the administration plans to remove acoustic insulation, and then inspect those areas previously unavailable due to the insulation; sanitize metal ceiling tiles; complete duct cleaning; replace pipe insulation and remove some carpeting; and install commercial dehumidifiers.

But problems persist, and the federation is advocating for a campus-wide inspection and the hiring of industrial hygienist Edward Olmsted, a NYSUT consultant.

"They (administrators) said he's too pro-union - as if mold were a union problem," D'Orazio said. "The WCCFT health and safety committee is anxious to step in and work on solving problems of unsafe and unhealthy workplace conditions in individual buildings."

- Liza Frenette

Copyright New York State United Teachers.

Henshaw, Shufro, Respond to Times' Series

By Sandy Smith
Occupational Hazards.com
January 7, 2004

http://www.occupationalhazards.com/full_story.php?WID=11176

In separate letters to the editor, Assistant Secretary of Labor John Henshaw and Joel Shufro, executive director, New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, commented on the recent series of articles published by the New York Times that revealed OSHA rarely seeks prosecution for the most serious violations of workplace safety and health laws.

In his letter, Henshaw said the three-article series (which can be found at www.nytimes.com) "does not reflect the Labor Department's strong record of enforcing the nation's health and safety laws and reducing workplace injuries, illnesses and fatalities through its Occupational Safety and Health Administration."

While admitting "There are still too many families who lose loved ones in workplace accidents," Henshaw pointed out there are "fewer workplace fatalities, illnesses and injuries than ever before." Over the past 30 years, workplace fatalities have been cut in half and injuries and illnesses reduced by over 40 percent, said Henshaw, who noted that during the same time period, the American work force has doubled.

He said that workplace fatalities in 2002 fell to the lowest point ever recorded, "and inspection results show that we are focusing on the most dangerous workplaces."

However, he admitted. "There is more to be done. One fatality is one too many, and workplace injuries and illnesses can and should be avoided. We will not stop until that goal is reached."

He pointed out OSHA helps employers meet their occupational safety and health obligations through compliance assistance and enforcement, noting that one of the enforcement tools at the agency's disposal is referral to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. "However, many cases do not reach the high burden of evidence for successful criminal prosecution - proving each element of a violation beyond a reasonable doubt. For a civil citation, a lesser standard suffices - preponderance of the evidence. The department does not refer cases that do not meet the higher burden of proof required for criminal prosecution by the Justice Department," said Henshaw.

Shufro, in his letter, stressed a different point. Shufro noted that for each worker killed on the job as a result of traumatic injury, 10 workers die of occupational diseases. "Although an estimated 66,000 workers die each year from occupational disease, their employers are never prosecuted," he said.

He admitted it is difficult to prove that a worker's death from an occupational disease is a result of a particular employer's action or inaction. "Illnesses caused by exposure to chemicals often have a latency period of 10 to 40 years," said

Shufro. "Workers are often exposed to hundreds of chemicals over their lifetime."

He stressed that stronger enforcement of current standards would help the situation, but, according to Shufro, standards exist for only 500 of the some 70,000 chemicals used in the workplace, and the standards that do exist are "woefully out of date and inadequate."

Shufro's letter added, "The death of a worker from occupational disease is no less necessary or tragic than the deaths described in your excellent series. Unfortunately, as with the fatalities you described, some employers get away with murder."

Copyright © 2004 Penton Media, Inc.

Industrial Safety & Hygiene News
January 2, 2004

http://www.ishn.com/CDA/ArticleInformation
/news/news_item/0,2169,115889,00.html

OSHA is feeling the heat after a series of articles in the New York Times in late December documented the agency's meager efforts to prosecute willful violators of safety and health standards whose attitudes and actions resulted in deaths on the job.

In its report, the Times looked at 2,192 cases of willful violations of workplace safety laws that resulted in death. Two-thirds of these violations were investigated by OSHA, but the agency only referred 3.9 percent of the 1,242 cases it investigated to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

"This is an astounding record of failure," Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) wrote in a letter to OSHA chief John Henshaw. "OSHA's gross negligence," said Lautenberg, warrants a "top-down review of agency policies."

Lautenberg promises to introduce a bill this month that will force OSHA to provide, within 60 days of the end of each month, a review of the number of deaths and injuries reported and all actions taken by OSHA to "punish" employers.

Henshaw defended his agency's record in a letter to the Times, writing that "many cases do not reach the high burden of evidence for successful criminal prosecution… the department does not refer cases that do not meet the higher burden of proof required for criminal prosecution by the Justice Department."

OSHA's critics are not appeased. "It is clear that federal OSHA has become a captive of the industries whose safety practices it is supposed to regulate," editorialized the Modesto, (Calif.) Bee. Cal-OSHA prosecutes 31 percent of willful violation cases resulting in fatalities. "The state's aggressive prosecution explains in part why California's workplace death rate is substantially lower than any other state's rate," said the newspaper.

Meanwhile, two worker-safety groups are pressing OSHA to file charges relating to the collapse of the Tropicana Casino and Resort garage in October that killed four workers and injured 20, according to the Atlantic City Press.

"OSHA has ignored these requests and not moved forward to make this a priority," said Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, or NYCOSH. "OSHA is supposed to be an enforcement agency, a watchdog group — not a lap dog. It isn't an agency employers can fear. Unfortunately they get away with murder."

Shufro said the group has been calling for the criminal prosecution of egregious violators of OSHA law for more than ten years. NYCOSH is working with PhilaPosh, another group working for safety in the workplace, on the garage collapse investigation.

Shufro said OSHA has very minimal penalties for cases involving work-related deaths. "It is treated as a misdemeanor. It is less of a penalty than shooting a moose out of season," Shufro said, adding that an employer can face fines and as many as six months in jail.

Copyright 2004 by BNP Media