health and safety

By Reid Southwick - Calgary Herald, December 26, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Crews were scrambling on Friday to clean up the scene of the latest train derailment that spilled ash and grain into a Banff creek and caused the water to become cloudy just upstream from the Bow River.

The derailment on Canadian Pacific’s main line through Banff National Park has reignited concerns about railway safety and the speeds at which trains travel through sensitive habitats.

The spilled ash and grain each pose their own potential problems for wildlife, one that could lower acidity levels for aquatic life, another that could attract bears to unsafe territory.

Parks Canada doesn’t expect any long-term impacts on the local environment, though its officials planned to continue monitoring water quality.

Fifteen Canadian Pacific cars loaded with lentils and fly ash — a component of cement and a byproduct of coal-fired plants — fell off the tracks on a bridge crossing over 40 Mile Creek near Banff townsite at 2 a.m. Friday.

Seven rail cars fell into the creek spilling some of their contents, which turned the water into a murky colour, though it doesn’t appear to be affecting the Bow River, which is about 200 metres downstream.

“The bridge is a wreck,” said John Cottreau, a spokesman for the Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash.

Alberta Environment, which has dispatched crews to the scene to help make sure the site is properly cleaned, said its greatest concern is the fly ash, which can create sedimentation problems and decrease acidity levels.

The impact that the spill will have on fish in 40 Mile Creek will depend on the amount of ash that was spilled, which has not yet been determined, spokeswoman Katrina Bluetchen said.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 17, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

• Pipe Dreams? Labor Researchers Say Keystone XL Project May Kill More Jobs Than It Creates - Sean Sweeney, director and founder of the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University, and Bruce Hamilton, vice president of Amalgamated Transit Union interviewed by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, December 12, 2014

Urgent Action:

• Philippines sugar organizer murdered - Act Now!

Dispatches from Lima COP20:

• 'Get the FF Out': Campaigners Reject Fossil Fuel Influence at Climate Summit - By Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, December 8, 2014
• Lima COP20 Climate Summit Marked By Protests, Publicity Stunts and PR Promises - By Brendan DeMelle, DeSmog Blog, December 10, 2014
• Lima's UN climate talks aren't even focusing on keeping down temperatures - By Simeon Tegel, Global Post, December 10, 2014
• People’s Summit in Lima Envisions Bottom-Up Movement for Global Climate Justice - By Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams, December 9, 2014
• Resistance and Solidarity at COP20, Lima - By Chris Eaton, Rising Tide North America, December 12, 2014
• Scenes from Climate Change Summit in Peru - By Lara Norkus-Crampton, National Nurses United, December 11, 2014

Other News of Interest:

• Cultivating Climate Justice through Compost: the Story of Hernani, Spain - By Beverly Bell, Global Justice Ecology Project, December 11, 2014
• Greetings from the Frontline Shale Fields of Pennsylvania - By Spencer Johnson, Talk Fracking, December 11, 2014
• Native Americans challenge construction of Mojave Desert solar plant - By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times, December 12, 2014
• New strike hits Peru's largest copper mine - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, December 11, 2014
• North Dakota's Meaningless New Bakken Oil Regulations Will Keep Bomb Trains Rolling - By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog, December 11, 2014
• NRC cites Palisades for worker radiological safety violations, record number of failures during Component Design Basis Inspections - Beyond Nuclear, December 11, 2014
• Seven injured, two seriously, in explosion at rail car repair facility near Atchison - By Michelle Pekarsky, Megan Dillard and Eric Burke, Fox4 Kansas City News, December 11, 2014
• Todos Somos SAWETO - By Michael Williams, Blue-Green Blog, December 10, 2014

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

By Jenny Brown - Labor Notes, December 3, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Paul Proudlock went to bed at midnight to calibrate his sleep for a freight train he was to drive at 2 p.m. the next day. At 2:15 a.m., a Canadian Pacific dispatcher called him and asked him to take a passenger train in three hours.

“I’m not rested,” Proudlock is heard explaining in a company recording. The dispatcher threatened to discipline him and cancel his 2 p.m. train. “You’re obligated to go. If you answer the phone, you have to go.”

“No, I’m not,” said Proudlock. “I’m obligated to do the safe thing first… I drive a train.”

This kind of pressure is commonplace, according to railroad and airline workers. They say managers push workers to pilot planes, trains, and buses when they are too tired to safely do so. The stakes are high for the workers—and for the general public.

3/4 FELL ASLEEP

In a survey of freight train operators conducted by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, 96 percent said they had gone to work tired. More alarmingly, three-quarters said they fell asleep while working—in the previous month. Among those who, like Proudlock, turned down jobs because of fatigue, 43 percent said they faced investigation or discipline.

“They’ll pressure people… and people don’t know what leg to stand on,” said CSX locomotive engineer J.P. Wright, who is based in Kentucky. “There are so many gray areas in the contract, if you could see a flow chart, it’s like a Merrie Melodies crazy cartoon.”

The railroads claim they don’t push people to work tired. Regulators scolded Canadian Pacific in the Proudlock case.

The main problem with freight railroads, said Wright, is that “they’ve short-staffed everything to the bone.” So when somebody takes time off, others have to unexpectedly fill in, creating cascades of scheduling complexity.

While rest times were increased in a 2008 rewrite of railroad scheduling rules, fatigue problems persist.

And regulations don’t help if the penalties are low, along with the chances of being fined. “I was just told, on a recorded CSX line, that they knew specifically they were violating the rest law but they would just go ahead and pay the fine,” said Wright, who is co-chair of the cross-union caucus Railroad Workers United.

From Sightline Daily - November 20, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Ecology.iww.org web editor's note: shortly after this article was published, it was deleted. The reasons for its deletion are not given. Did somebody higher up in the union bureaurcracy closely tied with management freak out? We'll let you know as soon as we find out more.

If you’re following the debate about the development of large-scale crude oil-by-rail sites in Washington, you should be paying close attention to what labor unions are saying.

Sightline has cataloged a range of serious concerns about the rise of oil trains— from lax tank car safety standards to industry intransigence to severe under-insurance—but the perspective of actual rail workers is even more troubling. In response to a recently published Washington Department of Ecology study on rail oil transport, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen submitted formal comments to the State that are frankly damning.The remarks illustrate an industry prioritizing profits and efficiency over health and safety and, by doing so, jeopardizing the very workers we rely on to  move 15,000-ton trains of hazardous goods through our communities safely.

Ecology will not be making the comments publicly available until March 2015, but with permission from the union I’m publishing portions of them here. What follows are direct excerpts from  Chairman Sharaim C. Allen’s letter to the Department of Ecology:

There is an imminent risk to public health and safety by the number of inexperienced, “new hire” railroad employees entering the railroad workforce inadequately trained and/or familiarized with the workplace environment.

There is an imminent risk to public health and safety by the proposed use of Single-Person Train Crews in freight rail operations.

Transport Canada took steps to bridle the North American rail industry’s “profits first” approach to safety by requiring all trains carrying hazardous materials in Canada to have a minimum Two-Person Crew. The Canadian government has also put a strict timeline of three years on the phasing out of the aging DOT-111 tank cars. For a country that is supposed to be setting the example for the rest of the world, so far, the USA still has not taken the sensible safety steps our neighbors to the north now require of railroads operating in their country.

By Bryce Covett - Think Progress, November 17, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

On Saturday morning, four workers died at a DuPont chemical plant that manufactures the pesticide Lannate in La Porte, Texas after a leak of the poisonous gas methyl mercaptan. A fifth was hospitalized but later released. The plant hasn’t been visited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 2007.

Such a deadly accident without an explosion or fire is unusual, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Methyl mercaptan is subject to a number of federal environmental and safety regulations. But those regulations did not ensure that the plant was a safe place to work. It was last inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) seven years ago, when it was issued two serious violations for the safe management of highly hazardous chemicals, which could result in toxic or explosive risks. It was fined $1,700 for one and $1,800 for the other, although the latter was later reduced to $1,700.

The plant is also out of compliance with hazardous waste management and air emissions standards from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to records reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. The agency brought formal enforcement actions against it for violations in 2012 and 2014, resulting in $117,375 in penalties. DuPont is also in discussions with the EPA and Justice Department about these issues at the La Porte plant, which began after a 2008 inspection.

And over the last five years, the plant was cited for violating state law at least two dozen times by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, according to a review of state records by the Texas Tribune, for failures related to performing routine safety inspections, keeping equipment in working order, and preventing pollution leaks. Most recently, it released 36,500 pounds of sulfur dioxide over the course of three hours in September, well above the allowed limit, and in August last year it leaked 40 pounds of chlorine. Some of the more serious citations resulted in fines of a few thousand dollars.

Staff Report - Russia Times, November 17, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Four DuPont employees were killed and another injured when a toxic chemical was spilled at its plant in La Porte, Texas, on Saturday morning. Residents of the city complained of a persistent “funny smell” after the incident.

The company would not immediately identify the victims of the spill [they've since been identified as Crystal Rae Wise, brothers Gilbert and Robert Tisnado, and Wade Baker; for details see the link, below]. The emergency started at around 4 a.m. local time. It took repair crews two hours to replace a ruptured valve in the crop protection unit and contain the chemical. The confirmation of fatalities was released 12 hours after the incident.

The chemical spilled was methyl mercaptan, or methanethiol,which is used to make feed stock for insecticides and fungicides. It is more commonly known for being added to naturally odorless propane and natural gas to give them a distinctive rotten egg smell, making leaks detectable. In high concentration it can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, coma, and death.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the employees,” plant manager Randall Clements said in a statement. “There are no words to fully express the loss we feel or the concern and sympathy we extend to the families of the employees and their co-workers.”

“We will continue to cooperate with all the local authorities, and make sure that we investigate this fully and we will find the cause of this, at this point, we don’t know why this happened,” he added.

The workers were exposed to the chemical as they responded to the leak. DuPont insists that at no time were people living in the vicinity of the plant in danger.

Local residents, however, complained of a foul odor on Saturday morning.

“We are used to funny smells around here, especially when the wind is out of the north,” La Porte resident Dudley Crittendon told Click2Houston.com. “We thought something had died in the house. We started burning candles but it didn’t go away.”

La Porte is located in Harris County, about 20 miles east of Houston. DuPont’s chemical plant employs 320 people. Four other companies are also tenants at the same complex, according to AP.

For a more detailed investigation of this incident, please see Victims of DuPont in Texas, Socialist Worker, November 18, 2014

By Jesse Paul and Mark Jaffe - Denver Post, November 13, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

MEAD — One worker was killed and two were seriously injured Thursday, November 13 when a frozen, high-pressure water line ruptured at a Weld County oil well site.

The workers were trying to thaw the line when the accident occurred, officials said.

The Anadarko Petroleum Corp. well was being hydraulically fractured, or fracked, by the Halliburton Co., and the workers were Halliburton employees.

Anadarko said it was suspending all fracking operations in the area pending a review of the accident.

The area has been the scene of drilling since at least 1979, but this year Anadarko has sunk at least nine deep horizontal wells, according to state records.

Each of those wells has to be fracked by pumping a mixture of water, sand and trace chemicals into the well at high pressure to crack rock and release oil.

Thomas Sedlmayr, 48, was flown to Denver Health, and Grant Casey, 28, was taken by ambulance to the Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland. The name of the dead worker had not been released.

By Anastasia Pantsios - EcoWatch, November 12, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Issues that primarily impact women often end up on the back burner. Maybe that’s why the new study from Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE) on the health impacts of exposure to salon chemicals on the (mostly) women who work in personal care salons is the first of its kind. The study, Beauty and Its Beast: Unlocking the Impact of Toxic Chemicals on Salon Workers, reveals that long-term exposure to products routinely used in salons leads to an array of negative health conditions frequently suffered by beauticians and other salon workers.

“Studies across the globe have found correlations between chemical exposures in salons and adverse health outcomes in employees,” said the study’s lead author Alexandra Scranton, director of science and research for WVE. “However, until now, there has never been a comprehensive review of existing science that brings all the players onto one stage.”

“Salon workers, a population dominated by women, are exposed to a myriad of chemicals of concern every day in their workplaces,” says the study. “Hair sprays, permanent waves, acrylic nail application and numerous other salon products contain ingredients associated with asthma, dermatitis, neurological symptoms and even cancer. Salon workers absorb these chemicals through their skin and breathe them in as fumes build up in the air of the salon over the course of the workday. Research shows that salon workers are at greater risk for certain health problems compared to other occupations.”

By Michelle Chen - The Nation, November 10, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Last week's Republican election victories will set the stage for more stagnation in Washington, but might also grease the skids for some of the most controversial energy ventures at ground zero in the climate change debate: the long-stalled Keystone XL Pipeline project, and the booming hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," industry. But one thing that might put the brakes on the dirty fuel rush is the mounting research evidence linking oil and gas extraction to massive health risks for workers and communities.

A new study published in Environmental Health reveals air pollution data on major, in some cases previously underestimated, health risks from toxic contamination at gas production sites related to fracking. Air samples gathered around "unconventional oil and gas" sites by community-based environmental research teams contained unsafe levels of several volatile compounds that "exceeded federal guidelines under several operational circumstances," and that "Benzene, formaldehyde, and hydrogen sulfide were the most common compounds to exceed acute and other health-based risk levels."

This suggests fracking may bring risk of cancer, birth defects and long-term respiratory and cellular damage to local towns and farms. Building on other studies on drilling-related water contamination, the air pollution research may stoke growing opposition from communities near drilling sites, who must weigh the industry's promises of new investment and jobs against the potential cost to the human health.

The findings also raise questions about the safety of fracking-site workers, who may have far less legal recourse over potential health damage than do local homeowners. Many work contract jobs under harsh, isolated conditions, in a volatile industry where pressure to pump profits is high and labor protections weak.

By Ken Ward Jr - The Charleston Gazette, November 13, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Don Blankenship, the longtime chief executive officer of Massey Energy, was indicted Thursday on charges that he orchestrated the routine violation of key federal mine safety rules at the company’s Upper Big Branch Mine prior to an April 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners.

A federal grand jury in Charleston charged Blankenship with conspiring to cause willful violations of ventilation requirements and coal-dust control rules — meant to prevent deadly mine blasts —during a 15-month period prior to the worst coal-mining disaster in a generation.

The four-count indictment, filed in U.S. District Court, also alleges that Blankenship led a conspiracy to cover up mine safety violations and hinder federal enforcement efforts by providing advance warning of government inspections.

“Blankenship knew that UBB was committing hundreds of safety-law violations every year and that he had the ability to prevent most of the violations that UBB was committing,” the indictment states. “Yet he fostered and participated in an understanding that perpetuated UBB’s practice of routine safety violations, in order to produce more coal, avoid the costs of following safety laws, and make more money.”

The indictment also alleges that, after the explosion, Blankenship made false statements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the investing public about Massey’s safety practices before the explosion.

The three felonies and one misdemeanor carry a maximum combined penalty of 31 years imprisonment, U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said in a prepared statement. He would not comment beyond the prepared statement.

The indictment comes after a more than four-year investigation that began following the mine disaster on April 5, 2010, but expanded to examine a troubled safety record that critics have long argued put coal production and profits ahead of worker protection.