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(c) 2010-2024 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

OSHA seeks damages for wrongly terminated employee who made safety complaint

The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho against Sandpoint Gas 'n' Go & Lube Center Inc., in Sandpoint, Idaho, and its owner Sydney M. Oskoui, individually, for violating the whistleblower protection provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The investigation determined that Sandpoint and its owner terminated a mechanic for raising safety and health concerns in the workplace.
OSHA investigated a complaint filed by the work and cited the employer for safety and health violations. Upon receipt of the citations and proposed penalties, the employer fired the employee. The department determined that the employee was fired for filing a safety complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Boise Area Office.
"We are committed to protecting workers' rights to raise work-related safety and health concerns without fear of losing his or her job," said Galen Blanton, OSHA's acting regional administrator in Seattle. "We will not tolerate the reprehensible behavior exhibited by Sandpoint in this case."
The employer is expected to pay to the fired employee back wages with interest, benefits and punitive damages. The suit also requests an order from the court permanently enjoining Sandpoint and its owner from violating the anti-retaliation provisions of the OSH Act and requires that a notice be posted for employees regarding their rights under the OSH Act.
OSHA enforces the whistleblower provisions of more than 21 statutes protecting employees who report violations of various commercial motor carrier, airline, nuclear, pipeline, environmental, public transportation agency, consumer product, motor vehicle safety, railroad, maritime, health care reform, food safety, securities and financial reform laws. Detailed information on employee whistleblower rights, including fact sheets with information on how to file a complaint with OSHA, is available online at http://www.whistleblowers.gov.
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Perez v. Sandpoint Gas 'n' Go & Lube Center Inc. and Sydney M. Oskoui, individually
Civil Action Number: 2:14-cv-00357-BLW

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Fixing Our Inadequate Brain Science

Today's post comes from guest author Jay Causey, from Causey Law Firm.

By Jay Causey from Causey Law Firm
The high incidence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) affecting our returning Afghanistan and Iraq veterans, and also our civilian contractor employees, has helped to highlight the inadequacy of the current level of “brain science.”
More than one in five Americans – – over 60 million people – – suffer brain disorder from injury or illness. 600 conditions exist, ranging from autism and Alzheimer’s to the aforementioned TBI and PTSD. Not a single one of these conditions has been cured.  Brain ailments affect more people than heart disease and cancer combined, yet those conditions receive 3 to 5 times more funding for research.
Unlike science for other conditions and diseases, brain science has not had the advantage of an umbrella organization to its coordinate efforts. Brain science research and funding has been fragmented, researchers have often been territorial and overly concerned with intellectual property issues, and the corporate funding that has come mostly from the pharmaceutical industry has been shrinking. An organization named One Mind has recently been created to attack the shortcomings of brain science by advocating for the principle of “open science,” which fosters collaborative scientific work with accessible central data collection for researchers. This process in turn allows for accelerated integration of data and validation of results for publication. All of this should allow basic research to more rapidly reach the clinical setting and benefit patients of brain ailment.
One Mind has two programs currently in progress: Gemini, in which 11 research centers will enroll 3000 patients in a longitudinal brain injury study; and Apollo, which is developing a data exchange portal that will support the collaborative effort described above and will create a digital marketplace accessible by students, teachers and researchers.
One Mind is currently headed by CEO Gen. Pete Chiarelli, U.S. Army (retired) who as vice chief of the Army was instrumental in Department of Defense efforts on PTSD, TBI, and suicide prevention. In 2013 Chiarelli received the “Patriot Award” for his work with soldiers and their families dealing with the so-called “invisible wounds” of war.
The author recently attended a presentation in Seattle by Gen. Chiarelli, who provided much additional anecdotal information about the shortcomings of brain science and the efforts by One Mind. He noted, for example, that the diagnostic criteria currently in use for assessing PTSD are decades old and woefully inadequate for mental health practitioners to accurately diagnose and assess the condition.
Go to www.onemind.org for a full review of the organization, its mission and its programs.
Photo credit: "Central nervous system drawing circa 1900"
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A Special Warning About Over-the-Counter Pain Medications

Today's post comes from guest author Jay Causey, from Causey Law Firm.

By Jay Causey from Causey Law Firm
The dangers of prescription pain meds get a fair amount of regular attention in the media.  A recent Consumer Reports (CR) article described a 300% rise in prescriptions of opiods – particularly those with hydrocodone –over the past decade, and provided a scary statistic:  17,000 people – 46 per day – die from overdose of these drugs.
What is less well known, and gets relatively scant attention, is that over-the-counter (OTC) painkillers containing acetaminophen (e.g. Tylenol) take 80,000 people yearly to the emergency room from overdose.  Acetaminophen, widely regarded as a “safe” drug is now the most common cause of liver failure.
The CR article points out the primary problem:  the directions for usage of these OTC drugs are ridiculously confusing and misleading.  Many of these only provide the caveat “take only as directed.”  What exactly does that mean?  Wildly different things according the cautions provided by differing drug manufacturers.  Some labels advise taking no more than 1000 milligrams of acetaminophen daily while others set the limits four times that high.  In some bizarre bureaucratic misstep, the FDA has lowered the maximum per-pill dose of the drug in prescription medications but has not done the same thing for OTCs. 
CR warns that overdosing on acetaminophen is easy as it is the most common drug in the U.S., found in more than 600 OTC and prescription medications.  There is little margin for error in exceeding the maximum recommended dose as only as small excess amount of the drug can be toxic to the liver.  A scary little graphic in the article shows how easy it is to do this.  A person might take six 500 milligram Extra Strength Tylenol (states maximum daily dose of 3000 milligrams) starting in the morning and through the day; then be on NyQuil for a cold and take eight 325 milligram pills (states maximum daily dose 2600 milligrams); and then do Walgreens Pain Reliever PM as a sleep aid (two 500 milligram pills at bedtime for a daily dose of 1000 milligrams).  At the end of a 24-hour period, that person would have ingested 6,600 milligrams of acetaminophen!!  Repeated doses of more than 4000 milligrams of the drug have been linked to liver, brain and kidney damage.  Chronically large doses have been correlated with the need for a liver transplant, or death, more than from one large overdose.
In 2011, the FDA limited the amount of acetaminophen in prescription pills to 325 milligrams per pill, but there has been no similar limitation imposed for OTCs, even though that market accounts for 80% of that drug taken yearly in the U.S.  For those regular users of acetaminophen, signs of potential liver damage to watch for are:  dark urine, pale stool, upper right abdominal pain, and a yellowish tint to the whites of the eyes.

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OSHA’s Top 10 Violations for 2014 announced at National Safety Council Congress & Expo

San Diego, CA – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has announced the preliminary Top 10 most frequently cited workplace safety violations for fiscal year 2014. Patrick Kapust, deputy director of OSHA’s Directorate of Enforcement Programs, presented the Top 10 before a crowded group of spectators on the Expo floor.

“We greatly appreciate our colleagues at OSHA sharing their most recent data at the nation’s largest gathering of safety and health professionals,” said National Safety Council President and CEO Deborah A.P. Hersman. “This data is a poignant reminder that there is still much room for improvement in making our workplaces safer, and that it is going to take all of us to make a difference.”

The Top 10 for FY 2014* are:

  1. Fall protection (1926.501) – 6,143
  2. Hazard Communication (1910.1200) – 5,161
  3. Scaffolding (1926.451) – 4,029
  4. Respiratory Protection (1910.134) – 3,223
  5. Lockout/Tagout (1910.147) – 2,704
  6. Powered Industrial Trucks (1910.178) – 2,662
  7. Electrical – Wiring Methods (1910.305) – 2,490
  8. Ladders (1926.1053) – 2,448
  9. Machine Guarding (1910.212) – 2,200
  10. Electrical – General Requirements (1910.303) – 2,056

About the National Safety Council

Founded in 1913 and chartered by Congress, the National Safety Council, nsc.org, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to save lives by preventing injuries and...

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Cycling or walking to work 'improves psychological health'

Today's post is shared from medicalnewstoday.com

According to a new study conducted by health economists at the University of East Anglia and the Centre for Diet and Activity Research in the UK, walking or cycling to work is better for people's mental health than driving.
The psychological benefits of walking or cycling to work come on top of the well-known physical health benefits.
In February of this year, the UK Office of National Statistics published a report that found UK citizens who walked to work had lower life satisfaction than those who drove to work. The report also found that cyclists were less happy and more anxious than other commuters.
The new study, however - which is published in the journal Preventive Medicine - contradicts this.
The team studied 18 years of data from almost 18,000 commuters in the UK aged 18-65. The data took in various aspects of psychological health including feelings of worthlessness, unhappiness, sleepless nights and capability of dealing with problems.
Factors that are known to affect well-being, such as income, having children, moving house or job, and relationship changes were also taken into account by the researchers.
The results suggest that people benefited from improved well-being when they stopped driving and started walking or cycling to work. Commuters reported that they felt better able to concentrate and "less under strain" if they used these methods of travel, rather than...
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….
Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters). 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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Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Trying to Hit the Brake on Texting While Driving

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



People know they shouldn’t text and drive. Overwhelmingly, they tell pollsters that doing so is unacceptable and dangerous, and yet they do it anyway. They can’t resist. So safety advocates and public officials have called for a technological solution that does an end run around free will and prevents people from texting in the first place.
That’s where Scott Tibbitts comes in. A chemical engineer who built a company that made motors and docking stations for NASA, Mr. Tibbitts, 57, spent the last five years coming up with a novel way to block incoming and outgoing texts and to prevent phone calls from reaching a driver.
He wasn’t some crazy inventor or relentless self-promoter acting on his own. To bolster his engineering solution, he struck a partnership with two heavyweights: American Family Insurance, which agreed to invest in the technology, and, even more important, with Sprint. It agreed to allow Mr. Tibbitts’s company, Katasi, to use its network to stop texts. It was a kind of holy grail, safety advocates gushed, a first for an American phone carrier.


The product was being completed in February for a summer start — “a huge deal,” as it was characterized by David Teater, senior director for transportation initiatives at the National Safety Council, which works to curb distracted driving. Sprint hailed it as a major step. It seemed to answer a call from people like Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West...
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GM halts Corvette delivery for brakes, air bags

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



GM halted delivery of the 2015 Corvette until it can find and fix potential problems with parking brakes and air bags. No recall was immediately announced.(Photo: Chevrolet)
General Motors slammed the brakes on a month's worth of Chevrolet's high-power Corvette halo car to prevent any faulty air bags or improperly installed parking brakes from getting into customers' hands.
About 800 2015 Corvettes — most of them at dealerships, GM says — are on hold because they may have been built with only one of the rear parking brake cables installed properly.
Another 2,000 2015 Corvettes at dealers could have a faulty part that attaches the air bag to the steering wheel hub.
GM halted shipments of additional 2015 Corvettes from their Bowling Green, Ky., factory to prevent any more potentially defective cars from getting into the sales network.
The two actions — a stop-delivery order to dealers and a stop-ship order to the factory — aren't recalls. In fact, they are the actions automakers take to try to prevent recalls by trying to catch the problem cars before they are sold.
GM said on Friday that it "has not publicly issued a recall on the 2015 Corvette."
But such "stop" orders often don't catch all the vehicles, and a recall follows anyway.
The move comes at an especially sensitive time for GM for several reasons:
•It can't afford to tarry resolving safety issues. Federal regulators have GM under a microscope after it was fined for failing to...
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