Occupational Safety

Federal and state health officials are investigating working conditions at a massive Baltimore County maintenance facility in Glen Arm where at least a dozen workers have developed rashes and other ailments since last fall.Inspectors collected air and dust samples this month from the Glen Arm Maintenance Facility after union officials sought a review by both the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH)."My concern is what's going on up there and what health hazards my people face up there," said James F. Clark, president of the Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees.

BERLIN -- Alarmed at the deaths of seven poultry workers across the country since April, the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance is calling for a nationwide investigation of safety and working conditions at plants owned by industry giant Tyson Foods Inc.Marching with hand-made signs, about 30 members of the alliance -- which includes environmentalists, poultry workers, growers, union organizers and religious activists -- rallied yesterday outside the Tyson...

No more shrill accusations. No more grumbling about Washington's "baddest" agency.Instead, when business leaders and conservative Republicans refer to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration -- an agency they wanted to gut not that long ago -- they're more likely to use words such as "enlightened" and "collaborative."The change in opinion is not because business executives and their GOP allies have had a change of heart.Rather, it's because OSHA has become less combative as it tries to protect the safety and health of the nation's workers -- and its budget and staff on Capitol Hill.

As part of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's effort to make the state more "business friendly," state officials plan to exempt 11 Maryland manufacturers that employ about 1,000 workers from surprise safety inspections -- provided they police themselves.Under an agreement signed last night by Maryland Occupational Safety and Health officials and the Maryland Manufacturers Self-Insurance Trust, member companies will be eligible to develop comprehensive safety programs that include self-inspection.

Although Maryland workplaces, on average, have among the top safety records in the nation, the state's safety regulatory agency is one of the most overwhelmed. The 43 Maryland Occupational Safety and Health inspectors can visit only a tiny percentage of the state's more than 70,000 work sites. But controversy has erupted over MOSH's most recent effort to address the problem. Union officials say the state may endanger workers if MOSH adopts a 2-year-old federal experiment in which safety agencies offer exemptions from surprise inspections to companies with approved safety programs.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican majority in the House last night tackled a huge symbol of government gone wrong: Congress' practice of exempting itself from the discrimination and workplace laws it requires of almost every other business and family in America."

Construction companies can expect more frequent inspections and higher fines now that the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health program is becoming more stringent, members of the Carroll County Homebuilders' Association were told Thursday."

The Baltimore Teachers Union hints at a cover-up.City school officials suspect a smear job by the union.Caught in the political cross fire is a teacher at Sarah M. Roach Elementary School who is recovering from a possible case of Legionnaire's disease, a potentially deadly form of pneumonia.Her illness, and the school department's response, has produced the latest clash between BTU and education officials over Baltimore's controversial experiment in school privatization, known as Tesseract.

Just how dangerous is dioxin? Is it the world's most toxic chemical, harmful in a few parts per quadrillion (that's 1 with 15 zeros behind it)?Or is it the ubiquitous byproduct of an industrialized society that each year releases enough into the ecosystem to exceed World Health Organization limits for every human being on Earth -- without killing off the planet?The United States spent $33 million a decade ago to buy the town of Times Beach, Mo., and relocate its 2,200 residents because the roads had been sprayed with oil that was laced with dioxin.

The state's worker safety and health agency has been too easy on Maryland's employers and slow in pursuing discrimination cases, according to a federal audit released yesterday.Launched after a fire killed 25 workers at a North Carolina chicken plant in September, an evaluation by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that Maryland settled too many safety-violation cases informally and failed to adequately verify that safety problems, once identified, had been remedied.

A man who died after falling from scaffolding Tuesday was working for a company that has a history of helmet and safety violations, according to records. Emilio Ernesto Herrera, 42, of Silver Spring was pronounced dead at a Harford County warehouse after authorities were called to the scene about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday. Herrera was working for a masonry company, building a cinder-block wall in an old appliance warehouse on Appliance Drive in Belcamp, said Sgt. Dave Betz, spokesman for the Harford County Sheriff's Office.

State safety workers are investigating the death of a Pennsylvania man who was struck on the head by a wooden beam at a construction site in northern Harford County yesterday. A 1,000-pound header beam that was being installed over a doorway of a wooden barn struck and killed Christopher Kohler, 42 of Wrightsville, Pa., authorities said. "The victim was on a lift and in the process of setting the header when it fell," said Sgt. David Betz, spokesman for the Harford County sheriff's office.

A series of fatal crane accidents, including one in Annapolis on Wednesday, have Maryland officials rethinking safety regulations for this equipment. There isn't much on the books regarding construction cranes, despite their long-standing use in the industry. Closer scrutiny of this aspect of the trade couldn't hurt. And here's why: Crane operators don't carry special licenses, and operator certification programs are voluntary. But accidents such as the one in Parole Plaza outside Annapolis and the more deadly collapse of a 20-story crane at a construction site in Manhattan in March often occur when a boom or piece of the crane is lowered or extended.

A construction worker died yesterday after being crushed in a crane high above a building site near Annapolis in an accident that comes as state officials are looking for ways to tighten safety regulations for such heavy equipment. The laborer, identified by police as Denis Umanzor, 44, of Silver Spring, was killed while working at Annapolis Towne Centre, a $400 million residential, office and shopping complex under construction in Parole. Although authorities have yet to determine what went wrong, a portion of a crane apparently came loose and pinned Umanzor as it was being dismantled - a step described by experts as particularly risky.

A lot of people tell me that they are sick of both political parties. They claim the parties are essentially the same and it doesn't matter who is in power, because the Democrats and the Republicans are in the pocket of special interests and equally disengaged from the concerns and needs of average people. To that, I proffer this example about mine safety, something in the news lately because of the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster. Say you are a miner, a historically dangerous job in which more than 100,000 of your compatriots have perished since 1900.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The workers, by and large, have been young and healthy. None were smokers, and none had any history of lung disease. But after working at plants that produce food flavorings, they all had one thing in common: They could not breathe. Over the past several years, California health officials have been tracking a handful of workers in flavoring factories who have been incapacitated with a rare, life-threatening lung condition - bronchiolitis obliterans - for which there is no cure or treatment.

WASHINGTON -- A government warning to mechanics that exposure to asbestos in brakes can cause deadly disease will not be removed from a federal Web site, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has decided not to suspend a scientist who had refused to water down the warning, OSHA officials said. Edwin Foulke Jr., the head of OSHA, made the decision to keep the five-page warning, called a Safety and Health Information Bulletin, on the agency's Web site. The safety bulletin was posted on an OSHA Web site in July and, like a similar Environmental Protection Agency warning to backyard mechanics and small garage operators, has been called scientifically invalid by industries that used, and use, asbestos.

WASHINGTON -- Millions of Americans are exposed regularly to vapors released when they heat products containing the same synthetic butter flavoring blamed for destroying the lungs of workers in popcorn and flavoring factories. But public health activists say no one in government has stepped up to assess whether consumers are at risk. The Food and Drug Administration has jurisdiction over products people ingest but reports it has no plans to investigate. Critics say the agency's response reflects a pattern of governmental indifference to the possible threat posed by breathing diacetyl, a butter flavoring agent.

Three members of Congress have joined an outcry for federal regulators to protect workers from lung damage caused by a chemical contained in synthetic butter flavoring. Reps. George Miller and Hilda L. Solis, both California Democrats, and Rep. Major R. Owens, a New York Democrat, wrote Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao yesterday urging the agency to adopt recommendations made by federal workplace health investigators. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health suggested ways to control workers' exposure to the chemical, diacetyl, after linking it to scores of cases of an often-fatal lung disease over the past five years.

WASHINGTON -- Two large unions and dozens of leaders in public and occupational health are petitioning the federal government to use its emergency powers to control worker exposure to a chemical in butter flavoring that has sickened hundreds across the country. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and the Teamsters union said they will formally ask the Department of Labor today to immediately issue an emergency temporary standard that would set a maximum for exposure to diacetyl and, among other steps, require employers to provide workers with air-purifying respirators.