Asbestos victims speak out

Today's post was shared by Linda Reinstein and comes from blog.saferchemicals.org

By Linda Reinstein, Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization "Out of the hottest fire comes the strongest steel." Chinese Proverb The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), the largest independent asbestos victims’ organization in the U.S., is pleased to join other NGOs in the SaferChemicals, Healthy Family coalition’s mission to reform the Toxic SubstancesControl Act (TSCA), the principal federal law governing the use and safety of the thousands of chemicals we are exposed to in our everyday lives. TSCA was passed more than 30years ago and is grossly out of date.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...

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What we know about football and repetitive brain trauma

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Brain tissue images, with tau protein in brown. The brain on the left is from a normal subject, the brain in the middle is from a former football player, and the brain on the right is from a former boxer.Courtesy of the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. League of Denial, a PBS Frontline documentary about the NFL's response (or lack thereof) to concussions and long-term brain injuries among its players, airs tonight. The investigation attempts to hash out what the league really knew about player safety while it downplayed the ill effects the sport has on its athletes. But what exactly are those effects, and what about them made thousands of former players sue the NFL over their injuries? While the symptoms of a concussion—dizziness, vomiting, memory loss—can be felt immediately, the long-term impacts of repeated brain trauma have been harder to study. Research points to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, as one of the major outcomes. CTE is caused by a buildup of tau, a protein that strangles brain cells and degenerates brain tissue, which is caused by repetitive brain trauma like the hits football players endure. This leads to depression, increased aggression, lack of impulse control, and eventually dementia, which may not manifest until years or even decades after the brain injuries took place. While CTE can only be definitively identified after a patient dies, a pilot study at the University of...

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Lawsuit claims chemical spill at Armstrong caused worker's neurological disorder

Today's post is sahred from  inpews.com

Sandra Cooper remembers the exact date her life started to turn upside down: Sept. 25, 2003. She'd gotten home from her job as an art teacher at Garden Spot High School around 4 p.m. that day. Her husband, Gene, who was on shift work at Armstrong World Industries floor plant, arrived home a short time later. She heard him coming. "I could hear the coughing even before he came up the sidewalk," Sandra Cooper said. "I've never heard anybody cough like that." His eyes were watering, he had a blinding headache and he was screaming in between hacks. There'd been a spill at work, he told his wife. Chemicals. He had to help clean it up.

Social Security raise to be among lowest in years

Social Security payments are tightly kinked to workers' compensation disability payments. When there are increases in benefits, some "reverse offset" states are liberal in passing along the adjustments to injured workers'. The State of New Jersey does NOT pass along the benefit increase and the workers' compensation insurance company does NOT increase the disability award payment to the injured workers. Today's post is shared from the dallasnews.org.

For the second straight year, millions of Social Security recipients, disabled veterans and federal retirees can expect historically small increases in their benefits come January. Preliminary figures suggest a benefit increase of roughly 1.5 percent, which would be among the smallest since automatic increases were adopted in 1975, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. Next year's raise will be small because consumer prices, as measured by the government, haven't gone up much in the past year. The exact size of the cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, won't be known until the Labor Department releases the inflation report for September. That was supposed to happen Wednesday, but the report was delayed indefinitely because of the partial government shutdown. The COLA is usually announced in October to give Social Security and other benefit programs time to adjust January payments. The Social Security Administration has given no indication that raises would be delayed because of the shutdown, but advocates for...

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The Soaring Cost of a Simple Breath

Cost in the US for pharmaceutical medications are a stressor for all including workers' compensation carriers. The blame is targeted to injured workers for causing the problem. In actuality it appears that big pharma maybe the problem. Perhaps Federal legislation should  allow cheaper rates for workers' compensation programs. Today's post is shared from nytimes.com.

The kitchen counter in the home of the Hayes family is scattered with the inhalers, sprays and bottles of pills that have allowed Hannah, 13, and her sister, Abby, 10, to excel at dance and gymnastics despite a horrific pollen season that has set off asthma attacks, leaving the girls struggling to breathe. Asthma — the most common chronic disease that affects Americans of all ages, about 40 million people — can usually be well controlled with drugs. But being able to afford prescription medications in the United States often requires top-notch insurance or plenty of disposable income, and time to hunt for deals and bargains. The arsenal of medicines in the Hayeses’ kitchen helps explain why. Pulmicort, a steroid inhaler, generally retails for over $175 in the United States, while pharmacists in Britain buy the identical product for about $20 and dispense it free of charge to asthma patients. Albuterol, one of the oldest asthma medicines, typically costs $50 to $100 per inhaler in the United States, but it was less than $15 a decade ago, before it was repatented. “The one that...

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Where's the New Jersey Conference?

Today's post was shared by WorkCompCentral and comes from daviddepaolo.blogspot.com

There's going to be lots of press surrounding the latest CompScope Benchmarks Study released by the Workers' Compensation Research Institute, as there always is, and should be. After all, the WCRI is one of the top research groups in our industry and the leadership and staff there work hard to provide as complete and unbiased data as possible. What is unique about the latest study of 16 states is one common theme - controlling costs has more to do with instituting price schedules for medical services than any other single factor. The premier example is Illinois, which, after reducing medical fees by 30% across the board on Sept. 1, 2011, saw all medical payments for claims with seven days of lost time declined by 5% for injuries arising in 2011 and evaluated as of 2012. Prices paid for non-hospital services dropped by 24% between 2010 and 2012. And Texas' claim costs, which ranked the highest in the nation prior to a set of reforms passed in 2005, are now typical of the states studied, according to WCRI , with medical costs per claim 17% lower than the 16-state median for 2009 claims evaluated in 2012. The Institute expects costs to decline further in Texas with the prescription drug formulary that became effective 9/1/2011. The state's claim cost growth rate is also slowing. Claims costs in Texas grew by between 3% and 6% per year between 2006 and 2011. Costs per claim for the 2010/2012 study period were $5,829 – slightly higher than the $5,354 median. The flip side is...

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Scientific improprieties in the asbestos industry funded research of McGill professor

Asbestos research, and its validity, is a much debated quesstion. Today's post is shared from Kathleen Ruff, RightOnCanada.ca Here is a powerful, detailed and damning scientific analysis of  improprieties in the research of Prof. J.C. McDonald on Quebec asbestos miners – The Past is Prologue, Universities in Service to Corporations: The McGill-QAMA Asbestos Example. This analysis was presented by Prof. David Egilman at the McGill asbestos conference on October 1, 2013. It is clearly presented and well worth reading. At the conference, no response was provided to the damning information that Prof. Egilman put forward. Prof. McDonald’s research was financed with one million dollars by the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association (QAMA). Prof. McDonald used his research to promote the use of chrysotile asbestos around the world. His research continues today to be used by the global asbestos industry to promote the sale and use of chrysotile asbestos. It was used, for example, by the global asbestos lobby at the May 2013 Rotterdam Convention conference to help defeat the listing of chrysotile asbestos as a hazardous substance. McGill continues to state that Prof. McDonald’s research was conducted “according to the rigorous scientific standards for which McGill is known”. McGill has not however addressed the detailed and damning evidence that Prof. Egilman has put forward. Prof. Egilman and other scientists have called on McGill to carry out an...

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