New Safety Rules Weighed for Magnets

Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from www.nytimes.com

Late last summer, the worried mother of Annaka Chaffin, a 19-month-old from Columbus, Ohio, took her daughter to a hospital. The girl showed signs of a stomach bug, and after an exam, the hospital staff determined that she was probably suffering from a virus and sent her home.

The next day, Annaka was found unresponsive, with blood coming from her nose and mouth. Within hours, she was pronounced dead.

An autopsy showed magnets in the girl’s small intestine, according to a report by the Franklin County coroner’s office. The magnets had become attached to one another, cutting off the blood supply to her stomach and eventually killing her.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission cited the Chaffin case on Wednesday during a hearing to discuss potential new rules governing high-powered magnets, which the agency believes pose a special risk to children. From 2009 to 2013, roughly 2,900 children and teenagers went to the emergency room because they had ingested at least one high-powered magnet, according to the commission.

“These are not like the magnets you used to put on your refrigerator door,” said Dr. R. Adam Noel, an associate professor of pediatric gastroenterology at Baylor College of Medicine. “One kilogram of these drives a Prius.”

The ingestion hazard gained national attention when the safety agency began a two-year battle with Maxfield & Oberton, the creator of Buckyballs, sets of highly magnetic stacking spheres that were recalled...

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Scott Walker targeted in fall union offensive

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

This post has been updated. The nation’s largest public sector union is mounting an intense effort to eject Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker from office this fall, determined to oust the Republican who punctured the power of organized labor in the state. “We have a score to settle with Scott Walker,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in his first interview about the union's midterm strategy. “He took collective bargaining away from us,” Saunders added, noting that the union was first started in the 1930s by state employees in Madison. “He stole our voices, in a state where we were born.” A spokeswoman for Walker, who is in a tough reelection fight, did not respond to requests for comment. Walker is in a tough reelection fight against Democratic challenger Mary Burke. Alleigh Marre, a spokeswoman for the governor, said in a statement that “the big government union bosses are bitter about Governor Walker's reforms which have saved taxpayers $3 billion to date, and they're going to stop at nothing to undo the recall by bankrolling Mary Burke's campaign.” “When the union bosses say they 'have a score to settle with Scott Walker,' they really mean Wisconsin taxpayers because that's who Governor Walker is protecting with his reforms,” Marre added. Saunders said the...

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Roughly 30 percent of former NFL player may develop Alzheimer's, other brain conditions

Today's post is shared from the techtimes.com The NFL is a big deal, making billions every year. But is it doing enough to take care of league players, former and current? According to a report released by the National Football League Friday, three out of every 10 former NFL players are likely to develop brain conditions, like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and at earlier ages compared to the general population. Released as supporting evidence in a class-action suit against the league, the report calculated that the NFL's proposed settlement of $675 million will be sufficient to award damages to affected former players. Out of the 19,400 former league players, the NFL and opposition lawyers estimate that around 28 percent of them, about 6,000 individuals, will develop Alzheimer's disease or some other form of dementia as a consequence of their time playing for the NFL. The American football league is being sued for allegedly hiding information that associated brain injuries to concussions. Presiding over the lawsuit is Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody, who has first expressed concern that $675 million will not be enough to cover all of the damages. The report was released in response to her concerns. Aside from $675 million for compensation, the NFL also proposed spending $10 million for research purposes, $75 million to undertake baseline assessments, and $5 million to raise awareness in the public. With the fund estimated to annually earn 4.5 percent, both sides have deemed the...

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FDA Asks Recalcitrant Compounder to Recall Products, Again

Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from blogs.wsj.com

FDA officials have asked a compounding pharmacy with which they have repeatedly sparred to recall all of its sterile products over concerns that medicines that are currently circulating may be contaminated and present a risk of illness or injury, according to a letter sent yesterday to Downing Labs, which operates NuVision Pharmacy in Dallas, Texas. The move comes after the FDA found a host of problems during an inspection earlier this summer and warned health care providers and consumers not to use the medicines made by the compounder. In fact, this was the third such warning in 15 months that the agency issued about NuVision and the safety of its compounded drugs. “Given the high rate of contamination, there is a high probability that contaminated units from other purportedly sterile drug product lots produced at the Downing Labs facility are currently in distribution,” the FDA wrote in what the agency calls a ‘formal request.’ “Based on the inspectional findings, FDA has serious concerns about the conditions and practices at the facility for the production of sterile drugs, which result in a lack of sterility assurance.” The letter goes on to cite various manufacturing problems, such as a lack of “sound scientific data” to support explanations for sterility failures and an inability to identify the cause of the...

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People near 'fracking' wells report health woes

Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from www.usatoday.com

People living near natural-gas wells were more than twice as likely to report upper-respiratory and skin problems than those farther away, says a major study Wednesday on the potential health effects of fracking. Nearly two of every five, or 39%, of those living less than a kilometer (or two-thirds of a mile) from a well reported upper respiratory symptoms, compared to 18% living more than 2 kilometers away, according to a Yale University-led random survey of 492 people in 180 households with ground-fed water wells in southwestern Pennsylvania. The disparity was even greater for skin irritation. While 13% of those within a kilometer of a well said they had rashes and other skin symptoms, only 3% of those beyond 2 kilometers said the same. "This is the largest study to look at the overall health of people living near the wells," says lead author and University of Washington environmental health professor Peter Rabinowitz, who did the research while at Yale. The study focused on Washington County, part of the Marcellus Shale where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is widely used to extract natural gas. "It suggests there may be more health problems in people living closer to natural gas wells," but it doesn't prove that the wells caused their symptoms, he says, adding more research is needed. Fracking, combined with...

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Under New Federal Rules, Employers Will Have to Report All Amputations

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.businessweek.com

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is moving ahead with a rule change that will require companies to notify the agency whenever an employee is hospitalized for an on-the-job injury or suffers an amputation or the loss of an eye at work. Right now, companies have to notify OSHA only when a work accident kills a worker or gets at least three employees hospitalized. “The updated record-keeping and reporting requirements are not simply paperwork, but have an important—in fact lifesaving—purpose,” Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Michaels told reporters during a conference call announcing the issuance of the final rule. “They will enable employers and workers to prevent future injuries by identifying and eliminating the most serious workplace hazards: ones that have already caused injuries to occur.” The new rules, a version of which was formally proposed three years ago, are scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1. They have drawn criticism from industry groups that contend they will burden businesses without doing anything to help workers. The new reporting requirements, says Marc Freedman, who directs labor law policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, will “generate much traffic to OSHA that I don’t think they’re going to have any real use for.” The Labor Department...

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America’s top execs seem ready to give up on U.S. workers

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

Correctional deputy Loralee Anne, right, speaks with job seekers about positions with the Riverside County Sheriff at the Career Choice Inland Empire Career Fair in Ontario, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014.  Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg Three years ago, Harvard Business School asked thousands of its graduates, many of whom are leaders of America’s top companies, where their firms had decided to locate jobs in the previous year. The responses led the researchers to declare a “competitiveness problem” at home: HBS Alumni reported 56 separate instances where they moved 1,000 or more U.S. jobs to foreign countries, zero cases of moving that many jobs in one block to America from abroad, and just four cases of creating that many new jobs in the United States. Three in four respondents said American competitiveness was falling. Harvard released a similar survey this week, which suggested executives aren’t as glum about American competitiveness as they once were; a majority of alums now say competitiveness is improving or treading water. Three years of economic growth and record corporate profits will do that for you. Companies don’t appear any more keen on American workers today, though. The Harvard grads are down on American education and on workers’ skill sets, but they admit they’re just not really engaged in improving either area. Three-quarters said their firms would rather invest in new...

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