“Alone in the darkness . . . the only sound is the pulsing of your heart as the searing heat slowly boils you alive . . . It was reported to be the worst coal mine accident in history. The families of missing miners begged for help but it was decided that a rescue was too dangerous. The miners were left entombed deep underground.”
So begins the Web pitch for the new “Miner’s Revenge” maze, one of 10 haunted attractions meant to tantalize and terrorize visitors during “Halloween Haunt” at Kings Dominion amusement park in the rolling Virginia countryside about 70 miles south of Washington. The advertisement continues: “Lamps at their sides and pick-axes in their hands they are searching for the men who left them to die . . . waiting to exact their revenge.” I haven’t gone through the maze, and I don’t intend to, although Kings Dominion spokesman Gene Petriello offered me a free pass. That’s because Miner’s Revenge hits a little too close to home for me. From 2010 to 2012, I spent a good bit of time researching a real coal-mine disaster for a book published last year: the massive April 5, 2010, underground blast at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine near Montcoal in southern West Virginia. Twenty-nine miners died in what was the worst U.S. coal-mine disaster in 40 years. Three investigations have found that the incident was the result of Massey’s... |
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(c) 2010-2024 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.
Showing posts with label Linda Reinstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linda Reinstein. Show all posts
Monday, October 28, 2013
Miners’ deaths aren’t a theme-park thrill
Friday, October 25, 2013
That time Big Tobacco sold asbestos as the "Greatest Health Protection in Cigarette History"
Smokers puffed their way through 13 billion Kents between March 1952 and May 1956, when Lorillard changed the filter design. Six decades later, the legal fallout continues—just last month, a Florida jury awarded more than $3.5 million in damages to a former Kent smoker stricken with mesothelioma, an extremely rare and deadly asbestos-related cancer that typically shows up decades after the initial exposures. Lorillard and Hollingsworth & Vose, the company that supplied the asbestos filter material, face numerous claims from mesothelioma sufferers, both factory workers who produced the cigarettes or filter material and former smokers who say they inhaled the microscopic fibers. (The companies insist that hardly any fibers escaped.) There's been a burst of new lawsuits in the last few years, according to SEC filings, possibly because a mesothelioma patient these days is almost certain to be asked by his doctor or lawyer, "Did you happen to smoke Kents in the 1950s?" While there's no official count, records and interviews suggest that mesothelioma claims since the 1980s number in the low hundreds at least. ... |
Related articles
- Think asbestos is banned in the US? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Mesothelioma Asbestos Cancer Claims the Life of Ed Lauter, Prolific Actor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Can Take Your Breath Away, Forever (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Mesothelioma: Two Groundbreaking Trials Into Treatments for Asbestos-Related Cancer (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- U.S. asbestos imports condemned by health experts, activists (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos victims speak out (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Richland: EPA fines DOE $115,000 over Hanford asbestos issue | Hanford news | Tri-CityHerald.com
The Department of Energy is being fined $115,000 for violations related to asbestos management after demolishing Hanford nuclear reservation buildings in 2009 and 2010.
The EPA inspector general issued an early-warning report in December 2011, saying that removal of asbestos in certain ways at Hanford and elsewhere potentially threatened health and safety. The Hanford violations were discovered as a result of an EPA inspection and evaluation of compliance at Hanford with asbestos management rules that followed in 2012. In March DOE and its regulators agreed to restrict the use of heavy equipment to demolish buildings that still have asbestos out of concern for worker health. |
Related articles
- Think asbestos is banned in the US? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Mesothelioma Asbestos Cancer Claims the Life of Ed Lauter, Prolific Actor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization New Infographic: Irrefutable Facts About Asbestos (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- U.S. asbestos imports condemned by health experts, activists (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- ADAO Special Report "The USA Asbestos Toxic Trade Continues" (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Can Take Your Breath Away, Forever (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Ronald Motley's Legacy Continues
Earlier this year, Ronald Motley, a South Carolina lawyer, who spearheaded lawsuits against big tobacco and asbestos industries passed away at the age of 68. Mr. Motley was a one-of-a-kind attorney and tireless advocate who, for so many decades, made such a huge difference in the lives of asbestos victims and their families. Today, his legacy proves to continue to have a lasting impact. Today, on what would have been Motley Rice LLC co-founder Ronald Motley’s 69th birthday, it was announced that the firm placed on The National Law Journal’s 2013 Plaintiff’s Hot List. ADAO will continue to honor Mr. Motley’s legacy and his firm’s commitment to truth and justice as we continue our work to help asbestos victims in the United States, Canada, and the world. Together, change is possible. Linda Reinstein |
Related articles
- Think asbestos is banned in the US? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization New Infographic: Irrefutable Facts About Asbestos (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- ADAO Special Report "The USA Asbestos Toxic Trade Continues" (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- U.S. asbestos imports condemned by health experts, activists (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos victims speak out (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Mesothelioma Asbestos Cancer Claims the Life of Ed Lauter, Prolific Actor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Can Take Your Breath Away, Forever (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Mesothelioma, Other Cancers Higher Among Firefighters
Mesothelioma, Other Cancers Higher Among Firefighters
A new study involving 30,000 firefighters strengthens the scientific evidence for a relation between firefighting and cancer, the researchers said.
The findings by NIOSH researchers and colleagues were reported online Oct. 14 by the peer-reviewed journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The article is available at http://oem.bmj.com/content/early/2013/10/14/oemed-2013-101662.full. The researchers found that cancers of the respiratory, digestive, and urinary systems accounted mostly for the higher rates of cancer in the study population. The firefighters had a rate of mesothelioma two times greater than the rate in the U.S. population as a whole. The researchers said it was likely that the findings were associated with exposure to asbestos, and NIOSH noted this is the first study ever to identify an excess of mesothelioma in U.S. firefighters. The study analyzed cancers and cancer deaths through 2009 among 29,993 firefighters from the Chicago,... |
Related articles
- Asbestos Can Take Your Breath Away, Forever (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Statement on malignant mesothelioma in the United Kingdom (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- U.S. asbestos imports condemned by health experts, activists (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Think asbestos is banned in the US? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- More than 1,100 have cancer after 9/11 (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos victims speak out (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Mesothelioma Asbestos Cancer Claims the Life of Ed Lauter, Prolific Actor
The tragic loss of well-known actor Ed Lauter to mesothelioma, an asbestos-caused cancer, reverberated around the world. Mesothelioma strikes celebrities like Lauter, Steve McQueen and Warren Zevon, but also countless others whose suffering, as the disease chokes off their ability to breathe, is witnessed only by their heartbroken families. In the U.S. alone, 10,000 people die each year of this completely preventable disease. The asbestos victim of 2013 is often someone who hugged Daddy when he came home from work with asbestos on his clothes, or did her husband’s asbestos-covered laundry. Why, then, are we still importing this toxin into the U.S.? Why don’t we have an asbestos ban? When will we protect our citizens from this tragedy? “One more victim of asbestos to mourn,” writes Fernanda Giannasi and ABREA’s family from Brazil. “Asbestos doesn´t only kill anonymous citizens and simple workers who are always paying with their lives for the common wealth. Today the world pays tribute to Ed Lauter, a celebrity from Hollywood who was murdered cowardly by a silent and insidious carcinogen which is currently very close to all of us and sometimes an invisible, subtle dust in our roofs, walls, heating.” As a mesothelioma widow, my heart goes out to the Lauter family. Our community includes countless Meso Warriors like Mr. Lauter... |
Related articles
- Mesothelioma, Other Cancers Higher Among Firefighters (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Think asbestos is banned in the US? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- ADAO Special Report "The USA Asbestos Toxic Trade Continues" (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Can Take Your Breath Away, Forever (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- U.S. asbestos imports condemned by health experts, activists (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization New Infographic: Irrefutable Facts About Asbestos (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
A Global Asbestos Battle Touches Yale
What is hotly contested about the Swiss industrialist-turned-philanthropist and author is whether he's rightly portrayed as a hero or a villain. And Yale University, which gave Schmidheiny an honorary doctorate in 1996, is caught in the middle — with that degree as a global political football. In 1976, when he was 29 years old, Schmidheiny took over the Swiss Eternit Group, a business founded by his grandfather. The company had become one of Europe's largest asbestos firms, making cement products girded with the deadly mineral throughout the continent and in Brazil. Schmidheiny was 29 and a newly minted lawyer. Within 10 years, the Italian arm of the business, with five factories, closed in bankruptcy. After Eternit, Schmidheiny, born rich and growing richer through ties to Switzerland's best known companies, turned his attention to ecologically sustainable development. He created a charity and endowed it with more than $1 billion, launched a nonprofit foundation that operates in 17 Latin American countries and founded a global business group dedicated to private-sector environmentalism. That was the Stephan Schmidheiny that Yale feted, and not just with an honorary degree. In 2000, Schmidheiny was a keynote speaker at the centennial of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, which... |
Related articles
- Mesothelioma Asbestos Cancer Claims the Life of Ed Lauter, Prolific Actor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Think asbestos is banned in the US? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- ADAO Special Report "The USA Asbestos Toxic Trade Continues" (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- U.S. asbestos imports condemned by health experts, activists (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Can Take Your Breath Away, Forever (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Scientific improprieties in the asbestos industry funded research of McGill professor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization New Infographic: Irrefutable Facts About Asbestos
In 2011, ADAO launched our first infographic “Beware of the Silent Killer“, with the help of Piktochart we were able to create a compelling visual story. We were thrilled to take complex information about asbestos disease and transform it into a visual that everyone could understand. It’s 2013, and today we are launching our second infographic campaign: “Irrefutable Facts About Asbestos.” Please take a look and share this infographic with your social networks. Why do infographics work? Recently, Social Media Chimps gave six reasons:
To our Twitter followers we encourage you to share the Infographic and tweet out a fact. FACT: #Asbestos is still legal and lethal in the US. http://bit.ly/18JsCQv #ADAO FACT: #Asbestos is a known carcinogen. http://bit.ly/18JsCQv #ADAO FACT: #Asbestos imports continue. http://bit.ly/18JsCQv #ADAO FACT: USA Hasn’t Banned #Asbestos http://bit.ly/18JsCQv #ADAO FACT: 30 Americans die every day from #asbestos-caused diseases http://bit.ly/18JsCQv #ADAO FACT: 10,000 Americans die from... |
Related articles
- U.S. asbestos imports condemned by health experts, activists (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos victims speak out (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Can Take Your Breath Away, Forever (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Mesothelioma: Two Groundbreaking Trials Into Treatments for Asbestos-Related Cancer (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries deny, delay asbestos, hazard claims, suits, insiders allege (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Scientific improprieties in the asbestos industry funded research of McGill professor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
ADAO Special Report “The USA Asbestos Toxic Trade Continues”
Presented at the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) Press Conference in Washington, D.C. on April 4, 2013Posted on April 9, 2013 Exposure to asbestos can cause mesothelioma and lung, gastrointestinal, laryngeal, and ovarian cancers, as well as non-malignant lung and pleural disorders. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) database statistics revealed that, from 1999 – 2013, the USA buried 43,351 Americans who died from mesothelioma and asbestosis – just two of the many diseases caused by asbestos. In response to this continued public health crisis, eighteen months ago, I began asking three questions:
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Related articles
- U.S. asbestos imports condemned by health experts, activists (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos victims speak out (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Asbestos Can Take Your Breath Away, Forever (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Mesothelioma: Two Groundbreaking Trials Into Treatments for Asbestos-Related Cancer (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries deny, delay asbestos, hazard claims, suits, insiders allege (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Scientific improprieties in the asbestos industry funded research of McGill professor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Monday, October 14, 2013
U.S. asbestos imports condemned by health experts, activists
The United States isn’t one of them. Last year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, 1,060 metric tons — more than 2.3 million pounds — came into the country, all of it from Brazil. “Based on current trends,” the USGS says, “U.S. asbestos consumption is likely to remain near the 1,000-ton level …” Public health experts and anti-asbestos activists find this distressing. Linda Reinstein, who lost her husband to mesothelioma, an especially virulent form of cancer tied to asbestos exposure, said she’s “appalled and disgusted that the United States still allows the importation of asbestos to meet so-called manufacturing needs. |
Asbestos Can Take Your Breath Away, Forever
Today's post was shared by Linda Reinstein and comes from blog.saferchemicals.org
The time is now for the Senate to unanimously support the passage of the Safe Chemicals Act (S.847). We need to do more to protect our children from BPAs, fire retardants and other dangerous toxins in our world. What many don’t realize is that asbestos is still legal and lethal in theUnited States, tragically impacting families. I know because it happened to us. I remember the day when my husband AlanAlan Was diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma as if it were yesterday. We had never heard of mesothelioma, and we were devastated when we learned that there is no cure. Our daughter was only ten years old when we began our arduous family battle to fight mesothelioma and work with Congress To ban asbestos. |
Asbestos victims speak out
By Linda Reinstein, Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization
"Out of the hottest fire comes the strongest steel." Chinese ProverbTSCA was passed more than 30years ago and is grossly out of date. ADAO has been a stakeholder in discussions with Congressional leadership since 2004. You can read my personal journey, and how I came to advocate for this issue here. As I Remind Congress,“History is a great teacher to those who listen.” Science And technology have made exponential advancements. As a mother and mesothelioma widow, I know the Safer Chemicals, Healthy FamilyFamily Coalition’s efforts will improve lives if Congress can draft and pass legislation to protect public health and our environment. I see hope on the horizon, but we have stalled. Bipartisan support is essential in getting a bill to the President’s desk, but we face a hurdle with the Chemical Safety Improvement Act (CSIA). ADAO opposes the current language of CSIA, due to deep concerns that the bill as currently written does not deliver meaningful reform to TSCA and does not adequately protect Americans from the worst... |
Related articles
- Think asbestos is banned in the US? (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Scientific improprieties in the asbestos industry funded research of McGill professor (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries deny, delay asbestos, hazard claims, suits, insiders allege (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Mesothelioma: Two Groundbreaking Trials Into Treatments for Asbestos-Related Cancer (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- A very particular crime - Hazards magazine (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- EPA Web Tool Expands Access to Scientific, Regulatory Information on Chemicals (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Statement on malignant mesothelioma in the United Kingdom (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
Friday, October 11, 2013
Think asbestos is banned in the US?
If there’s one reason we know our federal law governing chemicals doesn’t work, it’s asbestos. Despite popular belief, asbestos, one of the most harmful substances known, still isn’t banned in the United States. This week marks the 37th birthday of our primary federal law governing toxic chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). While most birthdays are a joyous occasion, we’re taking this opportunity to educate the public on just how flawed our federal chemical law is. Take for example asbestos. It’s one of the few substances that has a disease directly named after it (mesothelioma) and is widely regarded as a silent killer for many families. Top five asbestos facts:
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Related articles
- Mesothelioma: Two Groundbreaking Trials Into Treatments for Asbestos-Related Cancer (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries deny, delay asbestos, hazard claims, suits, insiders allege (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- A very particular crime - Hazards magazine (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Statement on malignant mesothelioma in the United Kingdom (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- EPA Web Tool Expands Access to Scientific, Regulatory Information on Chemicals (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
- Toxic Chemicals in Brazilian Blowout and Other Salon Products Increase Risk of Cancer (workers-compensation.blogspot.com)
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