Danger Flying Objects. M.R.I.’s Strong Magnets Cited in Accidents is a fascinating yet scary article from the NYT about safety concerns surrounding MRI equipment. It linked to a site with incredible images of wheel chairs and other objects being sucked into the MRI machines. Yikes – a safety hazard for patients and workers alike! (via MetaFilter).
Ohio Coingate. Investigations into BWC-related problems reeled in a big fish last week with Governor Taft’s criminal conviction for ethics violations. Follow the Toledo Blade’s ongoing coverage of the evolving Ohio scandals. Or read how these scandals are playing on the blogs.
Racial disparities. HealthLawProf Blog has a post on recent published NEJM reports on the disparity in health care services that face African Americans.
Investigations. Computer Forensics and Its Impact on Employment Litigation – “Computer forensics companies are the private investigators of cyberspace. They can uncover everything from “deleted” files (which do not actually disappear from the computer but are simply moved out of the portion normally accessible) to Web surfing, from profiles to “metadata” (data about data), from e-mail histories to data movement (i.e., evidence about data being written or “burned” to disks). (via our neighbor form the north, Thoughts from a Management Lawyer.)
Pharma. Matthew Holt dicusses the Vioxx trials.
Benefits. Cost of Benefits in Small and Large Businesses (pdf) – a study by the Small Business Administration, found via Michael Fox at Jottings by an Employer’s Lawyer
Toxic waste. Jordan Barab discusses Where Computers Go When They Die (And who pays the consequences). In a global economy, we often outsource costly, dangerous work to counties where worker protections are lax or nonexistent. Even though many think of high tech as a very clean industry, high-tech waste can be very toxic. Unfortunately, many Chinese workers may be blocked from reading Jordan’s post.
How to attract good workers. Diane Pfadenhauer at Strategic HR Lawyer posts about a survey on attracting and keeping employees.
Work shifts and safety. rawblogXport links to various CDC reports on the impact of shift work and long hours. From one of the reports: “Based on the pooled frequencies across these eight data sets, risk increased in an approximately linear fashion, from morning to night, with an increased risk of 18.3% on the afternoon shift, and of 30.4% on the night shift, relative to that on the morning shift.”
Insurance industry results. Joe Paduda reports on 2004 Property and Casualty industry results. As the industry shifts from a seller’s to a buyer’s market, he advises insurers that, “Now is NOT the time to scrimp on the basics of insurance – risk selection, loss prevention, and claims management.”
HR issues. George’s Employment Blawg does a great weekly roundup of the HR Employment Blogosphere – check it out if you haven’t yet seen this week’s edition.
Legal case study. California Labor and Employment law reports on Leegin Creative Leather Products v. Diaz, a case where the employer apparently let emotion rather than reason be their guide.
Veteran disabilities. Disabled Worker Law blogs on the increase in brain cancer deaths and disability claims for veterans of the Gulf War Veterans.
Blogging news: Anita Campbell has a good essay about Blogging Trends – Good and Bad posted at the Egoist … Martin Grace aka RiskProf came back from vacation with a nice new blog look. We’re glad to welcome him back! … Belated congratulations to Inter Alia on a 3-year blogging anniversary. Thanks for the truly informative array of legal and technical links and resources!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005 at 9:41 am and is filed under Misc., Safety & Health, Social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.