SEIU Health and Safety Program

06/24/2020

In honor of Dr. Bingham, I'm posting a series of videos of her speaking about occupational and environmental health and safety, from her long career, This video is of Dr. Bingham's presentation at the 1979 Seminar for the news media, Lost in the Workplace: Is There an Occupational Disease Epidemic? Dr. Bingham, the Assistant Secretary for OSHA spoke on September 14, the second day of this two-day conference in Chicago, Illinois. This seminar was designed to give the media an opportunity to learn about occupational health problems.

A video of Dr. Bingham's presentation at the 1979 Seminar for the news media, Lost in the Workplace: Is There an Occupational Disease Epidemic? Dr. Bingham, ...

10/28/2017

Sixty-nine years ago, one of the worst air pollution disasters in U.S. history was beginning. In late October 1948, an air pollution inversion in Donora, Pennsylvania, killed 20 people within 12 hours and 70 within a month. The air pollution sickened about 40 percent of the town's 14,000 inhabitants. Today’s clip is from the 1967 film, Beware the Wind, produced at the George Washington University with funding from the U.S. Public Health Service. Donora, Pennsylvania, is a mill town on the Monongahela River, southeast of Pittsburgh. The fog started building up in Donora on October 27, 1948. By the following day it was causing coughing and other signs of respiratory distress for many residents. Many of the illnesses and deaths were initially attributed to asthma. The smog continued until it rained on October 31, by which time 20 residents of Donora had died and approximately one third to one half of the town's population of 14,000 residents had been sickened. Another 50 residents died of respiratory causes within a month after the incident. Hydrogen fluoride and sulfur dioxide emissions from U.S. Steel's Donora Zinc Works and its American Steel & Wire plant were frequent occurrences in Donora. What made the 1948 event more severe was a temperature inversion, a situation in which warmer air aloft traps pollution in a layer of colder air near the surface. The pollutants in the air mixed with fog to form a thick, yellowish, acrid smog that hung over Donora for five days. The sulfuric acid, nitrogen dioxide, fluorine, and other poisonous gases that usually dispersed into the atmosphere were caught in the inversion and accumulated until rain ended the weather pattern. Dr. Devra L. Davis has researched and written about the October 1948 zinc smelter related air pollution tragedy in Donora, Pennsylvania, her hometown. Link to http://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/0603web/smoke.html for more details and read her excellent 2003 book, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution (2003).

This is clipped from the 1967 film, Beware the Wind, produced at the George Washington University with funding from the U.S. Public Health Service. In 1948, ...

09/26/2013

SEIU Local 121RN and the Nurse Alliance of California are working on petitioning Cal/OSHA for a comprehensive workplace violence prevention standard for all healthcare workers, whether private or public sector. Earlier this week the campaign received a letter of support from the SEIU State Council on behalf of its 700,000 members. This is the article and story the campaign put out earlier today.

Since 2009, SEIU Nurse Alliance of California and SEIU Local 121RN have been addressing workplace violence prevention through legislation, training, and advocacy. However, in 2012 it became clear that the current legislation and regulations could not adequately protect healthcare workers. The culmin...

04/30/2013

SEIU 121RN President Gayle Batiste, RN, addresses the “It Is Not Part of the Job” class on workplace violence prevention, sponsored by SEIU 121RN and the SEIU Nurse Alliance. “One worker dies every 15 seconds worldwide.”

04/28/2013

In honor of Workers Memorial Day I've had the awesome opportunity to co-lead on a program my local will present on Tuesday. We'll have a full-day of teaching / learning on workplace violence prevention and couch that all within WOrkers Memorial Day.

The VP of my IU will do a presentation on lateral violence (bullying).

A woman who was pivotal in getting the first ever Workers Memorial Day on the calendar will present on that history and how it is intrinsically tied in with where we are today; how and where we have so much more work to do.

A mentor of mine put together a presentation on workplace violence legislation moving in other states around the country and though he won't be with us on Tuesday, I am filling in for him.

We will have an executive officer of Cal/OSHA come and give us a primer so that we know and understand our rights as they are now, how to exercise them, and then what we need to think to build on for the future.

I will give a presentation on "Moving it Forward," for lack of a better title. The focus of my presentation will be on empowerment, communication, getting to "our story" and getting our story out.

The image with this post is my awful attempt at taking a picture of the badge we made for the day.

If you are in Southern California Tuesday ... I know where you can get some good coffee, meet some cool people and learn and share what you know about workers working to keeping ourselves safe, alive and well. (email me if you are, in fact, in town). -Richard

03/01/2013

On this date in 1936, after five years of labor by 21,000 workers, almost 100 of whom were killed on the job, the Boulder Dam (Hoover Dam) is completed and turned over to the government. This is clipped from the 1930s film, Boulder Dam, produced by the US Department of Interior.

Before construction could begin on Boulder Dam (now called Hoover Dam) in the early 1930s, loose rock had to be removed. Special men were required for the jo...

02/28/2013

This 1980 film was made for the US Department of Labor's Employment Standards Administration (ESA) which administers the Federal Black Lung Disability Trust ...

02/07/2013

In a remarkable example of the positive public health impact of an OSHA standard, since OSHA released the Bloodborne Pathogens Standard in 1991, hepatitis B infections among health care workers have plummeted from 17,000 to 400 cases annually.

The most prevalent, least reported and largely preventable serious risk health care workers face comes from the continuing use of conventional needles that c...