Alfred Lynch, president of the Arrowhead chapter of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), informs Cal-OSHA Reporter that the chapter has been decertified by the organization. “During the last three years, the chapter failed to nominate the minimum number of chapter officers (five) as required by ASSE’s national organization and this failure resulted in …
U.S. Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma) has introduced H.R. 2693, a bill that would require Fed-OSHA to issue a standard protecting workers from exposure to diacetyl, the substance that has been linked to Bronchiolitis obliterans, a debilitating and potentially fatal disease often called “popcorn lung.” The bill, co-authored by Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), a fellow Democrat …
California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) is investigating four recent fatal workplace incidents. On June 11, a worker directing a backhoe at a Temecula construction site was killed in a trench incident. The employee of Perris-based White House Sanitation, which installs septic tanks and sanitation devices, slipped into the trench during while directing …
AB 514, Assemblywoman Sally Lieber’s (D-Mountain View) bill to ban the chemical diacetyl in food processing, was approved by the state Assembly June 4, 43-33 and has been sent to the state Senate. The bill gets its first hearing in that chamber June 27 before the Labor and Industrial Relations (L&IR) committee. Under a recent …
Most Cal/OSHA variances are routine affairs, with one-day evidentiary hearings and often repetitive decisions by the Cal/OSH Standards Board. But the permanent variance request by Fleetwood Motor Homes of California now before the board is anything but routine. Based on an experimental variance granted by the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH), it raises …
Construction contractor C.C. Myers has attained something of a hero’s status among the Northern California public. It spared cross-bay commuters more than a month of misery by reconstructing a key portion of the MacArthur Maze interchange in Oakland in record time and well under budget. Myers has built a reputation throughout the state for tackling …
California’s Injury and Illness Prevention Program standards, both general and construction, remain the most cited of the top 25 safety standards by the Division of Occupational Safety and Health. The 2006 statistics include the most appealed citations. Cal-OSHA Reporter Title 8’s Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP) standards retained their status as the most cited …
According to AFL-CIO’s latest “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect” report, California ranked 12th in the nation in workplace fatalities in 2005, a ranking significantly lower than its sixth-place showing in 2004. The 2005 statistics (the last year for which data are available) show California with 465 workplace fatalities, a rate of 2.7 …