Job Safety Highlights at Confined Space

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/02/job-safety-highlights-at-confined-space/

Job Safety Highlights at Confined Space

If you haven’t taken a look at Jordan Barab’s Confined Space recently, you’ve missed some interesting, frightening and blood-boiling posts about job safety, the lack of it and the Bush administration’s failures to toughen and enforce the nation’s workplace safety laws.

Here are some highlights:

* More on the artificial butter flavoring chemical diacetyl and how it destroys workers’ lungs. Safety experts say diacetyl, used mostly in the manufacture of microwave popcorn, causes workers to come down with a serious lung disease called “popcorn lung.” Despite a petition from unions for an emergency action and exposure standard, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has yet to act.

* A link to a series of stories in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about a women who was seriously injured working on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea. As the AFL-CIO report Death on the Job notes, commercial fishing is one of the most dangerous and deadly occupations.

* Excerpts from an article Hog Hell, by Eric Shlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, about Smithfield Packing Company in Tar Heel, N.C. Shlosser writes, “The Bush administration has worked closely with the industry to weaken food safety and worker safety rules and to make union organizing more difficult.”

Be sure to check out these stories and learn about health and safety on the job.

http://spewingforth.blogspot.com/

by Mike Hall

tags: popcorn lung, workplace safety, Occupational safety and Health Administration, OSHA, job safety, fishing, food

[sweetheart]

1. democratic power is the enemy of tyrants

Interesting about the popcorn:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/06/20/popcorn-factory.htm

As for fishing being a dangerous profession, the world has known that for thousands years.