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Showing posts with label lead poisoning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lead poisoning. Show all posts

Monday, July 29, 2019

U.S. Department of Labor Investigation Finds New Jersey Contractor Exposed Employees to Lead and Other Hazards at Pennsylvania Worksite


The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited Scot Christopher Rule LLC for exposing workers to lead and other workplace hazards as the company renovated and remodeled a worksite in Easton, Pennsylvania. The company faces $104,637 in proposed penalties.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Lead: Bringing it Home From Work

NIOSH reports that homes may be contaminated by toxic substances such as lead when employees bring home the contaminates. Bystander exposure occurs when employees bring home toxic substances on their bodies, clothing or other objects. Lead affects the developing nervous system of children, and no safe blood lead level (BLL) in children has been identified:

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Ruling in California case may prompt new lawsuits over lead paint

The recent $1.1 Billion judgment against the lead paint  companies in California for creating a public nuisance may have widespread impact across the nation. Workers' hired to implement the remediation effort will have to be adequately educated concerning safety procedure to avoid lead poisoning. The today's post is share from kansascity.com  .

Paint makers could face a surge of lawsuits after a California state court judge ordered three companies to pay $1.1 billion to help government agencies get rid of lead from an estimated 5 million homes in the state.
The ruling, while preliminary, was a rare loss for an industry that had turned back some 50 lawsuits filed nationwide over the last 25 years by public agencies seeking billions of dollars to remove lead-based paint from homes built before the federal government banned the product from the U.S. market in 1987.
"The California ruling is certainly a significant development," said David Logan, a class action expert and dean of Roger Williams University Law in Rhode Island. "If it gets upheld, it will open a new path to victory for public agencies."
Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform, predicted "a surge of frivolous lawsuits" because of Monday's ruling, which the industry plans to appeal.
Exposure to lead is linked to learning disabilities and other health problems, especially among poor children living in older dwellings. The Centers for Disease Control...
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Friday, October 25, 2013

U.S. National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week Goes Global

Today's post was shared by US EPA News and comes from yosemite.epa.gov


he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are partnering with the Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint, to announce the Lead Poisoning Prevention Week of Action. 

This is the first time National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week will be recognized internationally. More than 35 countries from across the world will take action and hold public awareness activities during this week.“This year’s theme, ‘Lead-Free Kids for a Healthy Future,’ underscores the importance of testing your home for lead and understanding how to prevent harmful exposures. 

Given that lead impacts children around the world, we are pleased to help National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week go global this year,” said Jim Jones, EPA’s assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “Joining with other countries to raise awareness about protecting children from the harmful exposure to lead will have a long-term positive effect on the health of children worldwide.” 

This year, the partners will work to raise awareness about lead paint poisoning worldwide and the need to eliminate lead in paint. The...
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Thursday, October 17, 2013

This Is Your Brain on Toxins

The need for regulation and responsibility is the focus of this very interesting article that appears in The New York Times today. Today's post is shared from nytimes.org

“Lead helps to guard your health.”

That was the marketing line that the former National Lead Company used decades ago to sell lead-based household paints. Yet we now know that lead was poisoning millions of children and permanently damaging their brains. Tens of thousands of children died, and countless millions were left mentally impaired.

One boy, Sam, born in Milwaukee in 1990, “thrived as a baby,” according to his medical record. But then, as a toddler, he began to chew on lead paint or suck on fingers with lead dust, and his blood showed soaring lead levels.

Sam’s family moved homes, but it was no use. At age 3, he was hospitalized for five days because of lead poisoning, and in kindergarten his teachers noticed that he had speech problems. He struggled through school, and doctors concluded that he had “permanent and irreversible” deficiencies in brain function.

Sam’s story appears in “Lead Wars,” a book by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner published this year that chronicles the monstrous irresponsibility of companies in the lead industry over the course of the 20th century. Eventually, over industry protests, came regulation and the removal of lead from gasoline. As a result, lead levels of American children have declined 90 percent...
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Monday, September 2, 2013

Lead Paint Makers Could Face The Same Fate As Big Tobacco

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.huffingtonpost.com


A lawsuit in California that seeks some $1 billion from former lead paint manufacturers is far from the first attempt to hold the industry liable for decades of poisoning children and leaving lingering contamination.

But experts such as Richard Rabin -- who directed a lead poisoning registry at the Massachusetts Department of Labor for over 20 years -- think the case just might be the first to finally succeed, marking the end of a long losing streak.

"My ideal hope is something along the lines of what happened with tobacco," said Rabin, who initiated the inaugural trial against the lead paint industry more than 25 years ago.
"It's gone on and on and on," he said of lead litigation, even as research uncovering lead's dangers, "keeps coming and coming."

After fending off lawsuits since the 1950s, the tables eventually turned on big tobacco, forcing the industry to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars in the late 1990s. At that point, it had become common knowledge that the industry was well aware of the addictive qualities and the health hazards of their products.

In 1987, with nearly a century of documented dangers accumulated on childhood lead poisoning, a lawsuit -- spurred by Rabin -- was filed on behalf of a Boston girl exposed to lead paint as a toddler.

"I want to be a lawyer, but I don't think I can do the studying,'' Monica Santiago told The New York Times in 1988, then 15 years old. ''In school they teach me, but I forget. The kids call me dumb. Sometimes when I do...
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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Lead Paint - Industry Has Yet to Meet Its Responsibility

Bill Moyers recently interviewed Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, public health historians and authors of several books, including Lead Wars, about the politics of toxic substances. 


"And the industry said over 50 years ago that this was an insoluble problem, it was a problem of, caused by slums, it was a problem caused by who they called uneducable parents. And so that they washed their hands of the problem and they have still washed their hands of the problem. Parents have played, excuse me, paid the cost of lead poisoning. Landlords have even paid the cost of lead poisoning. The government has paid the cost of lead poisoning. The industry has not paid to get that lead off the walls so future generations of children can be protected." Gerald Markowitz

Click here to see the entire video recording of the program: "Toxic Disinformation" aired on PBS May 17, 2013.

California Public Entity Lead Paint Lawsuit Trial Starts (Bloomberg 7.15.13)