Jane Hiebert White has posted a great edition of Health Wonk Review: Washington Week at Health Affairs – and she notes that this issue coincides with Academy Health’s Annual Research Meeting held in DC this past week, a gathering based on the concept that health policy should be informed by research. In this HWR issue, one of the major themes centers on health care reform. It’s worth your time to check it out – it may be one of our biggest and most substantive issues yet.
Survival story – at the beginning of the year, we posted about miracle survivor Alcides Moreno who lived through a NY scaffolding collapse which sent him plummeting 47 stories. Today, the New York Post features a story about Moreno entitled 47-story guy walking tall. But not all the news associated with this story is good: his brother who was also on the scaffold was killed in the fall. Earlier this week, The New York Times covered the OSHA report about the accident, which found fault with City Wide Window Cleaning, the service that employed the Morenos, and Tractel, the firm that had repaired the scaffold.
OSHA issued five citations against City Wide for what it called serious violations. Three carried proposed fines of $7,000 apiece, the highest the agency can impose. One was for lack of a system to protect against falls — cables that would have left the Morenos dangling at the top of the building when the scaffold gave way.
Another citation against City Wide was for failing to train employees in how to inspect the scaffold, and for not training them to wear “personal protective equipment” before they stepped onto the rig. The article lists other charges against both companies. Commenting about the fines imposed, the Daily News editorializes that death comes cheap, noting that, “Financial penalties like that are meaningless as a deterrent to corner-cutting by contractors.”
Hand injury prevention – According to an article on hand injuries by Don Groce in Occupational Hazards, gloves can prevent injuries and reduce costs. Recent research shows that “The cost of hand injuries in just one sector of the construction industry is six times what it would cost those employers to offer every employee appropriate hand protection.” This preventive measure represents potential to reduce pain, reduce lost productivity, and save dollars. According to the CDC, hand injuries account for more than a million emergency department visits by U.S. workers per year. Groce’s article also discusses advances in glove manufacturing and various types of safety glove alternatives.
Dupont cancer cluster? – Celeste Monforton of The Pump Handle raises the question of whether there is a cancer cluster associated with Dupont in response to 19 cases of rare carcinoid tumors among DuPont employees, with 6 of the cases surfacing among workers at the Washington Works plant in West Virginia. She reports that adverse health effects have been associated with exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA or C8), the chemical used to make Teflon and other non-stick surfaces.
