/osha-emphasizes-safety-health-risks-fes

  • As OSHA Emphasizes Safety, Long-Term Health Risks Fester - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/us/osha-emphasizes-safety-health-risks-fester.html?_r=0

    Sur les ravages humains et financiers de l’utilisation professionnelle de produits chimiques aux Etats-Unis et l’inefficacité de l’OSHA, l’agence fédérale de prévention des maladies professionnelles.

    Chronic ailments caused by toxic workplace air — black lung, stonecutter’s disease, asbestosis, grinder’s rot, pneumoconiosis — incapacitate more than 200,000 workers in the United States annually. More than 40,000 Americans die prematurely each year from exposure to toxic substances at work — 10 times as many as those who die from the refinery explosions, mine collapses and other accidents that grab most of the news media attention.

    Occupational illnesses and injuries like Ms. Farley’s cost the American economy roughly $250 billion per year because of medical expenses and lost productivity, according to government data analyzed by J. Paul Leigh, an economist at the University of California, Davis, more than the cost of diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Roughly 40 percent of medical expenses from workplace hazards, or about $27 billion a year, is paid by public programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

    And yet the full price of this epidemic is measured not just in hospital bills and wages lost, but also in the ways, large and small, that life has changed for Ms. Farley and other sickened workers. (...).”