Monthly Archives: January 2010

Confused UK recycling sector is really deadly

If you work in waste and recycling in the UK, you might not be reassured to hear it has a work fatality rate nine times the national average. And you might be even more alarmed when you hear some privatisation-happy local authorities are clueless when it comes to their legal responsibility to keep you safe. […]
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Pesticide pushers kill thousands in Bangladesh

Thousands of Bangladeshi workers are dying of pesticide poisoning each year, as a result of unsafe use of often banned products. Meanwhile, safer, greener agricultural methods are ignored in the face of a sustained and richly-resourced promotional campaign by multinational pesticide producers. An annual government health survey has found that pesticide-related poisoning may be responsible […]
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Climate change is a class issue

Global warming, pollution and the environmental impact of energy production impose a greater burden on low-income and disadvantaged communities. The message, spelled out in papers in a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Justice, includes a call for urgent strategies to prevent inequities. Papers in the dedicated ‘climate justice’ issue emerged from a US […]
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Four digit fine for four digit loss

A UK plastics recycling company has been fined £2,500 after a worker had four of his fingers severed. Wesley Dickinson, 22, was trying to remove a guillotine jam at Centriforce Products Ltd in Liverpool when his fingers became trapped. Doctors reattached two of his fingers, but they have limited movement. The company, which admitted breaching […]
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US work safety chief calls for good safe green jobs

The newly installed leader of the US government’s workplace safety watchdog has made his first public act a call for green jobs to be good, safe jobs. On 9 December 2009 David Michaels was  confirmed as the Obama administration’s Assistant Secretary of Labor for occupational safety and health. The head of the Occupational Safety and […]
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Waste and recycling is a sick industry

Workers in the UK waste and recycling industry have much higher sickness rates than other local authority workers, research by a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) agency has found. Review of sickness absence data in the waste and recycling industry, a report prepared by the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL), found the sector recorded more […]
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