"New Jersey’s Workers’ Compensation Act (the Act), N.J.S.A. 34:15-1 to -128.5, provides a prompt and efficient remedy for an employee’s claim against an employer for a workplace injury. The Legislature made the statutory workers’ compensation remedy its preferred mechanism for providing compensation to injured workers......Based on the strong legislative preference for the workers’ compensation remedy and an intentional-wrong standard that even an employer’s recklessness and gross negligence fails to satisfy, we hold that this matter falls short of demonstrating that an intentional wrong creating substantial certainty of bodily injury or death occurred. " Justice LaVecchia
Over the past several decades there has been a remarkable reduction in environmental sources of lead, improved protection from occupational lead exposure, and an overall decreasing trend in the prevalence of elevated blood lead levels (BLLs) in U.S. adults. As a result, the U.S. national BLL geometric mean among adults was 1.2 µg/dL during 2009–2010 (1).
Nonetheless, lead exposures continue to occur at unacceptable levels (2). Current research continues to find that BLLs previously considered harmless can have harmful effects in adults, such as decreased renal function and increased risk for hypertension and essential tremor at BLLs µg/dL (3–5). CDC has designated 10 µg/dL as the reference BLL for adults; levels ≥10 µg/dL are considered elevated (2). CDC's Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology and Surveillance (ABLES) program tracks elevated BLLs among adults in the United States (2). In contrast to the CDC reference level, prevailing Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) lead standards allow workers removed from lead exposure to return to lead work when their BLL falls below 40 µg/dL (6). During 2002–2011, ABLES identified 11,536 adults with very high BLLs (≥40 µg/dL). Persistent very high BLLs (≥40 µg/dL in ≥2 years) were found among 2,210 (19%) of these adults. Occupational exposures accounted for 7,076 adults with very high BLLs (91% of adults with known exposure source) and 1,496... |
| As the judicial system is bombarded with evidential scientific research in order to ascertain the truth, the research process itself is subject to being influenced. Today's post is shared from MotherJones.org and describes what happens when so-called "independent research" becomes tainted. The American Council on Science and Health bills itself as an independent research and advocacy organization devoted to debunking "junk science." It's a controversial outfit—a "group of scientists…concerned that many important public policies related to health and the environment did not have a sound scientific basis," it says—that often does battle with environmentalists and consumer safety advocates, wading into public health debates to defend fracking, to fight New York City's attempt to ban big sugary sodas, and to dismiss concerns about the potential harms of the chemical bisphenol-A (better known at BPA) and the pesticide atrazine. The group insists that its conclusions are driven purely by science. It acknowledges that it receives some financial support from corporations and industry groups, but ACSH, which reportedly stopped disclosing its corporate donors two decades ago, maintains that these contributions don't influence its work and agenda.  Yet internal financial documents (read them here) provided to Mother Jones show that ACSH depends heavily on funding from corporations that have a financial stake in the scientific debates it aims to shape.The group also directly solicits donations from these industry sources around specific issues. ACSH's financial links to corporations involved in hot-button health and safety controversies have been highlighted in the past, but these documents offer a more extensive... |
 Air and water problems mainly make headlines these days when extraordinary pulses of pollution surge in places like Beijing and Shanghai. But there are still enormous, if largely hidden, health and environmental costs in many parts of the United States that have failed to meet the goals set decades ago under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (e.g., see Muller, Mendelsohn, Nordhaus, 2011). Sometimes the issue is visible. I visited Houston briefly this week and snapped the photo above on the airport approach. Not pretty.Read on for excerpts from two relevant articles. The first, from the Allegheny Front, explores how lessons learned in trying to cut pollution from natural gas facilities in Houston can be applied in Pennsylvania’s fracking zone. The second, by my Pace University colleague and longtime water analyst John Cronin, digs in on the gap between Environmental Protection Agency statements on water pollution and the results in America’s waterways. Here’s “Houston Air Pollution: Preview for Pennsylvania?” It’s the second article in a planned four-part series, “The Coming Chemical Boom,” that was in part paid for by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. ... |
 Representatives of the organization made their case in Frankfort on Thursday (Nov. 21) before House and Senate members of the Interim Joint Committee on Labor and Industry. They were joined by Doctor Virginia Weaver, a physician and professor of Occupational Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. She says the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is doing some important research on the hazards of firefighting. “They’re looking at firefighters from three major cities in the U.S., comparing risk for cancer in firefighters with the general U.S. public, and found an increased overall risk for all cancer, an increased individual risk focused in the digestive tract and the respiratory tract.” –Virginia Weaver The bill that’s being proposed in Kentucky would only apply to professional firefighters who’ve been on the job at least five years. It would also exclude those who smoke. |
| Today's post os shared from northjersey.com The governors of New Jersey and New York late Saturday vetoed legislation passed unanimously by each state's legislature to overhaul the operations of the Port Authority, and instead endorsed their own plan to revamp the troubled bistate agency. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, had until Saturday to take action on the legislation, which needed the signature of each state's governor. About 6 p.m., Cuomo and Gov. Christie, a Republican, jointly released and endorsed a 103-page report compiled by a special panel the governors convened in May in the aftermath of the George Washington Bridge scandal, which laid bare cross-Hudson rivalries among leaders of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Christie and Cuomo proposed changes to the authority's governance structure and recommended modernizing its commerce facilities, among other ideas. Their actions were immediately criticized by New Jersey lawmakers who said the vetoes wrongly delayed an overhaul of an agency that has come under penetrating scrutiny since January, when documents surfaced linking two former Christie allies to the lane closures at the center of the bridge scandal. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark is investigating the September 2013 lane closures, which snarled traffic... |
The debate over a longer lifespan confronts many issued including medical costs, insurance coverage and quality of life. Workers' Compensation programs pay for lifetime care also in most instances. Today's post is shared from the NYTimes.org .
To the Editor:
 Fundamentally, the goals of aging research are not dissimilar from efforts to prevent or treat Alzheimer’s or other chronic diseases in that they both seek to improve quality of life in the elderly. The difference is that interventions in aging may prevent not just one but a range of debilitating diseases simultaneously. The reality is that the world is rapidly getting older. With baby boomers leaving the work force, there won’t be enough workers to pay the ever-increasing Medicare costs of the retired. Extending health span will lower Medicare costs and allow aging people to stay engaged. Interventions that slow human aging will provide a powerful modality of preventive medicine: improving quality of life by keeping people... |
