Page 104 - Occupational Health & Safety, July 2017

INDUSTRY UPDATE
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operations plans for production facilities in the Gulf and has worked for the bureau for 25 years, starting his federal career as a pipeline engineer in 1992. He was ap- pointed Section Chief of the Technical As- sessment and Operations Support Section, Field Operations, Gulf of Mexico Region on Jan. 15, 2005.
■ Two researchers at the U.S. De- partment of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL, www.pnnl. gov/) were recognized April 28 for their technological and scientific innovations. Jun Liu was named PNNL Inventor of the Year and Vincent Sprenkle became the laboratory’s newest Distinguished Inven- tor of Battelle. The two were among 165 PNNL staff members honored during the lab’s annual celebration of staff accom- plishments in scientific innovation and technology commercialization.
Liu was named PNNL Inventor of the Year for the second time; he previously re- ceived the honor in 2012 and was named a Distinguished Inventor of Battelle in 2007. According to the laboratory’s announce- ment, Liu holds a total of 50 U.S. patents in multiple research areas that range from new nanomaterials for environmental cleanup to breakthroughs in energy storage and he leads the Battery500 consortium, which is developing the next generation of lithium- metal batteries to drive electric cars farther on a single charge. Sprenkle holds 21 U.S. patents for his work on fuel cells, batteries and electrochemical devices. He was previ- ously named PNNL Inventor of the Year in 2014 and currently is a manager of PNNL’s energy storage research.
■ Ann Howard, director of environ- mental accreditation at the American Na- tional Standards Institute, received the Cli- mate Action Reserve’s distinguished award this spring. Climate Action Reserve is a nonprofit registry that certifies projects for reducing emissions, and the award high- lights efforts to further its work. Howard was honored during the annual Navigating the American Carbon World Conference in San Francisco on April 19.
Each year, the Climate Action Re- serve gives its distinguished “Climate Ac- tion Reserve Recognizing Our Team,” or “CARROT,” award to partners that exem- plify efforts to further its mission to ensure environmental integrity of greenhouse gas emissions reduction projects and create
and support financial and environmental value in the U.S. carbon market. ANSI’s accreditation program provides valida- tors/verifiers recognition from various organizations, including the Climate Ac- tion Reserve. For more information about ANSI’s Accreditation Program for Green- house Gas Validation/Verification Bodies, visit the ANSI Accreditation page, https:// www.ansica.org/wwwversion2/outside/ GHGgeneral.asp.
Business Moves
■ Fort Worth, Texas-based Interstate Restoration LLC (www.InterstateRestora- tion.com) recently completed a deal with West Palm Beach, Fla.-based Restoration Alliance that allowed Interstate to expand its presence and operations in the Florida market. The company has focused on ex- pansion and said the combination of Res- toration Alliance and Interstate will give Florida customers “the best aspects of two top-tier teams.”
“Any time a business experiences a devastating damage to property, we want to have our experts on the scene within an instant,” said Interstate CEO Stacy Mazur. “With hurricane season right around the corner, we are especially sensitive right now to the needs of the business people and residents of Florida and other coastal states. Our goal is to get affected businesses back up and running in the least amount of time.”
Terms of the deal with Restoration Al- liance were not disclosed by Interstate, which also announced it has expanded the use of its high-tech V-Alert system that gives businesses a stronger warning about storm dangers.
Federal Enforcement Still Weak, NPR’s Berkes Says
NPR’s Howard Berkes delivered the 17th Annual Upton Sinclair Memorial Lecture at the AIHce EXP conference on June 6, focusing on coal miners, grain indus- try workers, and workers’ compensation protections—or the lack of them. Berkes, NPR’s correspondent for investigations and its chief reporter on the April 5, 2010, Up- per Big Branch mine disaster in West Vir- ginia, said federal enforcement was then and still remains too weak and hamstrung by the fact that even willful actions that re-
sult in a worker’s death on the job cannot be prosecuted as felony crimes.
Berkes was not present to deliver the lecture in person, appearing via a video link because he’d given a speech elsewhere while accepting an award the prior day. But he spoke to an appreciative audience that filled a meeting room inside Seattle’s Wash- ington State Convention Center.
He discussed the months-long investi- gation of the mine explosion and the role of journalists in uncovering the causes of such calamities and the failures by various parties behind them. NPR reported that MSHA had not collected millions of dol- lars in fines assessed for violations by some mine companies, and the coverage showed that miners were at greater risk working in mines that racked up unpaid fines, he said. “What point is there to a regulatory sys- tem if it’s not enforced?” he asked. “They [MSHA] were quite defensive when we pointed it out.”
He said a U.S. Department of Labor OIG audit of the unpaid fines will be issued soon. It was the mine disaster that got Berkes interested in investigating workplace safety, he said. He investigated grain bin deaths, including the 26 that occurred in 2010, and found that OSHA fines also weren’t deter- ring violations as intended. “Five hundred people have drowned in grain in the last 40 years,” he said. “Our investigation found that in the worst cases . . . the penalties were cut 40 to 90 percent most of the time,” and that most OSHA fines for grain bin viola-
tions were reduced.
“The [U.S.] Justice Department has an
entire division devoted to environmental crimes. There is no division for workplace safety,” he said.
He also investigated workers’ compen- sation protections in Oklahoma and Texas when those states allowed employers to opt out of maintaining coverage if they chose to do so. (Texas still allows this, while Okla- homa’s law allowing it has been found un- constitutional by the state’s highest court, he said.) The investigation found that the disability protections those states provided to workers when their company did opt out were inferior to the comp benefits that had existed before, Berkes said.
OSHA Announces Inaugural
‘Safe + Sound Week’
OSHA conducted its inaugural “Safe +
100 Occupational Health & Safety | JULY 2017
www.ohsonline.com