Michael Bloomberg steered New York City through economic recession, a catastrophic hurricane and the aftermath of 9/11, but he may always be remembered, accurately or not, as the mayor who wanted to ban the Big Gulp. After 12 years, Bloomberg leaves office Dec. 31 with a unique record as a public health crusader who attacked cigarettes, artery-clogging fats and big sugary drinks with as much zeal as most mayors go after crack dens and graffiti. And while Bloomberg's audacious initiatives weren't uniformly successful, often leading to court challenges and criticisms he was turning New York into a "nanny state," experts say they helped reshape just how far a city government can go to protect people from an unhealthy lifestyle. "He has been a transformative leader," said Dr. Linda Fried, dean of Columbia University's school of public health. "He has created a model for how to improve a city's health." Coming into office as a billionaire businessman who made his fortune selling data to Wall Street, Bloomberg was accustomed to using hard, cold research to drive decisions, and it was an approach he used effectively on matters of public health. Bloomberg pushed to ban smoking in indoor public spaces and prohibit cigarette sales to anyone under 21. He got artificial trans-fat banned from restaurant food — an action that led fast food giants like McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts to change their recipes rather than lose access to the... |
Copyright
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Bloomberg Public Health Legacy Lauded In NYC
Sunday, September 28, 2014
New lab incidents fuel fear, safety concerns in Congress
Symbol for biohazard.(Photo: CDC) Scientists wearing space-suitlike protective gear searched for hours in May for a mouse — infected with a virus similar to Ebola — that had escaped inside Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, one of the federal government's highest-security research facilities, according to newly obtained incident reports that provide a window into the secretive world of bioterror lab accidents. During the same month at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, a lab worker suffered a cut while trying to round up escaped ferrets that had been infected with a deadly strain of avian influenza, records show. Four days later at Colorado State University's bioterrorism lab, a worker failed to ensure dangerous bacteria had been killed before shipping specimens — some of them still able to grow — to another lab where a worker unwittingly handled them without key protective gear. Nobody was sickened in the incidents and the mouse was caught the next day. Yet in the wake of serious lab mishaps with anthrax and bird flu at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that prompted an uproar and a Congressional hearing this summer, these additional incidents are further fueling bipartisan concern about lab safety. "As long as we keep having an ad hoc system of oversight in this country, we're going to keep seeing more and more incidents," said U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, the ranking... |
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Friday, December 10, 2021
Workers’ Compensation Benefits for Long COVID
Workers’ Compensation Benefits are available for those workers who have been exposed to COVID at work and contract disease and remain ill from Long COVID.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Five US Airports that Put Employees and Passengers At Risk For Environmental Tobacco Smoke
Secondhand Smoke Is Deadly |
Average air pollution levels from secondhand smoke directly outside designated smoking areas in airports are five times higher than levels in smoke-free airports, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study conducted in five large hub U.S. airports also showed that air pollution levels inside designated smoking areas were 23 times higher than levels in smoke-free airports. In the study, designated smoking areas in airports included restaurants, bars, and ventilated smoking rooms.
Five of the 29 largest airports in the United States allow smoking in designated areas that are accessible to the public. The airports that allow smoking include Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Denver International Airport, and Salt Lake City International Airport. More than 110 million passenger boardings—about 15 percent of all U.S. air travel—occurred at these five airports last year.
"The findings in today’s report further confirm that ventilated smoking rooms and designated smoking areas are not effective," said Tim McAfee, M.D., M.P.H., director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. "Prohibiting smoking in all indoor areas is the only effective way to fully eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke."
A 2006 Surgeon General’s Report concluded that there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Although smoking was banned on all U.S. domestic and international commercial airline flights through a series of federal laws adopted from 1987 to 2000, no federal policy requires airports to be smoke-free.
"Instead of going entirely smoke-free, five airports continue to allow smoking in restaurants, bars or ventilated smoking rooms. However, research shows that separating smokers from nonsmokers, cleaning the air and ventilating buildings cannot fully eliminate secondhand smoke exposure," said Brian King, Ph.D., an epidemiologist with CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health and co-author of the report. "People who spend time in, pass by, clean, or work near these rooms are at risk of exposure to secondhand smoke."
Secondhand smoke causes heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults and is a known cause of sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS, respiratory problems, ear infections, and asthma attacks in infants and children. Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can trigger acute cardiac events such as heart attack. Cigarette use kills an estimated 443,000 Americans each year, including 46,000 heart disease deaths and 3,400 lung cancer deaths among nonsmokers from exposure to secondhand smoke.
For an online version of this MMWR report, visit http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr. For quitting assistance, call 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669) or visit www.smokefree.gov. Also, visit www.BeTobaccoFree.gov for information on quitting and preventing children from using tobacco. For real stories of people who have quit successfully, visit http://www.cdc.gov/tips. For state-specific tobacco-related data, visit CDC's State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation System at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/statesystem.
Read More About "Secondhand" Environmental Smoke
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Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Healthcare Workers: Protect Yourselves!
Today's post was shared by Safe Healthy Workers and comes from www.cdc.gov
Healthcare workers may be at risk for exposure to vaccine-preventable diseases. Getting vaccinated is an important step to keep yourself, coworkers, patients, and family safe.
Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at risk for exposure to serious, and sometimes deadly, diseases. If you work directly with patients or handle material that could spread infection, you should get appropriate vaccines to reduce the chance that you will get or spread vaccine-preventable diseases. Protect yourself, your patients, and your family members. Make sure you are up-to-date with recommended vaccines.
The term "healthcare workers" includes physicians, nurses, emergency medical personnel, dental professionals and students, medical and nursing students, laboratory technicians, pharmacists, hospital volunteers, and administrative staff.
Recommended Vaccines for Healthcare Workers:
Hepatitis B VaccineIf you don't have documented evidence of a complete hepatitis B vaccine series, or if you don't have an up-to-date blood test that shows you are immune to hepatitis B (i.e., no serologic evidence of immunity or prior vaccination) then you should:
- Get the 3-dose series (dose #1 now, #2 in 1 month, #3 approximately 5 months after #2).
- Get anti-HBs serologic tested 1–2 months after dose #3.
Get 1 dose of influenza vaccine annually.
MMR (Measles, Mumps, & Rubella) VaccineIf you were born in 1957 or later and have not had the MMR vaccine, or if you don't have an up-to-date blood test...
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
A Nuclear Workers' Compensation Disaster
Historically The Federal government's role has been to rise to the occasion and walk further down a path to federalization. On a smaller scale than the potential consequences of the Japanesse debacle, the US was first in line in other mass disasters including: Beryllium workers, coal miners compensation, 9-11 Victims Compensation and subsequent Zadroga Fund, and the Gulf oil spill program. In the past the Feds have even prepared to help with H1N1 flu compensation and in the preparation of a Smallpox compensation program.
The Japanese model of delay and denial has proved ineffective. The victims of the Sumitomo Metal Mining uranium processing plant disaster in 1999 were summarily denied benefits for their ensuing radiation health problems.
While similar reactors in the US pose identical design problems, preparation is lacking in the US to provide an adequate response, and even integrate or utilize, the best of the state workers' compensation programs. Those systems are universally struggling to handle the delivery of benefits for occupational exposures. The Federal government has even ignored the implementation of legislation sponsored Senator Edward Markey (MA) for the prophylactic distribution of potassium iodine (KI) pills to those who are in a potential radius of exposure near nuclear reactor sites.
One would think that we would have learned from the Three Mile Island Diaster decades ago or Chernobyl (prediction of fatal cancers of 9,000 to 28,000 between 1986 and 2056). Even the warnings of leaks of similar nuclear reactors like Oyster Creek in NJ or Shoreham in NY, all close to major population centers, have not seemed to create a momentum of urgency.
Notoriously late to react in situations of latent disease has become the classic US policy. We have seen this repeated public health policy in other toxic exposures such as asbestos and tobacco. It is not that we didn't know, it is merely that the government just chose to ignore the public health issues. Unfortunately, this policy has compounded the problems for ailing workers' compensation systems, and it maybe too little and too late to prevent a meltdown of the entire system.
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Monday, July 6, 2020
Special Independence Day Event - Music and Experts - Veterans Administration
Special Independence Day Event
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Minimal Light Duty Doesn't Limit Temporary Disability Benefits
Soto v. Herr's Foods, Inc.
11-18325, decided September 7, 2012 by the Honorable Emille Cox, J.W.C.
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Thursday, May 28, 2020
Chairwoman Adams Opening Statement at Workforce Protections Subcommittee Hearing on Protecting Workers from COVID-19
Saturday, December 30, 2023
Top Blog Posts of 2023
It has been a busy year for the Workers' Compensation blog. This blog has had over 2 million views. Here is a list of the most popular posts in 2023.
Happy New Year!
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Vaccinating Workers In a Pandemic Maybe a Pain for Employers
The public as been asked to comment staring, Friday, October 26, 2007.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Neuroscience may offer hope to millions robbed of silence by tinnitus
Occupational and traumatic hearing loss claims usually have a "tinnitus component" in measurable disability as a compensable portion of the award. Today's post is shared from pbs.org . On Easter Sunday in 2008, the phantom noises in Robert De Mong’s head dropped in volume -- for about 15 minutes. For the first time in months, he experienced relief, enough at least to remember what silence was like. And then they returned, fierce as ever. It was six months earlier that the 66-year-old electrical engineer first awoke to a dissonant clamor in his head. There was a howling sound, a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard sound, “brain zaps” that hurt like a headache and a high frequency "tinkle" noise, like musicians hitting triangles in an orchestra. Many have since disappeared, but two especially stubborn noises remain. One he describes as monkeys banging on symbols. Another resembles frying eggs and the hissing of high voltage power lines. He hears those sounds every moment of every day. De Mong was diagnosed in 2007 with tinnitus, a condition that causes a phantom ringing, buzzing or roaring in the ears, perceived as external noise. When the sounds first appeared, they did so as if from a void, he said. No loud noise trauma had preceded the tinnitus, as it does for some sufferers -- it was suddenly just there. And the noises haunted him, robbed him of sleep and fueled a deep depression. He lost interest in his favorite hobby: tinkering with his ‘78 Trans Am and his two Corvettes. He stopped going into work. |
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
At Too Many Hospitals, a Revolving Door
Today's post was shared by The New Old Age and comes from newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com
Jessie Gruman can’t remember the number of times she’s been hospitalized for cancer. The list of the conditions she’s had over almost 40 years is daunting: from Hodgkin’s lymphoma to cancers of the cervix and lung.
But Ms. Gruman, 59, can’t forget her experience three years ago, when it was time to leave the hospital after having her stomach removed, a consequence of gastric cancer.
Ms. Gruman was alone; her husband was on his way to this hospital but hadn’t yet arrived. This is all she remembers a nurse saying before she was shown the door.
Here is a prescription for pain medication. Don’t drive if you take it. Call your surgeon if you have a temperature or are worried about anything. Go see your doctor in two weeks. Do you want a flu shot? I can give you one before you leave. If you need a wheel chair to take you to the door, I’ll call for one. If not, you can go home. Take care of yourself. You are going to do great!
What wasn’t communicated to Ms. Gruman: Here’s a number to call if you have any questions. Here’s the medical expert who’s in charge of your follow-up care and how to reach him or her. Here’s the plan for your care over the next month, and here’s the plan for the next six months.
Or this: You’re going to experience a lot of challenges when you get home. Here are the three or four concerns that should be your priorities. Here’s what your caregiver needs to know to...
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
The Perfect Pandemic Storm
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Ebola Sample Is Mishandled at C.D.C. Lab in Latest Error
A laboratory mistake at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta may have exposed a technician to the deadly Ebola virus, federal officials said on Wednesday. The technician will be monitored for signs of infection for 21 days, the incubation period of the disease. Word of the accident provoked concern and disbelief from some safety experts. Dangerous samples of anthrax and flu were similarly mishandled at the C.D.C. just months ago, eroding confidence in an agency that has long been one of the most respected research centers in the world. Other employees who entered the lab where the mistake occurred were being examined for possible exposure. There are fewer than a dozen, and so far it appears that none were infected, said Thomas Skinner, a C.D.C. spokesman. The samples were properly contained and never left the C.D.C. campus, so there is no risk to the public, officials said. The error occurred on Monday, when a high-security lab, working with Ebola virus from the epidemic in West Africa, sent samples that should have contained killed virus to another C.D.C. laboratory, down the hall. But the first lab sent the wrong samples — ones that may have contained the live virus. The second lab was not equipped to handle live Ebola. The technician there who worked with the samples wore gloves and a gown, but no face shield, and may have been exposed. The mixup was discovered on Tuesday, Dr. Stuart Nichol, chief of the C.D.C.’s Viral Special Pathogens... |
Thursday, September 15, 2022
US Supreme Court Asked to Review PREP Act Immunity
The US Supreme Court [SCOTUS] has been asked to review whether the PREP Act [The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act of 2005, 42 U.S.C. §§ 247d-6d, 247d-6e] pre-empts a claim for willful misconduct,
Sunday, January 18, 2015
The workplace has grown meaner. Democrats want to do something about that.
Today, President Obama is proposing that Congress pass the Healthy Families Act, a bill that has been introduced in prior Congresses which mandates that employers give workers paid sick leave. He’ll also sign an order giving federal workers paid time off for the birth or adoption of a child. Republicans will object, perhaps quite vociferously. As Democrats roll out an agenda to address inequality and win support from middle-class voters, this is an issue that highlights a fundamental philosophical difference between the parties, one that Democrats are hoping they can turn to their political advantage. First, some basic facts. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 39 percent of private sector workers get no paid sick leave, and the lower you go down the income scale, the less likely you are to get it. If you’re an executive you’ll get paid if you stay home with the flu, but if you’re an hourly fast-food worker you almost certainly won’t. That imposes all kinds of costs on both workers and companies, from spreading disease when people are forced to work when sick, to increasing turnover as people lose their jobs because of illness. This is yet another area where the United States stands alone among highly developed countries. Every one of our peer countries mandates that employers provide paid sick leave; in some cases the employer just has to pay for it, and in some cases taxes create a fund that pays people when they’re too sick to... |
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Monday, November 4, 2013
Roche to Pay Up to $548 Million for Antibiotic Against Superbug
Pharmaceutical costs are a major portion of the medical benefit delivery dollar. The economic costs for development and production are enormous for new pharmaceuticals. Government investment in costs of treatments as well as cures is essential. Today's post shared from businessweek.com reflects on the enormity of pharmaceutical costs. Roche Holding AG (ROG) agreed to pay as much as 500 million Swiss francs ($548 million) for the rights to an experimental antibiotic to target a drug-resistant“superbug” that is a leading cause of fatal bacterial infections in hospitals. Polyphor Ltd., the Allschwil, Switzerland-based developer of the antibiotic, will receive 35 million francs up front, and is eligible for further payments of as much as 465 million francs if the product meets development, regulatory and commercial goals, Roche said in an e-mailed statement today.Roche also will pay royalties on sales, the Basel, Switzerland-based company said. The treatment, known as POL7080, targets Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, a bacterium that causes one in 10 hospital-acquired infections in the U.S., according to figures from the U.S.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited by Roche.Bacteria increasingly are growing resistant to antibiotics,leading to 25,000 deaths a year in the European Union alone,according to EU statistics. “As the incidence of drug-resistant infections is creating an urgent demand for new therapeutic options, we look forward to adding this potentially important, targeted agent with a novel mechanism of action to our portfolio of innovative medicines,”said Janet Hammond, a Roche executive who oversees discovery of drugs for infectious diseases. Polyphor, a closely held company, also is developing drugs for use in stem cell transplantation and lung diseases. |
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Tuesday, May 29, 2018
1 in 3 swimming-related disease outbreaks occur at hotels
- Take the following steps to protect yourself and loved ones from germs when swimming in pools, soaking in hot tubs, or visiting water playgrounds:
- Don’t swim or let your kids swim if sick with diarrhea. If Crypto is the cause of diarrhea, wait until 2 weeks after diarrhea has stopped to go swimming.
- Check the pools, hot tubs, and water playground inspection scores.
- Before getting in the water, use a test strip from your local retailer or pool supply store to check if the water’s pH and bromine or free chlorine level are correct.
- Don’t swallow the water.
- Take kids on bathroom breaks hourly, and change diapers in a diaper-changing area and away from the water.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
President Obama Statement on the Benefits of the Affordable Care Act
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