OSHA Finds its Own Inspectors Damaged by Deadly Beryllium

[G_j]

http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0117-02.htm

OSHA Finds its Own Inspectors Damaged by Deadly Beryllium; First Screenings Yield Disturbing Results, Whistleblower Vindicated

WASHINGTON -- January 17 -- The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is finding that a significant percentage of its inspectors have become sensitized by exposure to beryllium, an extremely toxic metal that can cause an often-fatal lung disease, according to a report in today’s Chicago Tribune. OSHA acted to screen inspectors only under pressure from disclosures of one of its own top administrators, charges Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

In 2003, Dr. Adam Finkel was removed from his position as OSHA Administrator for the six-state Rocky Mountain Region after protesting an April 2002 decision by Assistant Labor Secretary John Henshaw to deny recommended blood screening tests for employees and to not inform potentially exposed individuals of their exposures and the value of undergoing a blood test for sensitization. An agency database OSHA created more than 5 years ago indicates that as many as 1,000 current and former compliance officers may have been exposed to beryllium levels up to several hundred times higher than permissible levels.

After 18 months of intransigence following Dr. Finkel going public with his concerns, OSHA finally began a medical monitoring program in April 2004, but only for its current inspectors. The first results from those screenings reportedly show that 1.5 percent of the 200 inspectors examined so far have become sensitized to beryllium. Hundreds of workers in various private industries have already died of chronic beryllium disease (CBD); a fast-progressing, debilitating and potentially fatal lung disease in those whose immune systems have become sensitized following exposure to the substance. The only known cause of CBD is exposure to beryllium dust.

“Every American worker who expects OSHA to protect him from hazardous exposures on the job should take a hard look at how the agency has abandoned and deceived its own employees exposed to beryllium,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that Dr. Finkel now has faculty positions at Princeton University and the New Jersey University of Medicine and Dentistry after receiving a substantial financial settlement in return for withdrawing a whistleblower reprisal complaint against the agency. “CBD can be a fast-moving disease and we hope no sensitized OSHA employee has progressed to CBD itself during the years of delay after the issue was first raised.”


..more..

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Wow...this is interesting

Beryllicosis is as awful a death as mesothelioma and asbestosis...bookmarking this to follow it.

[aquart]

2. Bastards.

[rodeodance]

7. first the EPA fudges with numbers, now OSHA plays with lives!!

[G_j]

8. not to mention the FDA n/t

[lovuian]

3. Karma

Osha inspectors this is so sad we can't protect our inspectors!!!

[Straight Shooter]

4. Quick, George, before it's too late, demand a cap on CBD lawsuits!

Set up your self-righteous contemptuous blockade to "frivolous" lawsuits. We can't have all these deaths and disease getting compensated fairly, now, can we?

:nuke:

[UpInArms]

5. the top health official in the Clinton admin tried to get beryllium

banned -

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0107290381jul29.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed

excerpt (really interesting news story back in July 2001)

Even for experienced industrial hygienists and engineers, protecting workers who use beryllium is difficult. The U.S. Department of Energy has spent millions of dollars in the past 25 years at its weapons facilities to protect workers, an effort that has included extensive air sampling and ventilation. Yet since testing began in the 1980s, 165 Energy Department employees and contract workers have been diagnosed with beryllium disease.

David Michaels, the top health official in the Energy Department during the Clinton administration, said that given the government's experience with the illness, he thinks it is virtually impossible for small companies with limited resources to adequately protect workers. He called for a ban on beryllium, except for national security purposes, and decried the spread of the metal to many different industries and consumer markets.

"This is a disaster waiting to happen," said Michaels, former assistant energy secretary for environment, safety and health and now a public health professor at George Washington University.

But Brush Wellman Inc., the nation's leading beryllium producer, disputed Michaels' assessment.

"Many customers both large and small have safely used beryllium-containing materials over the years," the company said in a written statement. " . . . We believe it is unfair for anyone to assume that just because a company is small that it is unwilling or unable to provide adequate resources to protect its workers."

...more...

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. This man needs to be tried for abusing his position and jeopardizing

the public safety.

[Blue Diadem]

9. Toledo Blade ran a 22 mo. investigation and wrote a series

in 1999 about the dangers and deaths of beryllium and how safety regulators were detered by the industry and the Gov.

Here's a link for anyone interested. It was written in a weekly series so at the bottom of the first story there are numerous links to continue.

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Dato=19990328&Kategori=SRDEADLY&Lopenr=908002&Ref=AR



Article published Sunday, March 28, 1999

DEADLY ALLIANCE | INTRODUCTION
How government and industry chose weapons over workers


snip:
When safety regulators tried to protect workers, they ran up against an overwhelming alliance: the beryllium industry and the U.S. defense establishment.

This alliance, records show, slowly undermined the regulators' safety efforts, and before it was all over, the government had cut a secret deal with Brush Wellman. The government got its valuable beryllium for years to come, and Brush got more money and a virtual monopoly.

Workers got more of the same: overexposure to beryllium dust.


snip:
Throughout the series, we'll take you to places across the country where the disease is a problem, from an aging Pennsylvania coal town to a former Colorado weapons plant.

You'll meet 7-year-old Gloria Gorka, killed by air pollution outside a beryllium plant; Butch Lemke, a former worker who has spent 15 years tied to an oxygen tank, and Carol Mason, who has the disease even though she never worked a single day in a beryllium facility.



edited to add last snip.

[G_j]

12. there you have it..

"When safety regulators tried to protect workers, they ran up against an overwhelming alliance: the beryllium industry and the U.S. defense establishment."

[fortyfeetunder]

10. If Chao oversaw OSHA

I would have been surprised if she had cared not one bit.

[DeepModem Mom]

11. Another fox-guarding-henhouse moment from the Bush cabal --

God help us all.