Latest news with #OccupationalSafetyandHealthAdministration
Scientific American
3 days ago
- Politics
- Scientific American
Lawmakers Form First Extreme Heat Caucus, Citing ‘Deadly Risk'
CLIMATEWIRE | An Arizona Democrat and a New York Republican are teaming up to form the Congressional Extreme Heat Caucus in an attempt to find bipartisan solutions for deadly temperatures. 'We hope this caucus can make sure the United States is better prepared for the inevitable increase in temperatures, not just in Arizona and the Southwest but all across the country,' Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton (D) said in an interview. He's creating the caucus with New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a moderate Republican who bucked his party last year by expressing support for the nation's first proposed regulation to protect workers from heat by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. 'Extreme heat kills more Americans each year than any other weather event — over 1,300 lives lost, including 570 in New York alone — and it's a growing threat to the Hudson Valley,' Lawler said in a statement. 'That's why I'm co-chairing the Heat Caucus to drive real solutions, raise awareness, and protect our communities from this deadly risk.' Stanton said he was excited to team up with Lawler, who understands that heat jeopardizes health even in northern climates. 'He is from New York and I'm proud he recognizes how heat is important for workers,' he said. The caucus will be open to House lawmakers who have bipartisan ideas for addressing extreme heat. Noting that many Republicans have slammed OSHA's proposed heat rule, Stanton said the caucus doesn't have to find consensus on every policy, but members should be willing to search for common ground. "It is important to have that conversation on what we can come together and agree on because that's how we get legislation passed in this town, even if we don't agree on how far to go," he said. Lawler and Stanton teamed up earlier this spring to protest workforce reductions at the Department of Health and Human Services that could degrade heat-related programs. In April, the pair wrote a letter to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., protesting layoffs that purged the entire staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice as well as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps families pay for heating and cooling. 'As we head into another summer — with projections suggesting 2025 will rank again among the warmest years on record, we cannot afford to limit our ability to counter the impacts of extreme heat,' they wrote in April with nine other lawmakers. Among the caucus' priorities is making LIHEAP funding more evenly distributed to southern states to help pay for cooling assistance. The program was initially created to help low-income families pay their heating bills during winter, and the majority of its funding still goes toward cold-weather states. 'We have had too many deaths of people in their homes because they are unable to access programs that would help them access air conditioning,' Stanton said.
Politico
4 days ago
- Health
- Politico
Oil groups target heat rule as workers bake
For oil and gas workers, heat exposure can turn deadly. The industry is trying to tank a federal rule intended to help. The industry hopes its push will find favor with the Trump administration, which has pledged to eliminate barriers to fossil fuel production and dismantle policies to tackle climate change, writes Ariel Wittenberg. The rule — which the Biden administration proposed in July — would require employers to offer outdoor workers paid water and rest breaks when combined heat and humidity reach 80 degrees. Companies would also have to train managers and workers to identify heat illness symptoms and know when to get medical attention. The fossil fuel industry ranks third in the nation for heat-related hospitalizations and is among the top five for deaths. A reported 149 oil and gas workers have been hospitalized for heat exposure since 2017, compared with nine workers in the wind and solar industries. 'There are a lot of places where workers can't say, 'Oh, it's getting hot out here, I need to drink some water,' and this would help protect them before they are so ill they need to go to the hospital or die,' Jordan Barab, an Obama-era Occupational Safety and Health Administration official, told Ariel. Strenuous labor can worsen the dangers of high temperatures, leading to kidney damage, heat exhaustion and even heat stroke, which can kill in a matter of minutes. But industry groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, are urging the Trump administration to abandon the rule. They say it would apply 'a one-size-fits all' standard instead of letting employers set break schedules 'based on their specific workforce operations.' Such 'unbridled access to breaks' is unworkable, the group wrote to OSHA in January. Debate over the measure could bubble over next month when administration officials are scheduled to hold a hearing for public comment. By that time, summer will be heating up, and it could be a scorcher if history is any guide. The U.S. has suffered a string of record-breaking temperatures as climate change driven by burning fossil fuels turbocharges heat waves around the world. Temperatures in Texas have already broken 100 degree s — a record for May — and the rest of the country is on track to see hotter-than-normal days in the months ahead. It's Thursday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Arianna Skibell. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to askibell@ Today in POLITICO Energy's podcast: Catherine Morehouse breaks down the forced power outages in New Orleans this weekend, which left 100,000 people in the dark, and how that could help the Trump administration's efforts to keep fossil fuel plants running. Power Centers Bitcoin miner moves on up A former bitcoin miner whose company had a track record of permit violations and conflicts with neighbors is now operating at the highest ranks of the Energy Department, writes Brian Dabbs. Greg Beard, a career energy investor who ran the bitcoin firm Stronghold Digital Mining until March, joined the DOE's Loan Programs Office in recent weeks as a top-ranking political appointee — and staffers say he's already making big moves at the department. Musk is out, but DOGE remainsElon Musk is stepping back from the federal government but his Department of Government Efficiency isn't going anywhere, write Robin Bravender, Danny Nguyen and Sophia Cai. Just this week at the Interior Department, a 30-year veteran of the agency who told employees to ignore DOGE directives was escorted out of the building. Elsewhere, some DOGE employees have been hired on as permanent government staffers and given high-ranking positions inside agencies. And Cabinet heads like Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought have been quietly prepping plans for lasting changes that stand to be even more consequential than the initial rounds of cuts from Musk's team. From the sidelines: Musk and Tesla blast the GOPTesla criticized the Republican megabill for gutting clean energy tax credits, a message amplified by Musk hours after he announced he was leaving the Trump administration, writes James Bikales. 'Abruptly ending the energy tax credits would threaten America's energy independence and the reliability of our grid,' Tesla Energy, the company's solar and battery division, wrote on X. In Other News Glacier collapse: Nearly all of a Swiss Alpine village was buried when an unstable glacier in Switzerland collapsed this week. Green fee: Hawaii has become the first U.S. state to charge tourists a fee in an effort to fund climate policies. Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that federal agencies conducting environmental reviews can take a more limited view of the impacts of transportation and energy infrastructure projects they are permitting. April saw $4.5 billion in cancellations and delays of clean energy projects in the U.S., highlighting pressure on the clean power and low-carbon sectors as Congress weighs cutting billions of dollars in tax credits. By the end of the decade, the cost of buying and operating electric trucks could equal to — or even beat — the price of comparable diesel vehicles. That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.
Scientific American
4 days ago
- Politics
- Scientific American
Oil Industry Opposes a Planned Rule to Limit Heat Deaths among Workers
CLIMATEWIRE | The oil and gas industry is pushing the Trump administration to kill a proposed rule that would protect workers from extreme heat, arguing that it jeopardizes the president's vision of achieving 'energy dominance.' The opposition comes as people who work in U.S. oil and gas fields face increasingly dangerous conditions as global temperatures swell with rising levels of climate pollution. The industry is among the nation's leading workplaces for heat-related deaths and injuries. The American Petroleum Institute is one of several industry groups that has called on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to abandon the regulation, which was proposed under former President Joe Biden and requires employers to offer water and rest breaks when temperatures rise above 80 degrees. The federal protections were drafted for the first time last year as global temperatures reached their highest levels ever recorded by humans. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. 'API Ask: Do not proceed on the currently proposed Heat Injury and Illness Prevention Standard,' the group wrote to the Department of Labor in December, in a memo that has not previously been made public. It lists the proposed heat rule as one of four priorities in a 'vision for American energy leadership.' 'The oil and gas industry is poised to fully realize its potential under a new era of energy dominance,' the group wrote, adding that its priorities are 'essential to achieving this energy potential.' Heat has killed 137 workers nationwide since 2017 and hospitalized thousands more, according to an analysis of OSHA data by POLITICO's E&E News. Construction and agriculture workers bear the brunt of heat injuries and fatalities, but people who extract fossil fuels in oil and gas fields, or those in support service jobs, also succumb to extreme temperatures. The fossil fuel industry accounts for 4 percent of heat-related deaths in the U.S. and nearly 7 percent of worker hospitalizations, according to federal data. That makes the industry the third-highest sector for hospitalizations from heat and among the top five for heat-related deaths. Workers have fallen ill or died while operating oil and gas drilling rigs, installing pipes, and delivering odorants. Strenuous activity can amplify the dangers of high temperatures, leading to kidney damage, heat exhaustion and heat stroke, a condition that results in organ failure and death in a matter of minutes. The string of record-breaking temperatures year after year foreshadows what could be a deadly summer, as climate change fueled by the combustion of fossil fuels turbocharges heat waves around the world. Texas has already sweltered under 100-degree heat, a record for May, and the rest of the nation is on track to experience warmer-than-normal temperatures. OSHA cited the death toll from heat, and the role of climate change in causing them, when it proposed the protections in July. They cover some 35 million people. Many of the rules' requirements mirror recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since the 1970s. Now the rule is in the hands of the Trump administration, which has launched a concerted effort to terminate government climate offices, repeal regulations for lowering greenhouse gases and roll back billions of dollars in climate funding. President Donald Trump rejects the basic tenets of climate science. One of the first signs of whether the rule might survive will come in June, when OSHA officials are scheduled to hold a hearing to collect public comment on the proposal. API spokesperson Charlotte Law declined to answer questions about heat illness rates in the oil and gas industry, saying in a statement, 'we don't have anything further to add beyond the memo.' The document takes issue with rest break requirements in the draft rule, saying it 'unreasonably requires reduce work/exposure hours for experienced workers, potentially leading to operational difficulties with no clear safety improvement.' Heat rules 'stifle … creativity, innovation' OSHA has identified six heat-related fatalities involving fossil fuel workers since 2017. One construction worker collapsed at a gas-fired power plant, and multiple people have died from heat as they tried clearing clogged wells and pipes. Others became ill and died while pressure-washing equipment in the hot sun, and one became fatally sick as he was sweeping up spilled metallurgical coke, according to OSHA records. Some 149 workers in the oil and gas industry have been hospitalized for heat exposure since 2017, compared to nine workers in the wind and solar industries. One OSHA citation described how a Texas worker began complaining of cramps and nausea — symptoms of heat illness — while trying to clear two obstructed well holes in 2017. Instead of being offered a break, the employee was 'encouraged to continue to work,' the OSHA citation said. He later died after experiencing convulsions and without receiving medical attention. OSHA issued fines amounting to $21,367 to the employer, Patco Wireline Services, for three serious violations. The fines were later dropped in a settlement. Officials with Patco, based in Houma, Louisiana, couldn't be reached for comment. OSHA has issued citations in each of the six industry heat deaths since 2017. The fines came under legal requirements that employers keep workplaces free of 'recognized hazards' — a general provision that would be replaced by the more detailed heat rule, if it's ever finalized. The draft heat rule outlines specific steps employers must take to prevent workers from falling ill. In addition to offering water and rest breaks, companies would have to train managers and workers to identify symptoms of heat illness and when to get medical attention. 'There are a lot of places where workers can't say, 'Oh, it's getting hot out here, I need to drink some water,' and this would help protect them before they are so ill they need to go to the hospital or die,'' said Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary for OSHA during the Obama administration. Oil and gas groups disagree. API collaborated with the American Exploration and Production Council, the International Association of Drilling Contractors, and others on a letter to OSHA in January that called the rule 'flawed.' The groups argued that it applies 'a one-size-fits all prescriptive standard to arguably the most prevalent hazard ever faced by employers across the US.' 'Unless the heat rule is substantially changed, OSHA would create unnecessary burdens and stifle the creativity, innovation and individualized performance-oriented solutions that the oil and gas industry seek to foster,' they said. 'Our hope therefore is that this version of a proposed heat rule will not move forward through the rulemaking process.' The groups take particular issue with temperature triggers in the proposed rule, which requires employers to provide water and rest breaks when combined heat and humidity reach 80 degrees. At 90 degrees, workers would get 15-minute breaks to rest and drink water after every two hours of work. They would be paid during the breaks. Such 'unbridled access to breaks' is unworkable, the industry argued. 'Employers should be allowed to set break schedules based on their specific workforce operations,' the groups wrote. They added that the rule would be a burden in cold and warm climates — from Alaska's North Slope to the Permian Basin in Texas. Eighty-degree days are so uncommon in Alaska, they argued, that 'the cost of imposing the Heat Rule's requirements are not justifiable and would be unduly burdensome and difficult to consistently apply.' It would also 'be a significant burden' in Texas because temperatures regularly exceed 80 degrees, 'requiring employers to comply with the initial heat requirements nearly half the time,' the letter said. 'Campaign of deception' The fossil fuel industry is not alone in opposing the proposed rule. Representatives of the construction and manufacturing industries made similar arguments at a hearing this month of the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections. But the oil and gas industry may carry extra weight during the Trump administration. Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office aimed at 'unleashing American energy' that directed federal departments to review existing regulations and policies that 'impose an undue burden on the identification, development or use of domestic energy resources.' Neither OSHA nor the Department of Labor responded to questions about whether they have completed the review. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has expressed support for the fossil fuel industry, but hasn't publicly remarked on the heat rule. 'Unleashing American energy will create good-paying jobs and lower costs for business and families,' she wrote in an April post on X about the department's efforts to train workers 'to secure American Energy Dominance.' She also toured an oil and gas facility in Bakersfield, California, that's owned by California Resources to mark 'President Trump's first 100 days of economic success.' As the Trump administration weighs whether to kill OSHA's heat rule, more workers could die — and not just in the fossil fuel industry. Shana Udvardy, a senior climate analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has advocated for worker heat protections, argued that the fossil fuel industry's role in heat deaths goes deeper than the climate pollution it releases. 'If not for the fossil fuel industry's concerted, multidecade campaign of deception, the U.S. and the world may have taken much more ambitious action to curb the worst effects of climate change,' she said. 'If the industry were paying its fair share toward the cost of climate damages and climate adaptation,' she added, 'we'd have more public resources and capacity to protect workers.'
Int'l Business Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Int'l Business Times
Automation-Driven Injuries Are Rewriting Missouri's Workers'-Comp Playbook
Manufacturers across the United States installed 44,303 new industrial robots in 2023, a 12 percent jump year-on-year, according to the International Federation of Robotics . Missouri is part of that surge: the state's factories employed 292,200 people in May 2024, up 1.5 percent from the previous year, even as production lines added cobots and six-axis arms, notes the Missouri Manufacturing Indicators brief . Automation might suggest safer workplaces, and national figures do show overall improvement. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics news release reports that non-fatal injuries in U.S. manufacturing fell to 355,800 cases in 2023, with a recordable-case rate of 2.8 per 100 full-time workers, down from 396,800 cases the year before. But dig deeper and a more uneven picture emerges. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's robotics portal warns that most robot accidents occur during non-routine tasks such as programming, maintenance, or setup - exactly when human technicians enter a machine's safety envelope. Warehouse automation offers a cautionary tale. An investigation highlighted by WIRED found that serious injuries were roughly twice as likely at Amazon facilities using robots compared with sites relying solely on human lesson for Missouri's plants: adding robots without redesigning workflows may swap one set of hazards for another. Liability Shifts Inside the Show-Me State Missouri's workers'-comp apparatus is already absorbing the shock. Claims against the state's Second Injury Fund climbed from 2,787 in 2021 to 3,034 in 2024, according to the Division of Workers' Compensation Annual Report .Attorneys say a growing share stems from automation mishaps - crush injuries during lock-out lapses, ergonomic damage from accelerated line speeds, and tool-changer malfunctions that strike maintenance crews. "Robots don't fatigue, but the people servicing them do," explains Phil Lawson, a Springfield-based safety consultant. "Compress cycle times by 20 percent and the human margin for error all but disappears." If a grievously hurt technician sues a subcontractor or OEM, they will likely call a Kansas City Personal Injury Lawyer , raising the stakes for manufacturers that assumed workers'-comp alone would shield them from civil exposure. What It Means for Carriers - and Premiums For insurers, the actuarial math is shifting. Non-routine maintenance accidents tend to generate payouts far larger than classic slip-and-strain cases because they often involve amputation or de-gloving injuries with lifelong wage-loss components. One regional underwriter says premiums for fully automated lines "are starting to track closer to meat-packing than to traditional assembly." Nationally, the National Council on Compensation Insurance has begun adding machine-specific risk modifiers - robot density, cycle velocity, maintenance intervals - to its Atlas data set, hinting at a future where underwriting looks as much at a plant's firmware logs as at its payroll tables. Emily Warren, a broker with Gallagher in St. Louis, notes that "clients running force-limited cobots gain credits, but those with legacy industrial arms inside tight cages are being debited." Engineering Safer Cobots - and Safer Contracts Technology offers partial remedies. New collaborative robots ship with torque-limited joints and computer vision that pauses motion when a human limb intrudes. Yet Saeed Gupta, R&D director for a Springfield auto-parts supplier, says culture matters more than sensors. "Our near-miss reports dropped 40 percent after we rewrote the maintenance SOP to force a dual-key lock-out and retrained every tech," he recalls. Legal paperwork is evolving in tandem. Original-equipment manufacturers now demand indemnity clauses that flow down to systems integrators, while carriers want third-party safety audits before binding policies. Plant counsel Angela Ritter urges manufacturers to align warranties with ANSI/RIA R15.06 standards and to store digital proof of every software patch: "If an injury occurs during a firmware rollback and you can't show chain of custody, plaintiffs will label it negligence." The Road Ahead Automation is not slowing. The IFR's 2024 World Robotics report shows the global average robot density reached 162 units per 10,000 employees in 2023, more than double the level seven years earlier. IFR International Federation of Robotics As Missouri's factories race toward higher throughput, stakeholders must decide whether to treat safety as an afterthought or as core infrastructure. The state's modest employment gains prove that humans remain central to production even in highly automated plants. Yet injury severity is rising in the edge cases - the midnight maintenance cycle, the hurried software patch - where human and machine overlap. Without a holistic approach that blends engineering controls, rigorous training, airtight documentation and forward-looking insurance, Missouri manufacturers may discover that the ultimate test of their automation strategy occurs not on the factory floor but in the courtroom.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
After Toxic Fire and Public Outcry, BioLab to Shut Down
BioLab will not resume manufacturing at its Conyers facility, the company announced Thursday, following a massive chemical fire last September that sent toxic smoke across metro Atlanta. 'After taking steps to meet customer needs through alternative production, and in considering our future business needs carefully, we have made the difficult decision to not restart manufacturing at the Conyers plant,' the company said in a statement. BioLab added that it has completed remediation efforts at the fire-damaged site but will continue operating its nearby distribution center to ship products made elsewhere. The shuttering of the facility is a victory for environmental justice advocates in Rockdale County who had been engaging in a pressure campaign against the company, which has been cited for several environmental violations. Last year's fire in the predominantly Black city caused thousands of residents to evacuate their homes, while many more were mandated to shelter in place for days. The incident — reportedly caused by a water-reactive chemical becoming wet due to a malfunctioning sprinkler — also caused chemicals to drift into the metro-Atlanta area. The ordeal is now the center of multiple lawsuits. The U.S. Department of Labor cited BioLab on April 7 for four serious and two 'other-than-serious' violations tied to the chemical fire. The department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration found in its investigation of the facility that improperly stored hazardous chemicals caused the fire, thus proposing that the company pay $61,473 in penalties. The Committee to Protect Rockdale, formerly named the Shutdown Bio-Lab Coalition, said in a statement Friday that the closure is a 'good first step towards accountability' and are calling on local officials to continue to remediate the fallout of the fire. 'The announcement comes after months of continuous pressure from community members, environmental justice organizations, and public health experts. Along with the public health research, the Committee is particularly concerned about an apparent lack of any chemical safety plan on the part of Rockdale County — despite multiple incidents involving just this one company over the last twenty years,' the advocacy group wrote. The group is also asking the county Board of Commissioners to deny any future business license renewal applications from BioLab's parent company, KIK Consumer Products. 'Put simply: we don't want to wake up in a year to find out that the company has quietly restarted production. We want the Commission to leave no doubt,' the coalition wrote. The post After Toxic Fire and Public Outcry, BioLab to Shut Down appeared first on Capital B News - Atlanta.
