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(c) 2010-2026 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy -- Football Injuries

Football players' disease, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), is again in the news as evidence mounts causally connection contact sport head trauma to the illnesses. 

The study included 35 former NFL (National Football League) players and revealed that 34 had CTE before their death. A class action lawsuit is pending by the NFL players for head trauma injuries.

"CTE is clinically associated with symptoms of irritability, impulsivity, aggression, depression, short-term memory loss and heightened suicidality that usually begin 8–10 years after experiencing repetitive mildtraumatic brain injury (McKee et al., 2009). With advancing disease, more severe neurological changes develop that include dementia, gait and speech abnormalities and parkinsonism. In late stages, CTE may be clinically mistaken for Alzheimer’s disease or frontotemporal dementia (Gavett et al., 2010, 2011). A subset of cases with CTE is associated with motor neuron disease (MND) (McKee et al., 2010)."

Read the complete research article: The spectrum of disease in chronic traumatic encephalopathy 10.1093/brain/aws307


Read more about "football player injuries"
Apr 19, 2010
Football, the sport of humans clashing heads together, is now subject to a growing wave of workers' compensation claims for dementia. Recent studies have shown that football players have suffered head injuries as a result of ...
Mar 07, 2011
A Maryland Court of Appeals has awarded workers' compensation benefits to Tom Tupa, a Washington Redskins football payer. He was injured while warming-up for a football game to be played at FedEx Field in Landover, ...
Nov 20, 2011
Wayne Hills varsity football coach Chris Olsen, proving that winning games is more important to him than teaching life lessons, defended nine players charged in the brutal beating of two Wayne Valley students. Actually, Olsen ...
Sep 23, 2011
Most people know that football is dangerous. We see reports of NFL players with every kind of gruesome injury imaginable. Even suicidal depression, it turns out, is a potential hazard of playing football. Of course playing in the ...

NIOSH Safety Video MOVE IT!

Move IT!
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has published a video to enchance trucker safety. The video, Move IT!, Covers rig move safety for truckers in the oil and gas fields. It helps make sense of the organized chaos that accompanies and rig move and highlights of easy ways to lower the risk of being injured or killed when moving to a new location.
The video is available on the Internet through streaming. Click here to view the video.

Hazards exist in the surface refinishing business

University of Iowa, College of Public health, recently reported the death of a bathtub refinishingt technician who died from the inhalation of paint stripper vapors.

In 2012, a 37-year-old female technician employed by a surface-refinishing business died from inhalation exposure to methylene chloride and methanol vapors while she used a chemical stripper to prep the surface of a bathtub for refinishing. The technician was working alone without respiratory protection or ventilation controls in a small bathroom of a rental apartment. When the technician did not pick up her children at the end of the day, her parents contacted her employer, who then called the apartment complex manager after determining the victim’s personal vehicle was still at the refinishing company’s parking lot.

The apartment complex manager went to the apartment unit where the employee had been working and called 911 upon finding the employee unresponsive, slumped over the bathtub. City Fire Department responders arrived within 4 minutes  of the 911 call. The apartment manager and first responders reported a strong chemical odor in the  second story apartment. There was an uncapped gallon can of Klean Strip Aircraft® Low Odor Paint  Remover (80-90% methylene chloride, 5-10% methanol) in the bathroom. The employee’s tools and knee pad were found in the tub, suggesting the employee had been kneeling and leaning over the tub wall to manually remove the loosened original bathtub finish coat.

The factors contributing to this lethal exposure include use of a highly concentrated methylene chloride chemical stripper having poor warning properties (“Low Odor”); working in a small room without local exhaust ventilation to remove chemical vapors or provide fresh air; and working without a respirator that could have protected the employee from exposure.

Read More about "occupational exposure"

Nov 23, 2012
"Odds ratios (ORs) were increased for the usual risk factors for breast cancer and, adjusting for these, risks increased with occupational exposure to several agents, and were highest for exposures occurring before age 36 .
Nov 26, 2012
"Odds ratios (ORs) were increased for the usual risk factors for breast cancer and, adjusting for these, risks increased with occupational exposure to several agents, and were highest for exposures occurring before age 36 .
May 24, 2012
While focus has been on environmental concerns with the advent of fracking, a process to release oil and gas, a new concern has emerged over the potential occupational exposure to silica by workers who are involved in the ...
May 29, 2010
"Odds ratios (ORs) were increased for the usual risk factors for breast cancer and, adjusting for these, risks increased with occupational exposure to several agents, and were highest for exposures occurring before age 36 ...

Why Injured Workers Should Deactivate Their Social Media Accounts


Your private photos could be used against you by insurance companies.

Today's post comes from guest author Nathan Reckman from Paul McAndrew Law Firm.

Recently, it seems as though everyone is connected through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These tools have become a great way to keep in touch with friends and family scattered all over the world. Unfortunately, the information you or your connections post on your social networking sites can cause your workers’ compensation claim to be denied.
The Commission denied further benefits in part based on pictures obtained from Zack’s MySpace and Facebook pages.
For example, Zack Clement suffered a hernia when a refrigerator fell on him while he was working at a warehouse in Arkansas. After undergoing three surgeries and receiving work comp benefits for a year, Zack took his case back to the Arkansas Compensation Commission to get an extension of his benefits. The Commission denied further benefits in part based on pictures obtained from Zack’s MySpace and Facebook pages. The Arkansas Court of Appeals upheld the Commission’s decision, noting Zack’s claims of excruciating pain were inconsistent with the pictures of Zack drinking and partying.

In Iowa, the Workers’ Compensation Commission has also relied on Facebook posts to deny an injured worker benefits. Jody McCarthy had a debilitating back condition that she claimed was aggravated by her work. The deputy commissioner noted that

Sunday, December 2, 2012

The Hidden Cost of Jobs - Selling Fear

At great economic cost to taxpayers, governmental entities have desperately attempted to save jobs during the economic depression of our generation. The hidden costs to save jobs has been revealed in a story and database appearing in the NY Times today. The gamble in many jurisdictions just didn't payoff and now the taxpayers are subsidizing the costs.

"Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, creating a high-stakes bazaar where they pit local officials against one another to get the most lucrative packages. States compete with other states, cities compete with surrounding suburbs, and even small towns have entered the race with the goal of defeating their neighbors."



Likewise, states have targeted workers' compensation insurance as a competitive giveaway incentive to industry, adding insult to injury for disabled workers, as a trade-off cost in order to save jobs. This has been an unfortunate experiment and has resulted in an unfortunately emsaculation of the entire workers' compensation benefit programs. The "giveaway," like the other governmental incentive efforts, has created more losers than winners, and and decimated workers' compensation.

....
Jon L.Gelman of Wayne NJ, helping injured workers and their families for over 4 decades, is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson).  

Read more about the "recession" and workers' compensation

Feb 23, 2009
The present economic downturn has been compared to the Great Depression of the 1930's or the recession of the 1980's. The factors that existed during those financial cycles need to be compared to the present political and ...
Nov 06, 2009
Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 8.2 million, and the unemployment rate has grown by 5.3 percentage points." "Among the marginally attached, there were ...
Jul 21, 2009
Compounding that predicament is the fact that the recession has eliminated 6.5 million jobs since 2007. Both higher levels of unemployment and a reduction in salary increases impact have a fiscal impact of the workers' ...
May 29, 2012
The Dewey & LeBoeuf bankruptcy was a long time coming as the firm simply failed to curtail its spending and partner dividends when clients were pulling back in the face of the recession. So I don't see Dewey & LeBoeuf as ...

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Hospital Controlled Physician Access and Workers' Compensation

As hospital consolidation of physician practices by acquisition continues, the question of the impact on control of the cost workers' compensation medical delivery remains uncertain.

Hospitals, supported by private equity, are now buying physician practices at a greater pace than ever before making choices for physician care more limited and at a higher cost. The New York Times reports that physicians who sell their practices hospitals find that they are under pressure to meet economic challenges of hospital targeted fees and are restricted in the referral of patients.

"....the consolidation of health care may be coming at a hefty price. By one estimate, under its current reimbursement system, Medicare is paying in excess of a billion dollars a year more for the same services because hospitals, citing higher overall costs, can charge more when the doctors work for them. Laser eye surgery, for example, can cost $738 when performed by a hospital-employed doctor, compared with $389 when done by an unaffiliated doctor, according to national estimates by the independent Congressional panel that oversees Medicare. An echocardiogram can cost about twice as much in a hospital: $319, versus $143 in a doctor’s office."

Read the complete article:  A Hospital War Reflects a Bind for Doctors in the U.S.

Read more about "medical Costs" and workers' compensation

Nov 01, 2012
Planned changes by Mitt Romney to Medicare and Medicaid will have a dire effect on the regulations of the future cost of workers' compensation medical treatment. Proposed changes to the Federal program will indirectly ...
Nov 22, 2012
A report issued by NCCI concludes that medical costs in Workers' Compensation were higher in some instances than in Group Health Plans. The main findings were: For comparable injuries, when WC pays higher prices than ...
Nov 15, 2012
“While the average medical cost for a workers compensation claim is approximately $6,000, the medical cost of an individual claim can be a few hundred dollars or millions of dollars. In 2010, an NCCI study found that claims ...
Nov 29, 2012
The perpetual cost generator that continues to rage out of control in workers' compensation programs is the medical component. Medical costs are crashing the system to failure across the country, with no hope in sight for ...



FAA proposes policy to improve flight attendant workplace safety

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration, working with the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, today proposed a new policy for addressing flight attendant workplace safety.

While the FAA's aviation safety regulations take precedence, the agency is proposing that OSHA be able to enforce certain occupational safety and health standards currently not covered by FAA oversight.

"Safety is our highest priority and that certainly extends to those who work in the transportation industry," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "Under this proposal, flight attendants would, for the first time, be able to report workplace injury and illness complaints to OSHA for response and investigation."

"The policy announced today with the FAA will not only enhance the health and safety of flight attendants by connecting them directly with OSHA but will, by extension, improve the flying experience of millions of airline passengers," said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis.

Flight attendant workplace issues could include things such as exposure to noise and bloodborne pathogens, and access to information on hazardous chemicals. The FAA and OSHA will continue to work to identify any additional conditions where OSHA requirements could apply. They will also develop procedures to ensure that OSHA does not apply any requirements that could affect aviation safety.

"Flight attendants contribute to the safe operation of every flight each day," said acting FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. "This proposed policy is an important step toward establishing procedures for resolving flight attendant workplace health and safety concerns."

"We look forward to working with the FAA and the airlines to assure the protection of flight attendants," said Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health.

Through the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, Congress required the FAA to develop a policy statement to outline the circumstances in which OSHA requirements could apply to crewmembers while they are working on aircraft.

The policy notice was sent to the Federal Register today and is currently available at http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/ashp. The 30-day comment period begins when the policy notice is published in the Federal Register.


More about "flight attendants" and workers' compensation
Sep 16, 2010
A major global legal precedent has been established with an Australian flight attendant winning damages for injury from exposure to aircraft air contaminated by oil fumes and smoke. The problem of aircraft cabin air becoming ...
Mar 26, 2010
These studies have involved mainly nurses and flight attendants. The studies are consistent with animal studies that demonstrate that constant light, dim light at night, or simulated chronic jet lag can substantially increase ...
Jul 25, 2012
These studies have involved mainly nurses and flight attendants. The studies are consistent with animal studies that demonstrate that constant light, dim light at night, or simulated chronic jet lag can substantially increase .