health and safety

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, November 2, 2023

Web Editor's Note: unfortunately, they didn't.

"The citizens of Cincinnati are at a historical crossroads," wrote one locomotive engineer of Issue 22. "The choice they make could either uphold a legacy of public ownership that has withstood the test of time or cede control to private interests."

Cincinnati voters will decide next Tuesday whether to allow the company responsible for the toxic train crash in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this year to purchase the last remaining municipally owned interstate railroad in the United States.

Norfolk Southern has been working to buy the Cincinnati Southern Railway (CSR) for years, but the effort largely flew under the national radar until one of the company's trains derailed in East Palestine in February 2023, unleashing chemical pollution that sparked major public health concerns and put the small Ohio town in the spotlight.

The wreck brought renewed scrutiny to Norfolk Southern's lax safety procedures, poor treatment of workers, and long history of lobbying against basic regulatory measures, making the hugely profitable corporation a poster child of rail industry greed and dysfunction.

Concerns about Norfolk Southern's practices in the wake of the East Palestine disaster have fueled opposition to the company's proposed $1.6 billion purchase of the CSR, which has been in public hands since its construction in the late 1800s.

The unelected Cincinnati board of trustees that manages the 338-mile CSR and the city's Democratic mayor announced and celebrated the proposed sale last November, setting the stage for the November 7 vote on Issue 22.

Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center organizer Magda Orlander toldIn These Times on Wednesday that public opposition to the proposed sale has been "snowballing" since early voting began in early October. The grassroots group Derail the Sale has formed in opposition to Issue 22 and a number of local organizations, including the Cincinnati NAACP and Neighborhoods United Cincinnati, have joined the fight.

By Edward Carver - Common Dreams, June 26, 2024

The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday condemned Norfolk Southern for interfering with its investigation into last year's East Palestine train crash and the "vent and burn" of harmful chemicals that followed.

The remarks came at the final NTSB hearing on the disaster, in which the agency released a preliminary report—damning to Norfolk Southern and its contractors—from a 17-month investigation. NTSB officials explained that a decision to intentionally burn vinyl chloride, a carcinogen, from five derailed train cars was flawed and resulted from the company's selective sharing of information with officials at the time.

Norfolk Southern's uncooperative approach didn't stop after the vent-and-burn, according to the NTSB. Throughout the investigation, the company delayed or avoided sharing information, sought to "manufacture" evidence, and even issued a "threat" to agency staff, Jennifer Homendy, the NTSB chair, said.

"Norfolk Southern's abuse of the party process was unprecedented and reprehensible," Homendy said, also describing it as "unconscionable."

She praised NTSB investigators "for their fortitude in the face of mounting pressure, for their laser focus on the facts."

By staff - Asian Network for Rights of Occupational and Accident Victims, June 25, 2024

The Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV) condemns the gross negligence and violations of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) rights that resulted in the tragic death of 23 workers in a blaze at a South Korean lithium battery plant. The factory, operated by Aricell in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi-Do, caught fire following a series of battery explosions. Officials report that the victims likely succumbed to extremely toxic gas. Among the 23 deceased workers, 17 were Chinese, 5 were South Koreans, and one was a Laos national. Additionally, 17 of the deceased were women and 6 were men.

The chemicals used in battery manufacturing are highly flammable, making stringent safety measures critical. However, it is evident that the safety of the workers at Aricell was neglected. This incident highlights severe lapses in safety protocols, with catastrophic consequences.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) has condemned the incident as the worst chemical explosion and the largest industrial accident involving migrant workers in South Korea’s history. They emphasized that this disaster was foreseeable and preventable, given the history of lithium battery explosions and the inadequate safety measures at the factory.

Despite numerous safety checks, no effective countermeasures were implemented.

It has called for immediate and thorough support for the victims and their families, transparent communication regarding the cause of the accident, involvement of the victims’ families in the accident investigation, and strict enforcement of the Serious Disasters Punishment Act to ensure severe penalties for those responsible.

The National Metal Workers’ Union echoed these sentiments, highlighting the repeated failure to prioritize worker safety over profit. They noted that the fire and subsequent explosions at Aricell underline the systemic issues within the industry, particularly the exploitation and inadequate protection of migrant workers. The union calls for a complete overhaul of industrial safety systems and a thorough investigation to prevent such disasters from recurring.

ANROEV extends its heartfelt sympathy to the families of the workers who died in this workplace tragedy. It also stands in solidarity with labor groups calling for immediate assistance to the families of the deceased and the injured workers. We demand swift justice for those who lost their lives at work. The South Korean government must hold Aricell accountable for this gross negligence and ensure that such violations of OSH rights are met with appropriate punishment according to national laws.

This tragedy underscores the urgent need for strong safety regulations and strict enforcement to protect all workers, regardless of their nationality or employment status. The safety and health of workers must be the highest priority, and systemic changes are essential to prevent future tragedies.

By Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco - Grist, June 24, 2024

On February 3, 2023, a freight train owned by Norfolk Southern carrying thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals derailed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio. For days, flames engulfed the rail cars, which contained highly hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate, used in the production of plastic. A thick, tall plume of black smoke billowed from the accident site and forced the evacuation of thousands of residents. Now, scientists say that traces of this pollution was found across 16 states, spanning 540,000 square miles from Wisconsin to Maine to South Carolina.

“Everybody expected a local contamination issue,” said David Gay, coordinator of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author of the new study. “But I think what most people don’t understand about this fire is how big it was and how wide-ranging the implications are.”

Gay and his colleagues tracked the pollution from the fire by testing rain and snow samples from approximately 260 sites across the country in the two weeks following the derailment. The analysis, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, estimates that the fire in eastern Ohio impacted about 14 percent of U.S. land area and one-third of the country’s population, or 110 million people. 

Across these areas, researchers recorded some of the highest soil pHs, or alkaline soil, and levels of chloride ions in the past decade following the fire in East Palestine. Gay said that the elevated measurements documented during the two-week spike, while certainly unusual, were not dangerous. “It was jumping out like a red light,” said Gay. “I never would have guessed it would have been in Wisconsin, no way in hell.” 

By Julie Grant - Allegheny Front, June 21, 2024

After a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last year, and chemicals were released throughout the community, the National Transportation Safety Board investigated what happened and why. 

The agency will hold a meeting on Tuesday to vote on its findings. One major issue is whether Norfolk Southern provided all relevant information to decision-makers as the disaster unfolded. 

What happened?

The Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine on February 3, 2023, a Friday night, and fires flared up from the smoldering tank cars through the weekend. 

A Unified Incident Command quickly formed. It included Norfolk Southern, emergency responders, Ohio governor Mike DeWine, and was led by East Palestine Fire Chief Keith Drabick. 

That Monday, Drabick stood behind the governor at a press conference, as DeWine explained why he and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro were issuing mandatory evacuation orders for residents in a one-by-two miles radius around the derailment site, more than 2,000 people.

“The vinyl chloride contents of five rail cars are currently unstable and could potentially explode, causing deadly disbursement of shrapnel and toxic fumes,” DeWine said. 

He then pointed at a map with a red circle outlining a one-mile radius around the derailment site: “Those in the red area, those in the red area are facing grave danger of death. Those in the orange area are at severe risk of injury, including skin burns and severe lung damage.” 

By Gareth Dale - Green European Journal, June 12, 2024

Inspiration for decarbonising industry and creating green jobs is within the hands of those already facing precarity in today’s economically unstable times. A resilient history of workers’ initiatives overcoming redundancies, alongside recent activist, trade-union, and workforce collaborations, provides concrete examples for empowered transitioning.

In 2023, when Europe was blasted by a record-breaking heatwave named after Cerberus (the three-headed hound of Hades), workers organised to demand protection from the extreme heat. In Athens, employees at the Acropolis and other historical sites went on strike for four hours each day. In Rome, refuse collectors threatened to strike if they were forced to work during periods of peak heat. Elsewhere in Italy, public transport workers demanded air-conditioned vehicles, and workers at a battery plant in Abruzzo issued a strike threat in protest at the imposition of working in “asphyxiating heat”. 

One could almost say that the Ancient Greeks foretold today’s climate crisis when they euphemistically referred to Hades, god of the dead, as “Plouton” (giver of wealth). The reference is to the materials – in their day, silver, in ours, fossil fuels and critical minerals – that, after extraction from the Underworld, line the pockets of plutocrats. Modern society’s plutocratic structure explains the astonishingly sluggish response to climate breakdown. The much-touted green transition is barely taking place, at least if the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is taken as a yardstick. These continue to rise, even accelerate, and likewise the rate of global heating. The transition remains in the grip of powerful and wealthy institutions that – even if we leave aside motivations of avarice or greed for status – are systemically constrained to put the accumulation of capital above the habitability of the planet.

Against this backdrop, the politics of transition is class struggle beyond that of workers defending themselves and their communities against weather emergencies. That is part of the picture, of course. But class struggle is, above all, evident in the liberal establishment seeking to displace transition costs onto the masses, even as it presides over ever crasser wealth polarisation. From this, resistance inevitably flows. The question is, what form will it take? 

Some takes the form of an anti-environmental backlash, instigated or colonised by conservative and far-right forces. While posing as allies of “working families”, they denigrate the most fundamental of workers’ needs: for a habitable planet. Some takes a progressive form, the classic case being the gilets jaunes in France. When Emmanuel Macron’s government hiked “green taxes” on fossil fuels as a signal for consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars, the rural working poor and lower-middle classes, unable to afford the switch, donned yellow safety vests and rose in revolt. Although France’s labour-movement radicals joined the cause, they were unable to cohere into a political force capable of offering alternative solutions to the social and environmental crises.

By Frida Garza - Grist, June 10, 2024

Last month, Oscar Hernández couldn’t sleep. The cook, who worked at a restaurant located inside of a Las Vegas casino, had found that after coming home from his shifts, his body would not properly cool down. 

The air conditioning at work had been broken for about four months. Hernández worked eight-hour shifts during the restaurant’s brunch service, whipping up eggs, waffles, and fried chicken. He spent hours in front of a scaldingly hot grill — an older model that only ran at extremely high temperatures. Most often, his station on the line was in a corner, and it seemed as if all of the other heat sources in the kitchen — the gas burners, the four deep-fryers, the waffle iron — converged right there. Summer had not officially started, but Las Vegas was already seeing above-normal temperatures in May, sometimes reaching triple digits. The fans that the owners put in the kitchen were not strong enough to cool down the space.

Extreme heat is nothing new to Hernández, who lives in Nevada and has worked in the restaurant industry for 22 years. But the situation at this non-union restaurant, a rarity on the Las Vegas strip, was becoming untenable. Sometimes it got so hot in the kitchen that Hernández preferred the heat outside, where at least there was a breeze. He had a headache that would not go away, and at home he sometimes found himself getting irritated with his children over small things. 

“The heat inside a restaurant is different — it gets into your body,” Hernández said in an interview in Spanish. He knew doctors recommend getting adequate rest to help recover from overheating, but now he could not do even that. So he quit.

By Amy Goodman, Jeff Goodell, and Ruth Cerezo-Mota - Democracy Now!, June 6, 2024

By staff - FracTracker Alliance, June 5, 2024

Key Findings

• The DOE’s lack of transparency about ARCH2 prevents meaningful public feedback, leaving communities uninformed and unable to engage in decision-making.
• Hydrogen blending raises safety concerns due to hydrogen embrittlement, potentially affecting pipelines, valves, and household appliances.
• Reliance on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology introduces risks like subsurface carbon dioxide migration, posing threats to nearby communities.
• Fracking for methane can lead to groundwater contamination, air pollution, and health effects for nearby communities.
• While promising temporary jobs, ARCH2 is unlikely to generate significant long-term employment, potentially extending reliance on coal and gas industries and contributing to job and population loss.

Overview

The Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) project is a major initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy aimed at developing a hydrogen economy in the Appalachian region. However, despite promises of significant advancement in clean energy and economic growth, the project presents substantial risks to the environment and human health and safety.

This article is based on comments submitted to the Department of Energy (DOE) by FracTracker Alliance regarding the hub’s potential environmental, health, and economic impacts on local communities, including the lack of transparency from the DOE, the dangers associated with hydrogen blending, underground gas migration risks, and the impacts of continued reliance on fossil fuel extraction.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, June 5, 2024