Public Health Campaign of the Month: ‘Don’t Mess With Mercury’ Campaign

Mercury is a very toxic chemical in the occupational exposure to mercury produces serious disability.Today's post was shared by RWJF PublicHealth and comes from www.rwjf.org

Glass thermometers. Compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. Medical equipment. Gauges and other science equipment. Thermostats, switches and other electrical devices. Mercury lives in all of these devices—and all can be found in schools. While it may be common, mercury is also incredibly dangerous. Mercury poisoning can negatively impact the nervous system, lungs and kidneys. It can even lead to brain damage or death. Often mercury poisoning is the result of a kid thinking it’s “cool”— taking it, playing with, passing it around to friends. Metallic mercury easily vaporizes into a colorless, odorless, hazardous gas. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has released a new website that brings together a suite of tools to educate kids, teachers, school administrators and parents about the dangers of mercury poisoning. They include an interactive human body illustration and facts sheets, as well as a 30-second “Don’t Mess With Mercury” animated video to raise awareness about the dangers of mercury.

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Drug overdose deaths have quadrupled since 1980

The Workers' Compensation system is embroiled in a debate over use of pain medications. As I noted before, the problem of prescription pain medication and the abuse of medical prescribers, Is not limited to Worker's Compensation alone. The problem is systemic in the medical delivery system throughout the United States and it is foolish to think that it is only an exclusive issue two of Worker's Compensation claims. What is actually occurring, is that the insurance carriers and employers in Worker's Compensation, are utilizing this issue to reduce the delivery of medical benefits at the cost of damaging the very Basic requirements of a Worker's Compensation system. Today's post was shared by RWJF PublicHealth and comes from knowmore.washingtonpost.com

Drug overdose deaths have quadrupled since 1980 Since 1980, the number of us who die of drug overdoses has quadrupled. Most of these deaths now result from prescription drugs, especially painkillers. “The dichotomy between good drugs prescribed by doctors and bad drugs sold on the street is just bad science,” one doctor told The New York Times a couple of years back. The really upsetting maps above show this change over the decade that ended in 2009. Appalachia and New Mexico, as popular culture would lead you to expect, were particularly bad areas for drug fatalities fifteen years ago, but now, the problem is clearly a national one. “What other people had been saying was that this was predominantly a rural problem of drug poisoning,” Lauren Rossen, one of the people who put together this analysis, told me. “We were somewhat surprised to find that drug poisoning death rates were actually highest in metropolitan areas.” Exceptions are the state of New York and a narrow band running through the center of the contiguous states, from North Dakota to Texas. Click “Know More” to read more about this troubling trend.

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Tort reform bills placed on U.S. House schedule; could be considered next week

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

The U.S. House of Representatives could consider two tort reform bills next week. Both the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act and the Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency Act have been placed on the House’s schedule, according to GovTrack.us. The Hill reported Tuesday that House Republicans will “call up” the bills next week. LARA, or House Resolution 2655, imposes mandatory sanctions on lawyers who file meritless suits in federal court. Specifically, the bill: - Reinstates sanctions for the violation of Rule 11. Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was originally intended to deter frivolous lawsuits by sanctioning the offending party; - Ensures that judges impose monetary sanctions against lawyers who file frivolous lawsuits, including the attorney’s fees and costs incurred by the victim of the frivolous lawsuit; and - Reverses the 1993 amendments to Rule 11 that allow parties and their attorneys to avoid sanctions for making frivolous claims by withdrawing them within 21 days after a motion for sanctions has been served. Smith The House Judiciary Committee passed the bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in September. “LARA encourages attorneys to think twice before filing frivolous lawsuits,” Smith said at the time. The FACT Act, or House Resolution 982, requires more transparency from asbestos trusts. The House Judiciary Committee passed the bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold,...

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Lawyer recalls first meeting with woman who started Risperdal litigation

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Brian McCormick remembers meeting Victoria Starr back in 2007 when he first started working for Sheller P.C. The Oregon woman had approached the Philadelphia law firm about three years prior about filing a qui tam lawsuit on behalf of the U.S. government against the makers of the antipsychotic drug Risperdal.” Add caption Starr, a former sales representative for Janssen Pharmaceutica, a wholly-owned subsidiary of drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, felt as if she was being encouraged and pressured to market Risperdal off-label. McCormick’s law firm filed Starr’s qui tam suit in April 2004, three months after the woman quit her job. She had begun working for Janssen in about 2001. On Monday, Johnson & Johnson announced that it would be paying more than $2.2 billion to resolve civil and criminal claims relating to allegations that the company marketed Risperdal, a drug primarily designed to treat bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia, for uses other than those approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The pharmaceutical manufacturer will pay $1.673 billion to resolve the allegations of off-label marketing for Risperdal and sister drug Invega, the resolution marking the largest involving a single drug in U.S. history, and the third-largest healthcare fraud settlement involving one company, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The massive settlement that resulted from a...

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Three Known Causes of Death: Lead Paint, Asbestos, and PowerPoints!

Today's post was shared by Linda Reinstein and comes from switchandshift.com

Three known causes of premature human death are exposure to lead paint, asbestos, and PowerPoint presentations. The frightening reality is only two of these have been forcefully removed from our everyday lives. Many organizations still use PowerPoint presentations to communicate strategies with the hope of building understanding, while developing ownership and commitment. Some leaders even have the outlandish hope of creating enthusiasm and excitement. This is a flawed expectation, given the reality that people will tolerate the conclusions of their leaders, but will only act on their own. If people don’t change their conclusions about the business and their role in it, they will not change their actions to bring the new ideas to life. Dressing up the conclusions of leaders in a colorful deck does little to mobilize people to change.

People will tolerate the conclusions of their leaders, but will only act on their own

The key is creating a way for people to think together about the strategic imperatives for the business and challenging their current assumptions and beliefs about what will make it successful in the future. The role and goal is not to communicate new strategic acronyms, but to translate the strategic business buzzwords into shared meaning through dialogue, inquiry, and synthesis. Here are three tips that can help in avoiding the death-by-PowerPoint approach to strategy execution through people.

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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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EPA Extends Public Comment Period on Cleanup Plan for Maywood Chemical Company Superfund Site

Today's post was shared by US EPA News and comes from yosemite.epa.gov

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has extended the public comment period for its proposed cleanup plan to address contaminated soil at the Maywood Chemical Company Superfund site in Maywood and Rochelle Park, New Jersey.  The Agency is extending the comment period, which was set to end on October 22 to November 21.  Previous industrial activity at the site resulted in contamination of the soil and ground water with volatile organic compounds, radioactive waste and metals.  The EPA proposal calls for a combination of removing and treating contaminated soil.  The EPA held a public meeting on September 9, 2013 to explain the proposed plan. For more information and to view the proposed plan, visit http://epa.gov/region02/superfund/npl/maywood.

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Fungal Meningitis: One Year After the Outbreak

A year ago the medication induced infections were the focus of the US CDC as The New England Compounding Service drew national attention. Today's post is shared from the CDC.gov. A year ago this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention activated its Emergency Operations Center as part of the response to the tragic outbreak of fungal meningitis linked to three contaminated lots of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate (MPA) produced by the New England Compounding Center (NECC). As of October 23, 2013, there have been 751 cases of fungal meningitis and other infections associated with this outbreak; 64 of these patients have died. Since July 2013, one new case has been diagnosed. This week, CDC has two papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, one describing the clinical aspects of the infections associated with this outbreak and the other summarizing the epidemiologic investigation. The clinical paper, focusing on the early stages of the outbreak, describes patients who experienced a wide variety of illnesses, including meningitis, stroke, arachnoiditis (inflammation of one of the membranes around the brain and spinal cord), and epidural or paraspinal infections which ranged in severity from very mild to life-threatening. The epidemiology paper finalizes the original preliminary report published by the New England Journal of Medicine and details the efforts undertaken by public health agencies to identify and stop the outbreak. This...

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U.S. National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week Goes Global

Today's post was shared by US EPA News and comes from yosemite.epa.gov

he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are partnering with the Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint, to announce the Lead Poisoning Prevention Week of Action.  This is the first time National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week will be recognized internationally. More than 35 countries from across the world will take action and hold public awareness activities during this week.“This year’s theme, ‘Lead-Free Kids for a Healthy Future,’ underscores the importance of testing your home for lead and understanding how to prevent harmful exposures.  Given that lead impacts children around the world, we are pleased to help National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week go global this year,” said Jim Jones, EPA’s assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “Joining with other countries to raise awareness about protecting children from the harmful exposure to lead will have a long-term positive effect on the health of children worldwide.”  This year, the partners will work to raise awareness about lead paint poisoning worldwide and the need to eliminate lead in paint. The...

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This Is Your Brain on Toxins

The need for regulation and responsibility is the focus of this very interesting article that appears in The New York Times today. Today's post is shared from nytimes.org “Lead helps to guard your health.” That was the marketing line that the former National Lead Company used decades ago to sell lead-based household paints. Yet we now know that lead was poisoning millions of children and permanently damaging their brains. Tens of thousands of children died, and countless millions were left mentally impaired. One boy, Sam, born in Milwaukee in 1990, “thrived as a baby,” according to his medical record. But then, as a toddler, he began to chew on lead paint or suck on fingers with lead dust, and his blood showed soaring lead levels. Sam’s family moved homes, but it was no use. At age 3, he was hospitalized for five days because of lead poisoning, and in kindergarten his teachers noticed that he had speech problems. He struggled through school, and doctors concluded that he had “permanent and irreversible” deficiencies in brain function. Sam’s story appears in “Lead Wars,” a book by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner published this year that chronicles the monstrous irresponsibility of companies in the lead industry over the course of the 20th century. Eventually, over industry protests, came regulation and the removal of lead from gasoline. As a result, lead levels of American children have declined 90 percent...

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Chart of the Day: Hands-Free Talking Is as Bad as Talking on a Handset. Maybe Even Worse.

Distracted driving doesn't get better by the use of hands free technology. Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Michael O'Hare points us this morning to a study of cell phone usage in cars that confirms the obvious: it's dangerous. More dangerous than driving drunk, in fact. What's more, as the chart on the right shows, hands-free talking doesn't help. In fact, for certain tasks it makes things even worse. O'Hare explains what's going on: To understand the reason, consider driving while (i) listening to the radio as I was (ii) conversing with an adult passenger (iii) transporting a four-year-old (iv) sharing the front seat with a largish dog. Why are the first two not dangerous, and the last two make you tense up just thinking about them?  The radio is not a person, and you subconsciously know that you may miss something if you attend to something in the road ahead, but also that you won’t insult it if you “listen away”, and it won’t suffer, much less indicate unease. The adult passenger can see out the windshield and also catch very subtle changes in your tone of voice or body language.  If you stop talking to attend to the car braking up ahead, the passenger knows why instantly, and accommodates, and because you know this, you aren’t anxious about interrupting the conversation. The dog and the child, in contrast, are completely unaware of what’s coming up on the road or what you need to pay attention to; the former is happy to jump in your lap if it seems like a good idea at any moment, and the child demands attention on her own schedule and at...

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Manufacturers Argue Against $1 Billion for Lead Paint

NL Industries Inc. is one of five paint companies that presented closing arguments against a public-nuisance lawsuit by 10 California cities and counties seeking more than $1 billion to replace or contain lead paint in millions of homes. Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg in San Jose,California, interrupted closing arguments by Don Scott, a lawyer for NL Industries, who relied on studies by U.S .doctors to claim that the companies didn’t know about the potential forlead poisoning in children in the first half of the 20th century, as the counties and cities have claimed. Kleinberg, who is hearing the case, asked Scott about what he said was a “flat-out ban” of lead paint in Europe in the early 1900s, and a 1918 advertisement by Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont Co. that “distinguished themselves away from lead paint.” “Is it your position that if the American doctors that you cite say X, that’s the end of the issue, and that the court should not be concerned with these other pieces of evidence that are undisputed?” Kleinberg asked. “I am troubled by the idea that because American doctors, fine people I’m sure they were,say XYZ that’s the end of the inquiry.” Scott replied that the laws in Europe were a “mixed bag”in which some countries banned lead paint earlier than others. ‘Prevailing Standard’ “The fact is that on the question of what is pertinent tothis case, we’re looking at...

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Closing arguments in Calif. lead paint trial take place Monday

Lead poisoning and lead expose is widespread. A vast number of cases of lead exposure flow from the lead pigment that was placed by the paint industry into paint. The residuals of the lead paint remain in place in many public and private buildings exposing both workers' and children to lead exposure and  the resulting lead disease. Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

In the high stakes lead paint public nuisance case culminating in Santa Clara County Superior Court, both sides will make closing arguments Monday before Judge James Kleinberg. The 10 city and county plaintiffs — Santa Clara County, San Francisco City, Alameda County, Los Angeles County, Monterey County, Oakland City, San Diego City, San Mateo County, Solano County and Ventura County — are expected to argue they have met a burden of proving their case by a preponderance of evidence. Among other things, a team of attorneys for the plaintiffs will argue that the five defendant companies knew or should have known about the hazards created by the use of lead paint in homes, but promoted it anyway. They seek abatement in approximately 500,000 pre-1978 built homes in the jurisdictions and estimate the cost at $1.6 billion for inspection and abatement if the public entities implement the program. Plaintiffs say it would cost $2.4 billion if implemented by the defendants. Their plan calls for the creation of a fund administered by the public entities. Defendant companies — Sherwin-Williams, NL Industries, ConAgra Grocery Products, DuPont and Atlantic Richfield Company — are expected to fiercely defend their position, saying plaintiffs did not meet a necessary test set forth by the state’s Sixth District Court of Appeal. The paint companies will argue that the Sixth District allowed the 13-year-old case...

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Fla. appeals court says $33M in damages to smoker’s widow not excessive

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

A Florida appeals court this week denied a tobacco company’s request for a new trial in a lawsuit brought against the company by the widow of a former smoker. Rothenberg Also Wednesday, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal upheld a $33 million award to the widow, Dorothy Alexander, saying the damages were not excessive. After a three-week trial, the jury found in favor of Alexander on her claims against Lorillard Tobacco Company for strict liability, fraudulent concealment, conspiracy to commit fraud by concealment and negligence, but found Alexander’s husband, Coleman, 20 percent comparatively liable. The jury awarded Alexander $20 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages. Lorillard filed multiple post-trial motions, including motions seeking remittitur of the compensatory and punitive damages awards. The Miami-Dade County Circuit Court denied all of Lorillard’s post-trial motions except the motion for remittitur of the compensatory damages award and remitted the compensatory damages award to $10 million. After computation of comparative fault, Alexander was awarded $8 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages, which the trial court declined to remit. Lorillard appealed. On appeal, the tobacco company basically reiterated its post-trial claims of error. Additionally, it claimed that it is entitled to a new trial on compensatory damages rather than the...

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Lead Paint Makers Could Face The Same Fate As Big Tobacco

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.huffingtonpost.com

A lawsuit in California that seeks some $1 billion from former lead paint manufacturers is far from the first attempt to hold the industry liable for decades of poisoning children and leaving lingering contamination. But experts such as Richard Rabin -- who directed a lead poisoning registry at the Massachusetts Department of Labor for over 20 years -- think the case just might be the first to finally succeed, marking the end of a long losing streak. "My ideal hope is something along the lines of what happened with tobacco," said Rabin, who initiated the inaugural trial against the lead paint industry more than 25 years ago. "It's gone on and on and on," he said of lead litigation, even as research uncovering lead's dangers, "keeps coming and coming." After fending off lawsuits since the 1950s, the tables eventually turned on big tobacco, forcing the industry to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars in the late 1990s. At that point, it had become common knowledge that the industry was well aware of the addictive qualities and the health hazards of their products. In 1987, with nearly a century of documented dangers accumulated on childhood lead poisoning, a lawsuit -- spurred by Rabin -- was filed on behalf of a Boston girl exposed to lead paint as a toddler. "I want to be a lawyer, but I don't think I can do the studying,'' Monica Santiago told The New York Times in 1988, then 15 years old. ''In school they teach me, but I forget. The kids call me dumb. Sometimes when I do...

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….

Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

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