46.5 million recipients and the number of households actually receiving benefits increased to a new record of 22.2 million. Lastly, the average monthly benefit per household slide to a multi-year low of $277.27.
Households on foodstamps and average benefits:
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| Key findings of the study on OSHA inspections |
A landmark new study by business school economists at the University of California and Harvard University confirms that OSHA's inspections not only prevent workers from getting hurt on the job, they also save billions of dollars for employers through reduced workers' compensation costs.
The study, entitled "Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss," appeared in the top scientific journal Science and reports that workplace injury claims dropped 9.4% at businesses in the four years following a randomized OSHA inspection, compared with employers who were not inspected. Those same employers also saved an average of 26% on workers' compensation costs, compared to similar companies who were not inspected. This means that the average employer saved $355,000 (in 2011 dollars) as a result of an OSHA inspection. Benefits were observed among both small and large employers. Nationwide, these savings to employers amount to an estimated six billion dollars.
As researchers David Levine, Michael Toffel, and Matthew Johnson explain, "The benefits of a randomized safety inspection appear to be substantial. These results do not support the hypothesis that OSHA regulations and inspections on average have little value in improving health and safety." Furthermore, the researchers found "no evidence that these improvements came at the expense of employment, sales, credit ratings, or firm survival."
Following an interview with study co-author and assistant professor Michael Toffel, Michael Blanding of the Harvard Business School newsletter described the enormity of the findings:
[T]hose who charge that OSHA regulations cost business money have it completely wrong. In fact, the regulations save money. The magnitude of the results surprised even Toffel and Levine, who expected perhaps a small savings if any. But the strength of the findings, they say, should persuade even skeptical antiregulatory critics.
On May 21, Assistant Secretary for OSHA David Michaels responded to the new findings in an entry on the Department of Labor blog, writing:
The fact is OSHA inspections save lives and jobs at the same time. This is not a surprise to me. I regularly hear from employers, both large and small, that they value OSHA inspections and treat the inspector as an additional, expert set of eyes. The findings should finally put an end to the criticisms that OSHA inspections make running a business more expensive without adding value. The results are in: OSHA saves lives and jobs!
Dr. Michaels' full response to the study is available on the Department of Labor blog. A summary of the findings also appears in a ScienceNow breaking report, and subscribers to the journal can access the study at www.sciencemag.org. For more information about what OSHA is doing to protect workers, visit www.osha.gov.
Groundwater depletion has been most severe in the purple areas indicated on these maps of (A) the High Plains and (B) California's Central Valley. These heavily affected areas are concentrated in parts of the Texas Panhandle, western Kansas, and the Tulare Basin in California's Central Valley. Changes in groundwater levels in (A) are adapted from a 2009 report by the US Geological Survey and in (B) from a 1989 report by the USGS. Credit: US Geological Survey
The nation's food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere.
Chemical Regulation in the European Union: Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals
Source: Congressional Research Service (via Open CRS)
On June 1, 2007, the European Union (EU) began to implement a new law governing chemicals in EU commerce: Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH). It is intended to protect human health and the environment from hazardous chemicals while at the same time protecting the competitiveness of European industry. REACH evolved over eight years and reflects compromises reached among EU stakeholders. The final regulation reduces and coordinates EU regulatory requirements for chemicals new to the EU market and increases collection of such information for chemicals already in the EU market, thus potentially removing disincentives to innovation that existed under the former law. It also shifts responsibility for safety assessments from government to industry and encourages substitution of less toxic for more toxic chemicals in various chemical applications. Some U.S. chemical industry representatives believe that REACH is “impractical,” in part due to the large number of chemicals and difficulties of identifying end uses of chemicals in many products. In contrast, some public-interest groups are urging U.S. legislators to adopt a similar legislative approach.
H.R. 4471 would establish an interagency committee—the Transportation Fuels Regulatory Committee—to analyze and report to the Congress in 2013 on the impact a variety of rules and actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would have on gasoline and diesel fuel prices. The Secretary of Energy would chair the committee, which would consist of representatives from various agencies, including EPA, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Transportation. The committee would analyze the potential economic impact of specific EPA rules and actions that are scheduled to become final in 2016 and 2020. The bill also would delay the implementation of several EPA rules until six months after the release of the committee’s report. Finally, the bill would require that revisions to any national standards regarding ozone and ambient air quality take into account feasibility and cost.
...H.R. 4471 would require the Transportation Fuels Regulatory Committee to conduct a variety of analyses of certain EPA rules and actions, including the Tier 3 Motor Vehicle Emission and Fuel Standards, new or revised standards under section 111 or 112 of the Clean Air Act applicable to petroleum refineries, and new Renewable Fuels Program rules. Such analyses would include estimates of the cumulative impact of the covered rules and actions in relation to changes in prices of gasoline and diesel fuel, costs for capital investments, and employment. The committee also would analyze the cumulative impact of the covered rules and actions on consumers; small businesses; regional economies; public health; state, local, and tribal governments; and other areas. According to the Energy Information Administration, completing a thorough analysis of such issues could require a significant increase in funding to gather new data and expand the agency’s analytical capacity. However, the bill requires that the analyses be completed during the year following enactment and rely on readily available, existing data. Given those specifications and based on information about the cost of similar work by EPA and the Energy Information Administration, CBO estimates that this work would cost $3 million in 2013.
John Gran (@FishSouthBay) - The Globally Harmonized System (GHS) finally makes its debut. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of time yet to comply.
OSHA has announced that the final rule for GHS, or Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals, will become law effective May 25, 2012.
The effective date of the final rule is 60 days after March 26, the date of the rule’s publication in the Federal Register.
The new GHS rule will be added to OSHA’s existing hazard communication standard, or worker right-to-know law.
OSHA says the GHS rule will help prevent 43 worker fatalities and 585 occupational injuries and illnesses from chemical exposures every year.
According to OSHA, the GHS rule will affect over 5 million workplaces and 40 million workers.
There are two primary groups of employers that will be affected by the GHS rule:
OSHA will allow employers the following phase-in or transition period to comply with the new GHS requirements:
Options During Transition
During the phase-in period, employers would be required to be in compliance with either the existing hazard communication standard or the revised standard with GHS, or both.
OSHA recognizes that hazard communication programs will go through a period of time where labels and SDSs under both standards will be present in the workplace. This will be considered acceptable, and employers are not required to maintain two sets of labels and SDSs for compliance purposes.
Read more by by John Gran (@FishSouthBay) at:
When we think of rising sea levels, we think of global climate change and melting ice caps. Yet there's a disparity in the raw data. During the second half of the last century, global sea levels rose 1.8 millimeters per year, according to tide gauges. But it's been determined that melting ice caps and glaciers have only contributed to 1.1 millimeters per year of that. So where did the other 0.7 millimeters come from? A new study has a remarkably simple answer: from you.
The extra rise in sea level not accounted for by melting ice caps can be explained by taking into account all the water we are pumping out of the ground and dumping into the ocean, says a team of researchers reporting in Nature Geoscience. Which actually makes a lot of sense.
When humans pump water out of the ground for irrigation, industrial processes, or even simple residential use, some of it is returned to aquifers straight through the ground. Some of it goes into tributaries and rivers and ends up trapped in reservoirs both natural and man-made. But a lot of it wends its way back to the ocean via rivers and streams or is evaporated into the water cycle, eventually reaching the oceans that way. Regardless, the study shows we've been largely underestimating the impact on sea levels caused by pumping water out of the ground and dumping it into the oceans.
That impact, according to the study, is roughly 0.77 millimeters per year between 1961 and 2003--a remarkably tidy number keeping in mind the gap between ice-melt-derived sea level rise and real sea level rise is roughly 0.7 millimeters, and one that far surpasses previous estimates of groundwater's impact on sea levels. The researchers themselves admit that their simulations, while scientific and backed with plenty of data, could always benefit from more and better measurement of groundwater extraction. But the explanation--that pulling water from the ground and putting it into the oceans might contribute to rising sea levels--is just simple enough seem credible, no?
[Nature]
Read the rest of Solar Energy Generation Costs to Compete with Fossil Fuels by 2017
The FDA announced on May 11 that they’ll be delaying implementation of pending sunscreen regulations that were supposed to mandate how sunscreens are labeled and marketed. These changes that would have make it easier for consumers to choose safe and effective sunscreens have been put off, apparently due to pressure from cosmetic industry groups. This means that unfortunately, we’ll have to spend another summer with inadequately labeled sunscreen. Click ahead to learn more about the regulations and why they’ve been delayed.
U.S. military scientists have started to test microgrids that would provide clean energy to soldiers in the field, in a bid to mitigate the risks associated with fuel transportation to dangerous areas and to make soldiers’ work less technically complex. Since 2009, scientists from the Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) have been developing two systems – RENEWS and REDUCE – which are being tested at the Fort Irwin National Training Center in California, and by U.S. Africa Command. .. Continue Reading U.S. Army tests renewable energy systems for soldiers in the field
It is, says Gabriel Demombynes, of the World Bank’s Nairobi office, “a tremendous success story that has only barely been recognized." Michael Clemens of the Center for Global Development calls it simply “the biggest, best story in development.” It is the huge decline in child mortality now gathering pace across Africa. The decline in African child mortality is speeding up. In most countries it now falling about twice as fast as during the early 2000s and 1990s. More striking, the average fall is faster than it was in China in the early 1980s, when child mortality was declining around 3% a year, admittedly from a lower base.The decline in African child mortality is speeding up. In most countries it now falling about twice as fast as during the early 2000s and 1990s. More striking, the average fall is faster than it was in China in the early 1980s, when child mortality was declining around 3% a year, admittedly from a lower base.What are the factors responsible for some of the "biggest falls in child mortality ever seen, anywhere?"
What makes a big difference, Mr. Demombynes argues, is some combination of broad economic growth and specific public-health policies, notably the increase in the use of insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) which discourage mosquitoes, which cause malaria.Bednets are often taken as classic examples of the benefits of aid, since in the past they were pioneered by foreign charities. Consistent with the view that aid is vital, Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist, recently claimed that a big drop in child mortality in his Millennium Villages project (a group of African villages that his Earth Institute of Columbia University, New York, is helping) is the result of large increases in aid to villagers. In fact, argues Mr. Demombynes, the mortality decline in these villages was no better than in the countries as a whole.The broad moral of the story is different: aid does not seem to have been the decisive factor in cutting child mortality. No single thing was. But better policies, better government, new technology and other benefits are starting to bear fruit. “This will be startling news for anyone who still thinks Africa is mired in unending poverty and death,” says Mr. Clemens. But “that Africa is slipping quickly away.”
Two University of Wisconsin-Madison professors, both researchers in the field of bioenergy, have been selected to receive U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Awards. The DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research selected Jennifer Reed and Garret Suen based on their outstanding research proposals, which were two of the 68 winning entries in a pool of 850.
Though from different scientific backgrounds, both Reed and Suen conduct research to support the development of technologies for producing ethanol and advanced biofuels from renewable resources. Their research subjects include bacteria, and cellulosic biomass—the leaves, stems, and other non-edible parts of plants like grasses and corn.
An assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and a researcher in the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), Reed was selected for her proposal on “Systems Approach to Engineering Cyanobacteria for Biofuel Production.”
Reed uses a systems biology approach to study microorganisms that can produce biofuel as part of their metabolic processes. She also uses computational modeling to engineer strains of bacteria with improved metabolic and regulatory systems, which could help increase the efficiency of biofuel production.
Suen is also interested in bacteria, but his research focuses instead on how they can break down the cellulose in plant tissues in order to release sugars for fermentation to ethanol. A former GLBRC postdoc in Cameron Currie’s bacteriology lab, Suen is now a professor of bacteriology and a researcher with the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative (WBI).
Suen uses biomass breakdown systems found in nature as models for biofuels production. In particular, he studies bacteria that reside in the digestive systems of ruminants like cows in order to understand how microbe communities work in concert to deconstruct plant material. His winning proposal was entitled, “Deciphering the Genetic and Molecular Underpinnings of Carbohydrate‐Degrading Systems in Ruminal Bacteria."
The DOE Office of Science’s Early Career Research Program supports outstanding individual research programs at universities and DOE national laboratories by funding researchers early in their careers. Now in its third year, the program rewards researchers in the areas of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Biological and Environmental Research, Basic Energy Sciences, Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics, and Nuclear Physics.
...the National Toxicology Program's Report on Carcinogens (RoC). The House Republicans' scrutiny of the RoC coincides with industry objections to the Report's listing of styrene as a possible carcinogen. It also follows a strategy common to previous debates over chemical regulation - that of sowing doubt about scientific findings in hopes of averting action on a hazardous substance.
The article is really a review of the history and current state of LENR, much of its content is what people following recent developments in LENR research already know. Ritter contacted a number of people involved in the field, including Dennis Bushnell of NASA, Robert Duncan of the University of Missouri, Steven B. Krivit of New Energy Times, and Andrea Rossi. Quite a bit of the article is devoted to describing Rossi’s E-Cat, and emphasizes that as yet it is unproven.Bushnell maintains that, “From more than two decades of experiments producing heat and transmutations, ‘something’ is real and happening.”
Krivit says of the E-Cat, ““Rossi has no credible evidence for his extraordinary claims, I have stopped paying attention to him.”
Duncan states, ” “I don’t need to have an opinion about the E-Cat. Nobody does. Rossi is claiming to be going commercial with it. If he does deliver to the marketplace, then the marketplace will decide the efficacy of the technology.
Ecat.com has the main Rossi ecat update
ECAT Licensees to be revealed October, 2012
Leonardo Corp have a number of Licensees for its products for various regions around the world including its northern Europe Licensee Hydro Fusion Ltd, which also attended the E-Cat 1MW October test. All E-Cat Licensees have attended demos of operating E-Cat units.A convention will be held for all E-Cat Licensees and is set for October. An official list of all licensees will then be published online at ECAT.com.
One ECAT 1 MW plant has been delivered and is working in a military facility. Andrea Rossi recently made the following statement:“The 1 MW plant has been delivered and is working in a military concern. It has been made in the USA, after the October test of the prototype made in Italy; such prototype will be delivered, with the modifications which we will complete based on what we learnt from the model at work, to a European Customer in July. ”
The ECAT 1 MW plant in USA is now stable at very high temperatures.
The industrial plants will get the necessary certification within weeks.
The price for an E-Cat 1 MW plant is still $1.5M; orders can be made from the inquiry form on the right side at this website.
From: The Chicago Tribune
By the early 2000s, the flame retardant known as penta had become a villain. Packed by the pound into couches and other furniture, the chemical was turning up in the blood of babies and in breast milk around the world. The European Union voted to ban penta after researchers linked it to developmental and neurological problems in children, and manufacturers pulled it from the market.
But the only U.S. company that made penta soon introduced a replacement, hailing it as the beginning of an eco-friendly era for flame retardants.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose mission is to safeguard America’s health and environment, praised the withdrawal of penta as a “responsible action” and promised that the new flame retardant had none of the problems of the old one. Unlike penta, Firemaster 550 would neither stick around in the environment nor build up in people and wildlife, a top EPA official declared in a 2003 news release.
Today, in sharp contrast to the promises of industry and government, chemicals in the flame retardant are being found everywhere from house dust in Boston to the air in Chicago. There also are signs the chemicals are building up in wildlife, prompting concern that Firemaster 550 or its byproducts could be accumulating in people.
At a time when consumers clamor for more information about their exposure to toxic substances, the chemical safety law allows manufacturers to sell products without proving they are safe and to treat the formulas as trade secrets. Once health effects are documented, the law makes it almost impossible for the EPA to ban chemicals. EPA officials acknowledge they know little, if anything, about the safety of not only Firemaster 550 but most of the other 84,000 industrial compounds in commercial use in the U.S.
Unlike Europe, where companies generally are required to prove the safety of their chemicals before use, U.S. law requires manufacturers to submit safety data only if they have it. Most don’t, records show, which forces the EPA to predict whether chemicals will pose health problems by using computer models that the agency admits can fail to identify adverse effects.
For the full article please see the above link.
A group of plant scientists at the University of Missouri have discovered a new, inexpensive approach to extracting an powerful anticancer chemical from soybeans. The incidence of a number of common cancers (breast, colorectal, prostate, bladder, lymphoma, and oral cancers) is lower in Japan by a factor of two to ten times than in North America or Western Europe. The medical profession is edging toward a conclusion that a significant portion of the reduction in alimentary system cancers and breast cancer is associated with the importance of the humble soybean to Japanese diets. .. Continue Reading Natural cancer drug available from soaking soybeans
HOW DOES IT WORK?In the base of tlie fan is an oil lamp which heats a cylinder containing two pistons. Light the lamp and the blades slowly pick up speed. The fans were part of a shipment made up for a long forgotten African hunting expedition.
Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have created a new piezoelectric nanogenerator that promises to overcome the restrictions found in previous attempts to build a simple, low-cost, large scale self-powered energy system... Continue Reading KAIST develops low-cost, large-area piezoelectric nanogenerator
Classic Varvel: No fat future - what's wrong with this picture?
Please read classic Varvel at
Release Date: 05/16/2012
Contact Information: Latisha Petteway (News Media Only), petteway.latisha@epa.gov, 202-564-3191, 202-564-0455
“EPA is committed to a strong and robust IRIS program,” said Lek Kadeli, acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. “This program plays a significant role in protecting the health of our country’s citizens and the environment in which they live. We welcome the NAS’ review of the IRIS assessment development process and look forward to working with them to continue to strengthen the program.”
Another "Billion dollar Disaster in California" as Big, green energy firms take billions of tax payers dollars for carbon trading ponzi scheme.... If you thought selling bottled water was a genius scam, these guys are selling "hot air"sfgate The auction of emission permits, known as allowances, could generate $1.8 billion next year by one estimate, growing to $5.8 billion in 2015. The amount Californians pay for electricity and gasoline could rise as a result, unless some of the money is returned to them as rebates or dividends.
"That's part of the intent of cap and trade - it's to embed a carbon price signal throughout the economy, and that includes electricity rates," said Jordan Parrillo, a regulatory analyst with the utilities commission's consumer affairs branch - the Division of Ratepayer Advocates."These decisions are now upon the state," said F. Noel Perry, founder of Next 10. "They're upon the Legislature and the governor and the people of California. I'm not really sure if people realize it, but yeah, it's here."
For example, the California Air Resources Board, which is in charge of developing the system, estimated two years ago that gas prices could climb 6 percent by 2020 because of cap and trade. At today's prices, that would equal an increase of 26 cents per gallon. Under one of the commission's less rosy scenarios, the increase could be as much as $1.61.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/16/BUPQ1OIGTI.DTL#ixzz1vJBwi4YC
Laura Segall For The Chronicle
Melissa Bruninga-Matteau, a medieval-history Ph.D. and adjunct professor who gets food stamps: "I've been able to make enough to live on. Until now."
"I am not a welfare queen," says Melissa Bruninga-Matteau.
That's how she feels compelled to start a conversation about how she, a white woman with a Ph.D. in medieval history and an adjunct professor, came to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Ms. Bruninga-Matteau, a 43-year-old single mother who teaches two humanities courses at Yavapai College, in Prescott, Ariz., says the stereotype of the people receiving such aid does not reflect reality. Recipients include growing numbers of people like her, the highly educated, whose advanced degrees have not insulated them from financial hardship.
"I find it horrifying that someone who stands in front of college classes and teaches is on welfare," she says.
Tidal farms, which use underwater turbines to harness the power of the planet’s oceans and convert it into electricity, are something that we frequently mention here at Inhabitat. While there are plans to build them all over the world, Scotland achieved a major milestone this week by successfully installing a 10MW tidal power array in the Sound of Islay, off the coast of Orkney.
Read the rest of 100-Foot Subsea Turbine Successfully Installed at World’s First Tidal Farm Off the Coast of Scotland
The Associated Press reports:
Without fanfare, the nation's nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away.
The revamp, the first since the program began after Three Mile Island in 1979, also eliminates a requirement that local responders always practice for a release of radiation.
The widespread contamination in Japan from last year's Fukushima nuclear accident screams out for stronger planning in the United States, not weaker rules.At least four years in the works, the changes appear to clash with more recent lessons of last year's reactor crisis in Japan. [...]
And some view as downright bizarre the idea that communities will now periodically run emergency scenarios without practicing for any significant release of radiation.
These changes, while documented in obscure federal publications, went into effect in December with hardly any notice by the general public.
An Associated Press investigative series in June exposed weaknesses in the U.S. emergency planning program. The stories detailed how many nuclear reactors are now operating beyond their design life under rules that have been relaxed to account for deteriorating safety margins. The series also documented considerable population growth around nuclear power plants and limitations in the scope of exercises. For example, local authorities assemble at command centers where they test communications, but they do not deploy around the community, reroute traffic or evacuate anyone as in a real emergency.
The latest changes, especially relaxed exercise plans for 50-mile emergency zones, are being flayed by some local planners and activists who say the widespread contamination in Japan from last year's Fukushima nuclear accident screams out for stronger planning in the United States, not weaker rules. [...]
None of the revisions has been questioned more than the new requirement that some planning exercises incorporate a reassuring premise: that no harmful radiation is released. Federal regulators say that conducting a wider variety of accident scenarios makes the exercises less predictable.
More than 20 million people live and work within a 50-mile radius of the Indian Point nuclear reactors, located just 24 miles north of New York City. The peak injury zone includes portions of New York City, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.However, many state and local emergency officials say such exercises make no sense in a program designed to protect the population from radiation released by a nuclear accident.
"We have the real business of protecting public health to do if we're not needed at an exercise," Texas radiation-monitoring specialist Robert Free wrote bluntly to federal regulators when they broached the idea. "Not to mention the waste of public monies."
Environmental and anti-nuclear activists also scoffed. "You need to be practicing for a worst case, rather than a nonevent," said nuclear policy analyst Jim Riccio of the group Greenpeace.[...]
