Consumer Protection + Legal Rights

Flavored Cigarettes Banned: Step in the right direct

2009-09-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

The FDA has finally moved in the right direction to stop kids from smoking. Banning flavored cigarettes, putting more serious warnings on packs and stopping sports marketing will prevent cigarette addiction which typically starts at ages 11 and 12.

For more, go to the FDA's website:

http://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/FlavoredTobacco/default.htm website:

Widow beats Phillip Morris in landmark tobacco verdict Options

2009-02-18T09:33:00.000-08:00

Friday the 13th was not a lucky day for Phillip Morris -- widow Ellen Hess won a landmark verdict in the first of 8000 test cases brought against Phillip Morris for tobacco-caused lung cancer. Mrs. Hess proved that her husband was addicted to smoking and could not quit, and jurors held Phillip Morris responsible for causing his addiction.

This case is a landmark victory because Phillip Morris won an earlier appeal throwing out a class action verdict in favor of dead and dying smokers. In that case, the Florida Supreme Court found that each and every single smoker must sue Phillip Morris and prove their case individually. Sadly, this will mean each person who has had a loved one die must endure a trial against Phillip Morris, who refuses to pay any verdict without appealing to every possible court, a process that has taken decades.

Living Near Asbestos Plant Raises Cancer Risk

2008-09-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2008 Sep 15;178(6):556-7.

NEW YORK SEPT 25, 2008 (Reuters Health) - People who have ever lived a short distance from an asbestos-manufacturing plant may have an elevated risk of a rare form of cancer, a new study suggests.

Asbestos is a heat-resistant fibrous material that was once widely used in insulation, fireproofing, tiles and a host of other building materials. Breathing in airborne asbestos fibers can contribute to lung cancer, as well as mesothelioma -- a rare cancer of the membrane surrounding internal organs. It most often affects the tissue that lines the chest cavity and protects the lungs.

People who have ever had on-the-job exposure to asbestos -- in industries like construction and insulation manufacturing -- are at greatest risk of mesothelioma.

The new findings now suggest that people who've ever lived near an asbestos manufacturing plant are also at risk of developing the disease, several decades later.

In the study, Japanese researchers found higher-than-expected death rates from mesothelioma among people who'd lived near a now-closed asbestos cement pipe plant between 1957 and 1975.

The risk steadily declined as residents' distance from the plant increased, with elevated mesothelioma rates seen among people living up to roughly 1.5 miles downwind of the plant.

Residents who died of mesothelioma developed symptoms of the disease an average of 43 years after their first year living near the plant, according to Drs. Norio Kurumatani and Shinji Kumagal. The findings are published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The researchers based their findings on 35 men and 38 women who had lived near the asbestos pipe plant between 1957 and 1975 and died of mesothelioma sometime between 1995 and 2006. None had had any occupational exposure to asbestos.

The mesothelioma death rate for these residents was four times what would be expected. And the greatest risk was seen among men and women living within 300 meters of the plant; the death rate among women was 41 times the expected rate, while the rate among men was 14 times the expected figure.

The findings strongly support exposure to the asbestos plant as the cause of these mesothelioma cases, according to Kurumatani and Kumagal.

In 2006, the researchers note, the Kubota Corporation, which ran the plant before it closed, established a compensation fund for people who developed asbestos-related diseases after having lived within kilometer -- or 1.6 miles -- of the site during the time it used asbestos.

Kurumatani is at the Nara Medical University School of Medicine in Kashihara, and Kumagal is affiliated with the Osaka Prefecture Institute of Public Health in Osaka.

SOURCE:

· American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, September 15, 2008.

Lancet Oncology journal features lung cancer issues; including meseothelioma caused by nanotubes

2008-08-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

The July 2008 issue of the Lancet Oncology is devoted to lung cancer issues. Interesting is a study showing a connection between mesothelioma -- a cancer strongly associated with asbestos -- to modern carbon nanotubes. These nanotubes appear to mimic the behavior of asbestos fibers in the lung, and are apparently extremely carcinogenic. Those working with these products in high tech and sporting areas including bicycle manufacturing and yacht building should be highly careful and take extreme measures such as tyvek suits, showers and full faced respirators to avoid breathing the fibers or taking them home on your clothes!

For more:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/issue?issue_key=S1470-2045(08)X7089-5

Many female lawyers dropping off path to partnership

2007-05-07T12:43:00.001-07:00

Many female lawyers dropping off path to partnership
By Sacha Pfeiffer, Boston Globe Staff | May 2, 2007

For women, the law remains a frustrating profession.

Female lawyers continue to face intractable challenges in their attempts to become partners, causing them to abandon law firm careers -- and the legal profession entirely -- at a dramatically higher rate than men, according to a local study to be released today.

The study echoes the findings of other recent major reports, but offers more detailed statistics and demographic data. It also aims to draw attention to the social consequences of this troubling exodus: As fewer women ascend to leadership positions in their firms, the pool of women qualified to become judges, law professors, business chiefs , and law firm managers is shrinking.

"This shows that we are reaching a crisis point when it comes to the retention and advancement of women in the legal profession, and therefore a crisis point when it comes to women leaders generally," said Lauren Stiller Rikleen, a senior partner at the law firm Bowditch & Dewey and author of the book "Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women's Success in the Law."

For years, law firm leaders have insisted that as more women graduate from law school and enter private practice, the presence of women in leadership positions in the judiciary, in business, and in academia would grow correspondingly. But even though the gender gap in law firm hiring has been narrowing over the past decade, women are dropping off the partner track at alarming rates.

Of the 1,000 Massachusetts lawyers who provided data for the report, 31 percent of female associates had left private practice entirely, compared with 18 percent of male associates. The gap widens among associates with children, to 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively -- reflecting the cultural reality that women remain the primary care givers of children and are therefore more likely to leave their firms for family reasons.

The dropout rate among women lawyers is overwhelmingly the result of the combination of demanding hours, inflexible schedules, lack of viable part-time options, emphasis on billable hours, and failure by law firms to recognize that female lawyers' career trajectories may alternate between work and family, the report found.

The report, "Women Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership," which was produced by the MIT Workplace Center in conjunction with several of the state's major bar associations, is rife with devastating commentaries on law firm life, including one female lawyer's remark that "I would not encourage my daughters to enter the legal profession."

Among its findings:

Women make up only 17 percent of law firm partners.

Women leave the partnership track in far greater numbers than men.

Women stop pursuing partnership mainly because of the difficulty of combining work and child care.

Nearly 40 percent of women lawyers with children have worked part time, compared with almost no men, even though men in the profession have more children than women, on average.

Many firms have flextime policies but are "clever in discouraging their uses."

The impetus for today's report was a 2003 address to the Women's Bar Association by US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner, who called for urgent attention to the relative lack of women in leadership positions in the law. That spurred the creation of the Equality Commission, comprising representatives from the WBA, Women's Bar Foundation, Boston Bar Association, and Massachusetts Bar Association.

The commission's report surveyed the state's 100 largest firms about their attrition rates from 2002 to 2004, and also surveyed individual male and female lawyers about their movements in and out of firms from 2001 to 2005. About half the firms responded. Among individual lawyers, about 35 percent, or nearly 1,000, responded.

Of women who jump off partnership track, slightly more than half move to legal positions at nonprofit groups, government agencies, or corporations, where their schedules are often less grueling, according to the report. But 46 percent leave the law altogether, compared with less than a third of men who leave the partnership track.

Lawyers who step off the partnership track can often stay at firms in other capacities, including as so-called income partners. But the hours are often just as grinding, and income partners are essentially salaried employees, unlike "equity partners" whose earning potential is higher.

Practicing law also seems to force women to choose between working and having a family , the report said ; senior male lawyers are more likely than their female peers to be married or living with partners (99 percent vs. 84 percent, respectively) or to have children (80 percent vs. 68 percent).

Two other local studies in the past decade reached similar conclusions. In 1999, a Boston Bar Association report concluded: "We are in danger of seeing law firms evolve into institutions where only those who have no family responsibilities -- or, worse, are willing to abandon those responsibilities -- can thrive." In 2000, the Women's Bar Association released a report that found workplace flexibility was critical to women's success, but often elusive.

"The conclusions of all of these studies are very much the same," said Mona Harrington, program director of the MIT Workplace Center, "and that in itself is a story: Nothing is changing."

The ramifications of that failure to change extend well beyond law firm corridors, the study's backers warned. "If we don't reverse this trend, we will not only not have a greater representation of women on the bench and in academic institutions," said Pamela E. Berman, a recent past president of the Women's Bar Association, "but we'll actually see regression."

Sacha Pfeiffer can be reached at pfeiffer@globe.com.

Carolin Shining bio page

2007-05-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.baronandbudd.com/attorney_profiles/Carolin_Shining

AOL Outrageous Lawsuits: Outrageous Propaganda?

2007-03-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

From the American Association of Justic

I am writing about something which is currently on the America Online (AOL) website titled "Most Outrageous Lawsuits." It appeared in the money and finance section of AOL and is also prominently displayed on the AOL home page.

We have seen this propaganda before. The "crazy lawsuits" they describe come directly from groups like Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA) and the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), groups whose sole mission is to dismantle the civil justice system and eliminate accountability for corporate negligence. In the past, when such front groups have provided examples of "cases," they haven't even been real.

AOL is preying on an unsuspecting public that assumes what is posted on its site is news, all to make the case that they, and other negligent corporations, should not be held accountable for wrongdoing in our courts.

There is good reason for AOL to invest its resources in the misinformation campaign to eliminate the right of Americans to seek justice. In the past few years, it is the civil justice system that has been the last resort for shareholders and investors to hold AOL accountable for their negligence. The following are just a few examples of the trouble AOL has gotten in:

Just this week AOL agreed to pay $246 million to compensate the University of California for losses to their pension and endowment funds after the company's stock prices plunged in 2001-2002. The University alleged that AOL inflated it stock price prior to its merger with Time-Warner by misrepresenting its sales, revenues and subscriber numbers.
On February 26, 2007, Time Warner reached agreements to pay $405 million to settle lawsuits related to past accounting problems at AOL.
On February 7, 2007, AOL reached a $105 million settlement with the California State Teachers' Retirement System that claimed that AOL executives and bankers had artificially boosted the value of its stocks prior to buying Time Warner.
In December, 2006, AOL settled a securities fraud case for $50 million with the state of Alaska.
In September, 2006, AOL members joined together in a class action suing AOL for violating their privacy by posting their search queries online. AOL made public the search queries of over 600,000 members.
In January, 2006, AOL settled a class action for $25 million after the company was accused of wrongfully billing its customers.
In 2005, Time Warner settled a $2.4 billion securities fraud lawsuit stemming from their misstatement of advertising revenue on the eve of its merger with AOL.
In 2004, AOL settled two class actions that claimed it had continued to bill plaintiffs after their subscriptions were cancelled.
The American Association for Justice has made several attempts to get this propaganda pulled from the website but AOL has refused. We will continue to press but I encourage you to take the following steps:

If you are a member of AOL tell them to stop running this feature on their website by posting a comment;
Call the Chairman and CEO of AOL, Randy Falco, at (703) 265-1000 and ask him to take down the information;
Circulate this information to others who will take action; and
Send to any legal and political blogs you know of.
If you have any questions or need information, please do not hesitate to contact the AAJ Communications Department at 202-965-3500 x369.

Thank you.

Jon Haber
CEO
American Association for Justice

How women can negotiate better pay

2007-01-15T09:03:00.000-08:00

Click to the back of this .pdf to read an article by this blogger:

http://www.atla.org/members/women_summer05.pdf

by Carolin Shining, Managing Attorney, Baron and Budd Beverly Hills office
http://www.baronandbudd.com/carolin-shining.html

Parks over freeways in LA?

2007-01-15T09:01:00.000-08:00

Just heard a story on NPR regarding putting parks over the freeways in LA. What a dumb idea. Some of the nicest views in LA are on the freeways. And what about the exhaust in the tunnels? Here is a good idea -- try building a real subway and ditching the cars completely. Geesh.

Asbestos lining the U.S. Capitol?

2006-08-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

Blog: Confined Space
Post: Capitol (Asbestos) Crimes
Link: http://spewingforth.blogspot.com/2006/03/capitol-asbestos-crimes.html

Capitol (Asbestos) Crimes

The last few weeks have been kind of busy, so I passed up this story. It's not a completely unusual story, except for few details.

Workers who work in century-old steam tunnels are exposed the the threat of cave-in and lots of crumbling, cancer-causing asbestos. The employer, although well aware of the hazards, refuses to do anything about it.

You can read similar stories almost every week around the country, but there's one thing "special" about this situation.

The workplace: The United States Capitol.

The employer: The Architect of the Capitol.

NOTE: I am about to say something good about Republicans.

Until the Republican takeover of the Congress in 1994, congressional employees were not covered by OSHA, despite the fact that they do the same maintenance and construction jobs that private sector employees do, and despite the fact that even white-collar congressional employees suffer from exposure to asbestos, poor indoor air quality and ergonomic hazards.

The new Republican Congress decided this was unfair; Congressional employees should be covered by OSHA standards, and their employers should be forced to comply with OSHA standards -- that includes Senators, Congressmen and the Architect of the Capitol. The Congressional Accountability Act was passed and the Congressional Office of Compliance was created to monitor safety conditions. This was, of course, a good thing, even if the motive wasn't entirely pure. The new Republican majority figured that if Congressmen and Senators had to comply with stupid OSHA regulations, that would give them even more incentive to weaken or even abolish the agency.

But there were some unintended conseqences: real hazards are being found. At the beginning of March, the OOC filed its first occupational safety and health complaint against the office of the Architect of the Capitol, "warning that the agency is allowing employees to operate in dangerous, rotting tunnels that run under the Capitol complex.

"The miles of tunnels are in such a dilapidated state that they are subject to cave-ins that could trap and injure employees who are working in them, according to Carl Goldman, executive director of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 26, and Nan Ernst, a representative for the union local 2910 at the Library of Congress.

“Some of the tunnels are 100 years old,” Ernst said. “Those who do the maintenance on the pipes are subject to injury. They have no unions there to protect them. We are concerned about our co-workers there being subjected to those conditions.”

She added that in addition to the potential for cave-ins, the tunnels are lined with carcinogenic asbestos.
The complaint was filed before a hearing officer, requesting an order mandating the correction of the violation because the Architect of Capitol failed to respond to a OOC citation in 2000 for failing to maintain the aging infrastructure.

The Architect of the Capital finally admitted to an unhappy Senate Committee that there was an asbestos problem and that workers had only recently been giving respirators.

Architect of the Capitol Alan Hantman yesterday admitted that he did not do enough to protect workers in crumbling asbestos-lined utility tunnels.

At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, the panel’s ranking member, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), angrily told Hantman, “We knew there was asbestos, we knew that it was hazardous … and literally waited years before we provided safety devices for these workers to protect them. How can we explain that to the workers and their families?”

Hantman conceded, “We have ongoing inspections going — but clearly they were not adequate.”

“That is cold comfort,” Durbin retorted. "We have done a great disservice to these workers’ families. I want to say to you point blank, if you do not come forward with requests for life-safety measures, [such as] protective devices to protect these workers, then you are not doing your duty."

Indeed.

Carolin Shining
http://www.baronandbudd.com/carolin-shining.html

CPSC Rule Change to Hurt Families

2006-07-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

Proposed Rule Change by CPSC Puts Consumers in Danger
Weakened Standards Let Manufacturers Off Hook For Defective Products

"[The proposal] is a sop to the industry and a weakening of the current hazard-reporting system."
- Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Thomas Moore, one of the three members of the commission, and the only member to oppose the proposed rule.

Federal agencies are using arcane regulations and legal opinions to shield automakers and others from challenges by consumers and states. 19-month old Logan Fidurski was killed by a defective bed; New rule would have made it more difficult for his parents to hold manufacturer accountable

When parents Glenda and Alec Fidurski put their 19-month old son Logan to bed one night in December 2001 they had no idea that there was a fundamental design flaw in his bunk bed that allowed the mattress to slide back and forth and trap an infant between the mattress and the ladder.

Because of the defect, Logan was caught in between the bunk bed ladder and mattress and died of asphyxiation. The Fidurski family filed a lawsuit and held the manufacturer of the dangerous bunk bed accountable in the civil justice system.

But under a proposed rule from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Logan's family would not have had sufficient evidence to bring a successful court case and may not have been able to hold the parties responsible for the hazardous product accountable.

On May 26, 2006, the Consumer Product Safety Commission proposed revisions to its rules advising manufacturers, distributors and retailers of consumer products when to report product hazards. The proposed revisions would increase the likelihood that defects in products would not be disclosed to the CPSC or the public. Furthermore, consumers would have increased difficulty bringing lawsuits regarding defective products because they would be unable to augment their cases with strong evidence based on the CPSC's product hazard reports.

"If the proposed rule change would have been in effect, we would not have been able to produce cause and would have been unable to use our arguments that won the case," said Brad Parker, the Fidurski family's attorney.

In the Agency

The CPSC's proposed rule will severely affect the safety of all Americans and the rights of families like the Fidurskis. The rule making process normally allows for a comment period from the public so that a rule is subjected to outside scrutiny before it is promulgated -- but not in this case. CPSC is seeking to make this major change in the way product hazards are reported through an "interpretive rule," a bureaucratic procedure that does not allow for the normal public comment period. Without allowing for the normal level of public scrutiny, this interpretative rule proposed by the CPSC will likely create an avenue for businesses and manufacturers to evade requirements for reporting dangerous and unsafe products to the CPSC and the public, as well as minimize the requirements for dangerous product recalls.

By the Numbers

1,100: Number of children who have died from crib related injuries in the last 20 years.

20 million: Units of children's toys recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2005.

[Sources: Kids in Danger, Consumer Safety Product Comission, as Reported by the Washington Post]

http://www.baronbudd.com/carolin-shining.html

Flu vaccine maker sharply criticized by FDA

2006-07-09T07:59:00.000-07:00

As if the embattled vaccine industry needed more criticism, a major manufacturer of influenza vaccine, Sanofi Pastuer recently was seriously criticized after an FDA inspection. Let's hope that despite the lack of coverage in the consumer media of this problem with vaccine manufacturing, someone will take this seriously as vaccines prepared today are this fall's flu vaccine.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=a7L_uejCJSBQ&refer=europe
http://www.hazards.org/asbestos/ilo.htm
http://www.fluzone.com/

ILO to promote global asbestos ban

2006-07-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.hazards.org/asbestos/ilo.htm

The International Labour Office (ILO) is to pursue a global ban on asbestos, the world¹s biggest ever industrial killer. The landmark decision came with the adoption of a resolution on 14 June 2006 at the ILO conference in Geneva and followed a high level union campaign. Rory O¹Neill asked Jukka Takala, director of ILO¹s SafeWork programme, what ILO will now do to help make the world asbestos-free.

Hazards What is the ILO response to the asbestos resolution?

Jukka Takala ILO will intensify its support to the existing campaigns related to asbestos and, in particular, on the elimination of the future use of asbestos, and asbestos - containing materials. As the French Minister of Labour, M. Larcher said, the ILO should have a campaign of its own to eliminate future use of asbestos, and properly manage asbestos in place today.

Hazards How serious a problem is asbestos trade and use?

Jukka Takala Every year some 2 million tons of asbestos is produced and taken to use worldwide, and some of it is even recycled, such as that in shipbreaking. While recycling of useful materials is important, recycling of hazards must be stopped immediately. All these asbestos problems continue to cause a massive global epidemic that is increasingly hitting the developing world, in addition to the industrialised countries. These developing economies do not have the means to protect themselves, have outdated policies and legislation, poor inspection systems, and lack of knowledge to tackle the problem. It has been estimated that every 170 tons of asbestos is responsible for one mesothelioma - a fatal cancer of the linings of the lungs - and for two lung cancers.

Hazards The resolution calls on ILO to actively promote the elimination of all asbestos use. What is the ILO¹s timetable for achieving an end to the trade in/use of asbestos?

Jukka Takala Unfortunately, we will see asbestos-related deaths still at the end of this century. The task is now to increase the number of countries that have already eliminated future asbestos use from the present 40 countries to at least 100 in the coming 10 years. This should certainly reduce the asbestos use radically. The priority order is to concentrate on the present biggest producers, importers, and users of any kind of asbestos.

Hazards How important a priority for ILO is achieving an end to asbestos use/trade?

Jukka Takala Personally, I think this has top priority. Asbestos is the most important single factor causing death and disability at work, some 100,000 fatalities a year. The most fundamental right at work is the right to life and health.

Hazards Has ILO any targets for achieving the goal of an end to asbestos use?

Jukka Takala Any serious campaign should have measurable targets and time limits, that is exactly what we were talking about in the discussion on the new Promotional Framework on Occupational Safety and Health. Member States should set up their own campaigns, deadlines and targets. ILO targets will be the summary of those.

Hazards If there are no targets, when would ILO hope to see an end to the trade in/use of asbestos?

Jukka Takala No targets, no indicators, no deadlines - will result in no progress. ILO should take this seriously. This means also that funding, resources and support is located for promotion of the elimination measures. One of the targets is to convince decision makers - in ILO and in member States - of the importance and urgency of the issue.

Hazards What will be ILO¹s first measures to meet the requirements of the new resolution? What will it do and when? (guidance to governments/social partners; seminars; publications; other?)

Jukka Takala ILO will have to make its own plans for setting up both global and national campaigns, identify responsible units and persons for such campaigns, prepare an implementation programme, implement the plan, and to follow up and continuously adjust and improve such implementation plans. The tools at the ILO's disposal are: standards and their national compliance, advocacy and awareness measures, knowledge management and information exchange, technical collaboration and international collaboration.

Hazards The asbestos industry/lobby has been blocking the classification of chrysotile (white asbestos) alongside other forms of asbestos under the Rotterdam Convention¹s Prior Informed Consent (PIC) provisions. As ILO is a UN agency, is ILO going to take action to push for PIC listing of chrysotile, a measure that would complement the provisions of the resolution?

Jukka Takala While ILO is not a member of other sister UN organisations and can be only an observer, we only have an indirect possibility to influence the PIC procedure. We think that, indeed, other organisations should follow ILO's footsteps and move forward. UNEP, WHO, IPCS, IOMC, and SAICM are all relevant fora for the ILO to take the message further.

Hazards Critics will say stopping asbestos trade and use has implications for workers in the industry. What is ILO¹s response to this?

Jukka Takala An efficient production facility - asbestos mine - can produce 200,000 tons of asbestos ready to use with a workforce of fewer than 1,000 workers. One worker produces more than 200 tons annually. Compare this to the figure above that says that every 170 tons of asbestos kills three users later on in the user chain - without recycling. Referring to the employment issue is not a credible justification to continue asbestos use, while the workers of asbestos mines and plants should be assisted and supported in finding other replacement jobs eg. in substitute safer materials production.

Hazards The asbestos industry/lobby has previously claimed existing ILO measures (Conventions and Recommendations) support its ³safe use² argument for continued asbestos trade. The resolution says this cannot happen. What will ILO do if the asbestos industry continues to claim ILO support for asbestos trade?

Jukka Takala We will try to make sure that the Resolution will be known by all those who will use this argument. There is no "safe use" of asbestos. The ILO, however, will not have an "international labour inspection force" and we will have to rely on national enforcement, media, trade unions, and responsible employers to make sure that asbestos use will gradually disappear. A long journey but the Resolution is a good tool for that.

Hazards Closing thoughts?

Jukka Takala The lung cancer links of asbestos were tentatively raised in the ILO's first Encyclopaedia supplement: ³Occupation and Health", in 1938. It has taken 68 years to come to the new ILO Resolution, and still there are a number of different views. This process should be speeded up to reduce the number of foreseen victims in future.

The resolution in full

Resolution concerning Asbestos at the International Labour Conference 2006

The General Conference of the International Labour Organisation,

Considering that all forms of asbestos, including chrysotile, are classified as known human carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a classification restated by the International Programme for Chemical Safety,

Alarmed that an estimated 100, 000 workers die every year from diseases caused by exposure to asbestos,

Deeply concerned that workers continue to face serious risks from asbestos exposure, particularly in asbestos removal, demolition, building maintenance, ship breaking and waste handling activities,

Noting that it has taken three decades of efforts and the emergence of suitable alternatives for a comprehensive ban on the manufacture and use of asbestos and asbestos-containing products to be adopted in a number of countries.

Further noting that the objective of the Promotional Framework for Occupational safety and health Convention 2006 is to prevent occupational injuries, diseases and deaths.

1. Resolves that:
(a) the elimination of the future use of asbestos and the identification and proper management of asbestos currently in place are the most effective means to protect workers from asbestos exposure and to prevent future asbestos-related diseases and deaths; and
(b) the Asbestos Convention 1986 (no 162) should not be used to provide a justification for, or endorsement of, the continued use of asbestos.

2. Requests the Governing Body to direct the International Labour Office to:
(a) Continue to encourage Member States to ratify and give effect to the provisions of the Asbestos Convention 1986 (No. 162) and the Occupational Cancer Convention 1974 (No.139);
(b) to promote the elimination of future use of all forms of asbestos and asbestos-containing materials in all Member States
(c) promote the identification and proper management of all forms of asbestos currently in place;
(d) encourage and assist member States to include measures in their national programmes on occupational safety and health to protect workers from exposure to asbestos, and
(e) transmit this resolution to all member States

www.baronbudd.com/carolin-shining.com

Do Respiratory Device Makers Really Need Bail-out?

2006-07-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

Without proper warnings, the use of a respiratory mask can lead to a false sense of security when one is working with deadly toxic materials. Unfortunately, expediency and political hay appear to be more important than warning the public about these dangers. Many of the claims described in these articles are from persons dying from terminal cancers caused by asbestos who believed that their respirator was protecting them, when in fact it was not.

///

Breathing-Mask Makers Look to Congress for Lawsuit Relief
By Jim Snyder
The (Washington DC) Hill
July 5, 2006

http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Business/070506_mask.html

Six companies that make respiratory masks want Congress to protect them from lawsuits, saying such a step would ensure that they could meet production demands in the event of a terrorist attack or flu pandemic.

The companies — Aearo. Bacou-Dalloz, Inovel, Moldex, MSA and North Safety, which collectively have formed the Coalition for Breathing Safety — wrote a letter last week to President Bush arguing that "unfettered liability costs will dramatically affect our nation’s ability to respond to an avian flu pandemic."

The issue primarily affects N-95 respirators, disposable masks with filters that are used by first responders and healthcare workers.

According to the coalition, more than 326,000 claims have been filed against the companies from 2002 and 2004. Before that, the companies faced an average of 200 cases a year.

Litigation costs now take up 90 percent of the revenue from mask sales, according to the coalition.

The companies have been lobbying, with the help of Bracewell & Giuliani, for Senate and House bills that would protect them for lawsuits as long as federal regulators had approved the masks.

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Reps. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Tim Holden (D-Pa.) have introduced liability-protection bills for the companies.

Lawsuit protections are needed "so the companies can expand their facilities to meet production demand if there is a pandemic," said Ed Krenik, a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani working on behalf of the coalition.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health approves designs of respiratory masks.

The companies argue that they have been listed among other defendants in cases seeking damage claims for silicosis diagnoses. Silicosis is a respiratory illness caused by breathing crystalline silica.

The case isn’t the first in which companies have used the threat of a pandemic to gain liability immunity. Last year, Congress gave immunity protections to vaccine makers.

Companies also are encouraging the Bush administration to buy more masks as part of its flu preparations. The administration has awarded contracts for the production of 60 million masks, but France, these companies point out, has plans to buy more than 600 million masks.

In May a group of 85 members of Congress wrote the administration urging it to include the use of respiratory masks in its plan for flu-pandemic preparations. The plan now calls for surgical masks, which provide less protection, be given to healthcare workers.

"Preparation thus far … fails to properly account for the risks of infection and implement a plan to minimize them," the letter states.

© 2006 The Hill

Second hand smoke -- finally gets its due

2006-07-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

Just this past week, a milestone in health has taken place. The Surgeon General has finally annouced that secondhand smoke is a true hazard for all who are present. The US EPA has long equated secondhand smoke with asbestos as a carcinogen, but the tobacco industry and millions of addicted smokers have long fought and denied these harms as over-reacting and hysteria, not fact. Finally, the truth is becoming known. Let's hope that the mass media -- still dependent on advertising dollars from the non-tobacco holdings of Philip Morris' new "Altria" holding group -- are not too cowed to give this news the space it is due:

For more read:

Center for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/Tobacco/sgr/index.htm

American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_10_2X_Environmental_Tobacco_Smoke-Clean_Indoor_Air.asp

Baron and Budd: http://www.baronbudd.com

Safe to go to the drug store?

2006-06-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

It might be worth taking a healthy trip to the bookstore before going to the drug store. Nearly 100 years after Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", are we still being sold snake oil?

A review of books covering the recent debacles in the drug industry in the New York review of books online is worth more than a glance (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19055):

"Much of what is wrong with the industry is explained in several recent books. They include Merrill Goozner's The $800 Million Pill, which shows that most innovative research on serious diseases like cancer and HIV/AIDS is done not by drug companies but in government and university labs. Jerry Avorn's Powerful Medicines discusses the risks and benefits of the drugs themselves, and shows that many of them fall far short of their marketing pro-mises. John Abramson's Overdosed America presents a clinician's view of the misinformation that leads doctors to prescribe unnecessary and possibly harmful drugs. Jerome Kassirer's On the Take explains how the medical profession has allowed itself to be seduced by the billions of dollars lavished on it by the drug companies (for example in subsidizing medical meetings of all types). Sharna Olfman's No Child Left Different takes a critical look at the promotion and overuse of psychoactive drugs in children. Selling Sickness, by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels, explains how the pharmaceutical industry increases sales by convincing essentially normal people that they have chronic conditions (such as erectile dysfunction) that require lifelong drug treatment. Although each of these books emphasizes different parts of the system, they are remarkably consistent when they overlap, and together they make a damning case, not just against the industry but against our entire system for developing, testing, and using prescription drugs."

-- Merrill Goozer, The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs (University of California Press, 2004); Jerry Avorn, Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs(Knopf, 2004); John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (HarperCollins, 2004); Jerome P. Kassirer, On the Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health(Oxford University Press, 2004); No Child Left Different, edited by Sharna Olfman (Praeger, 2006); Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels, Selling Sickness: How the World's Bigest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All into Patients (Nation Books, 2005).

www.baronandbudd.com/carolin-shining.html

Papers Show Guidant Considered Warning Doctors of Hazards

2006-06-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

More corporate misdeeds....read more at nytimes.com regarding documents that Guidant's lawyer had tried to keep from the public, but which plaintiffs' lawyers were able to wrench free through a court order:

////

Newly released company records show that Guidant -- a major heart implant manufacturer -- drafted a detailed document last year that disclosed hazards of an electrical flaw in its heart devices to physicians. In that proposed "Dear Doctor" letter, dated January 2005, Guidant stated that two company models had an electrical flaw. It also told physicians that it had pulled back all units not yet implanted into patients.

That letter, however, was never sent and more heart patients apparently kept getting those devices: advanced defibrillators known as the Contak Renewal and Contak Renewal 2.

Since last fall, the Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration have been conducting an inquiry into Guidant's handling of safety issues affecting several defibrillators now recalled, including those models.

The proposed "Dear Doctor" letter and other company records released this week by a Texas state judge suggest that the legal and financial consequences from that inquiry could be significant for Guidant and Boston Scientific, which completed its acquisition of Guidant in April.

Both Contak Renewal models and another Guidant defibrillator, the Prizm 2 DR, had insulation flaws that could cause them to short-circuit and catastrophically fail. While the Prizm 2 DR was failing at a relatively low rate, Guidant engineers projected in one analysis that 1 out of every 100 Contak Renewals could short-circuit, a failure rate considered high by experts. Guidant also suspected by late 2004 that the Renewal models would become increasingly prone to failure as the devices aged, documents indicate.

At least seven patients are known to have died in episodes in which Guidant defibrillators failed to work because of the electrical defect, five involving Contak Renewals. But many experts believe that the number is probably higher because an implanted heart device is rarely examined after a patient's death to determine if it was working properly.

A defibrillator is a life-saving device intended to sense and electrically disrupt potentially fatal heart rhythms. The Contak Renewal combines a pacemaker and a defibrillator, a type of unit that is often referred to as a cardiac resynchronization therapy device, or CRT-D. Such units cost about $35,000 each.

By mid-2004, Guidant had received reports of several electrical failures in the two Contak Renewal models. The Contak Renewal models are mechanically similar though the Renewal 2 has different software. The Renewal 2 was sold only outside the United States, though it was used in this country in clinical trials.

Cons. Reports: Pregnant Women Should Not Eat Tuna

2006-06-06T19:54:00.000-07:00

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
Pregnant women should not eat canned tuna because a small percentage contains levels of methyl mercury as high as fish the Food and Drug Administration recommends pregnant women never eat, a Consumer Reports article warns Tuesday.
Most cans of light tuna contain on average 0.12 parts per million of mercury, while white or albacore tuna has on average about 0.35 parts per million. But 6% of light-tuna cans tested exceeded the average for white or albacore, some as high as 0.85 parts per million.

"FDA says pregnant women should never eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tilefish," says Consumer Reports' Jean Halloran. King mackerel averages 0.73 parts per million mercury, lower than some tuna, the FDA says.

"So if you were so unfortunate as to get one of these occasional high-mercury cans of tuna fish, you could get a mercury level comparable to a fish that FDA says you should never eat" if you're pregnant.

As fish get older and larger, they build up methyl mercury in their bodies. Light tuna comes from smaller, younger tuna, and white or albacore tuna comes from older, larger fish.

The FDA says that "high levels of mercury in the bloodstream of unborn babies and young children may harm the developing nervous system." It advises that women who might become pregnant and children can eat up to 12 ounces or two meals a week of canned tuna and that one of those may be white or albacore tuna.

The FDA says that although some canned tuna may contain higher mercury levels, some are lower, and scientists took averages into account in the recommendations.

"I haven't seen science that a single serving of a higher level would be of concern," says David Acheson, chief medical officer of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

"Mercury is very much a chronic-exposure concern. You build up the levels in the blood, and that seems to be the problem."

Men and those women not likely to get pregnant shouldn't forgo the cardiovascular protection that eating fish can provide, says Richard Forshee of the University of Maryland's Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy.

Asbestos Defendant's expert admits error in

2006-06-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

Most people need no convincing that the power company involved in the toxic waste dramatized in the movie "Erin Brokovich" acted improperly. What they don't realize is that corporate behavior continues today. In this article, one of the experts for PG&E, Dennis Paustenbach, has admitted to defrauding a scientific publication in order to get results favoring the power company published in a scientific journal. Today, Mr. Paustenbach makes hundreds of thousands of dollars annually defending companies that made and used asbestos products.

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Wall Street Journal: follow-up to earlier Paustenbach story - Publication to Retract An Influential Water Study Publication to Retract An Influential Water Study

By PETER WALDMAN

June 2, 2006; Page A10

In a black eye for scientific publishing, the medical journal that published an influential study exonerating chromium-contaminated water from causing high rates of cancer in China is planning to retract the article.

The study, published in 1997 under the names of two Chinese doctors, recanted the earlier findings by one of the same authors. That earlier study had reported a link between so-called hexavalent chromium in drinking water and elevated cancer rates in five villages in northeastern China -- a link later cited by U.S. regulatory agencies as a cause of concern.

But as reported in a page-one article2 in The Wall Street Journal in December, the 1997 article was actually conceived, drafted and edited by consultants for PG&E Corp., which was embroiled in toxic-tort litigation over hexavalent-chromium contamination in California. The PG&E consultants submitted the 1997 article for publication without disclosing their own or PG&E's involvement in it to the journal that published it, the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The omission gave the
Impression that the Chinese doctor recanted his findings on his own.

In an email Wednesday to the journal's editorial board Paul Brandt-Rauf,
the Columbia University professor who serves as the journal's editor,
distributed the "Notice of Retraction" he intends to publish in the July
issue. Retraction is necessary, the statement says, because the parties

who submitted the article violated the journal's editorial rules by failing to disclose "financial and intellectual input" by outside parties.

The statement added that the retraction is based solely on violations of editorial policy, that the contents of the article haven't been re-evaluated, and that "there is no evidence to suggest the existence of scientific fraud." The article was published under the names Zhang JianDong and Shukun Li.

The firm that submitted the 1997 article was called ChemRisk, a unit at the time of now-defunct McLaren/Hart Inc. ChemRisk's founder, Dennis Paustenbach, declined yesterday to comment on the retraction. He and several scientists who worked on the 1997 article have testified in the toxic-tort litigation in California that they wanted to disclose their
involvement in the paper but weren't asked to by Dr. Zhang, the named lead author, who was hired by ChemRisk to provide data for the article. Dr. Zhang is now deceased, but ChemRisk's translator, Tony Ye, said in an interview last year that he didn't recall Dr. Zhang ever telling ChemRisk that it couldn't disclose its involvement in the paper.

The article's planned retraction comes as the result of a complaint submitted to the journal by Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization based in Washington. In an interview, Renee Sharp, a scientist for the group, noted that Dr. Brandt-Rauf's retraction statement was accompanied by a note to the journal's board, saying that lawyers had kept his statement "to the barest minimum" of facts. "The evidence of fraud in the documents we obtained is overwhelming," Ms. Sharp said.
"ChemRisk's so-called study has influenced a number of state and federal decisions on chromium, and those must also be reviewed." Dr. Paustenbach and others have said the article represents honest and sound science.

A PG&E spokesman said its role should have been acknowledged when the article was published and that the utility supports "full transparency."

Dr. Brandt-Rauf said the article's second named author, Dr. Li, had agreed
to the retraction of the paper. "I believe she was not privy to what was really going on," said Dr. Brandt-Rauf. In an interview for this article

In China, Dr. Li said "It's OK if they want to retract. I'm fine. It doesn't matter to me."

American Girl Jewelery Recalled for Lead Content

2006-06-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

NEWS from CPSC
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Office of Information and Public Affairs Washington, DC 20207

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 30, 2006
Release #06-123 Firm’s Recall Hotline: (800) 659-0164
CPSC Recall Hotline: (800) 638-2772
CPSC Media Contact: (301) 504-7908

Children’s Jewelry Sold at American Girl Stores Recalled for Lead Poisoning Hazard
WASHINGTON, D.C. - TThe U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: American Girl Children’s Jewelry

Units: About 180,000

Manufacturer: American Girl Inc., of Middleton, Wis., a division of Mattel Inc., of El Segundo, Calif.

Hazard: The recalled jewelry contains high levels of lead. Lead is toxic if ingested by young children and can cause adverse health effects.

Incidents/Injuries: None reported.

Description: The recall includes American Girl necklaces, bracelets, earrings and hair accessories for girls. The recall does not include jewelry for American Girl dolls. The jewelry’s packaging features a red and white cardboard backing with “American Girl” and “Made in China” written on the front.

Sold at: Only American Girl Place in Chicago and New York, and the American Girl Outlet in Oshkosh, Wis., from May 1999 through February 2006 for between $8 and $12. American Girl jewelry sold through its catalogue or Web site is not included in the recall.

Remedy: Consumers should immediately take recalled jewelry away from children and return the items for a full refund (including applicable tax and return postage costs) to:

American Girl Jewelry Recall
P.O. Box 620974
Middleton, WI 53562-0974

Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact American Girl at (800) 659-0164 between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. CT, seven days a week, or visit American Girl’s Web site at www.americangirl.com/recall

http://www.baronandbudd.com/carolin-shining.html

"Sound" vs. "Junk" Science

2006-05-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

The Fraud of "Sound Science"
Friday, May 05 2006 @ 11:22 AM PDT
Contributed by: arch_stanton

Over recent months, an unprecedented rupture has occurred between the U.S.
scientific community and the White House. Denunciations of President Bush's
science policies by a slew of Nobel Laureates organized by the Union of Concerned
Scientists, followed by a sweeping rejection of the scientists' charges by
the administration, have made for great political theater. But the controversy
has also shown that on issues ranging from mercury pollution to global warming,
today's political conservatives have an extremely peculiar – and decidedly
non-mainstream – concept of what science says and how to reach scientific
conclusions. Conservatives and the Bush administration claim to be staunch
defenders of science, of course; but close attention to the very language
they use suggests otherwise.

The Fraud of "Sound Science"

A history of a conservative term of art by Chris Mooney, Contributor

Over recent months, an unprecedented rupture has
occurred between the U.S. scientific community and the White House. Denunciations
of President Bush's science policies by a slew of Nobel Laureates organized
by the Union of Concerned Scientists, followed by a sweeping rejection of
the scientists' charges by the administration, have made for great political
theater. But the controversy has also shown that on issues ranging from mercury
pollution to global warming, today's political conservatives have an extremely
peculiar – and decidedly non-mainstream – concept of what science says and
how to reach scientific conclusions. Conservatives and the Bush administration
claim to be staunch defenders of science, of course; but close attention
to the very language they use suggests otherwise. Much of the modern conservative
agenda on science is embodied in the enigmatic phrase "sound science," a
term used with increasing frequency these days despite its apparent lack
of a clear, agreed-upon definition. In one sense, "sound science" simply
means "good science." Indeed, when unwitting liberals and journalists have
been caught using the phrase – which happens quite frequently – it appears
to have been with this meaning in mind. Conservatives, too, want people
to hear "good science" when they say "sound science." But there are reasons
for thinking they actually mean something more by the term. The Bush administration
has invoked "sound science" on issues ranging from climate change to arsenic
in drinking water, virtually always in defense of a looser government regulatory
standard than might otherwise have been adopted. In this sense, "sound science"
seems to mean requiring a high burden of proof before taking government action
to protect public health and the environment (not really a scientific position
at all). Indeed, in an online discussion of "Sound Science and Public Policy,"
the Western Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by Utah
Republican Chris Cannon, notes that "environmental laws should be made with
great caution and demand a high degree of scientific certainty" – once again,
a policy statement rather than one having to do strictly with science. A
short history of the phrase "sound science," and its development into a mantra
of the political right, clearly demonstrates its anti-regulatory, pro-industry
slant. Strategic uses by the business community trace back at least to Dow
Chemical Company president Paul F. Oreffice's 1983 claim that a $3 million
program to allay fears of dioxin pollution in Michigan would use "sound science"
to "reassure" the public – i.e., downplay risks. To rebut Dow's claims, a
young South Dakota representative named Tom Daschle promptly released results
from a confidential study suggesting that dioxin damages the immune system.
In this incident, it's possible to see the first sprouting of a political
debate over "sound science" that would bloom into a full schism a decade
later. A key development came in 1993, when an Environmental Protection
Agency report estimated that secondhand smoke causes some 3,000 lung cancer
deaths each year. EPA classified secondhand smoke as a Group A human carcinogen.
The tobacco lobby quickly sprang into action, and it's not hard to see why.
If smokers were hurting other people, and not merely themselves, the issue
wasn't just about "personal responsibility" any more. Society could find
itself compelled to take steps to ban smoking in a variety of public venues.
The Tobacco Institute, an industry group, quickly labeled EPA's conclusions
"another step in a long process characterized by a preference for political
correctness over sound science." And as we now know from tobacco documents
made available as a consequence of litigation, the industry decided to do
something about it. In early 1993, Philip Morris and its public relations
firm, APCO Associates, created a nonprofit front group called The Advancement
of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) to help fight against the regulation of
secondhand smoke. To mask its true purpose, TASSC assembled a range of anti-regulatory
interests under one umbrella, and rarely, if ever, explicitly challenged
the notion that secondhand smoke poses health risks. Instead, the group,
headed by former New Mexico governor Garrey Carruthers, described itself
as a "not-for-profit coalition advocating the use of sound science in public
policy decision making." Still, at the very least TASSC implied that the
science of secondhand smoke was bogus. For example, in 1994 the group released
a poll of scientists suggesting that politicians were abusing science on
issues such as "asbestos, pesticides, dioxin, environmental tobacco smoke
or water quality."

At roughly the same time, fortuitously or otherwise,
the incoming Republican Congress of 1994 adopted "sound science" as a mantra.
Just a week after the November 1994 elections, Newt Gingrich and company
had set the tone. "Property rights" and "sound science" had become "the environmental
buzzwords of the new Republican Congress," a Knight-Ridder news report noted.
The perceptive report also included a definition of "sound science," which
suggested it meant much more than simply "good science." Instead, the point
was deregulation: "'Sound science' is shorthand for the notion that anti-pollution
laws have gone to extremes, spending huge amounts of money to protect people
from miniscule risks." Calls for "sound science" closely accompanied the
push to enact a key tenet of the Republican Party's "Contract With America"
– regulatory "reform," an industry-backed gambit to provide steep hurdles
to future environmental, health, and safety regulations. Reform bills sponsored
in 1995 by Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole would have imposed
stringent new rules on the process by which the Environmental Protection
Agency and other government bodies conducted science-based risk assessments
to determine whether a particular danger should be regulated. The proposals
demonstrated that the new Republican majority wanted nothing less than to
become government's science cops--and to start fixing the tickets of industry.

The leading regulatory reform proposals would have legislated the very nature
of science itself. They prescribed a one-size-fits-all standard for risk
assessment across very different government agencies, potentially stifling
scientific adaptability. The bills also would have erected a "peer review"
process to scrutinize risk assessments with large potential regulatory impacts
– one that would have not only bogged down the regulatory process, but also
allowed industry scientists to participate in or even dominate reviews. In
addition, regulatory reform would have created new opportunities for federal
court challenges over agency risk assessments – an ideal opportunity for
business interests to engage in scientific warfare over analyses they didn't
like. The whole process, Public Citizen lawyer David Vladeck wrote at the
time, smacked of an attempt to achieve "paralysis by analysis." Reformers
didn't describe it that way, of course. As Dole argued in a Washington Post
commentary, the goal was to make sure that agencies were using "the best
information and sound science available." Yet the notion that Republican
reformers were merely calling for better science in the abstract – instead
of issuing unrealistic demands for minimized uncertainty before regulation
could be undertaken – is hard to swallow. At the same time that they pushed
for regulatory reform, the Gingrich Republicans dismantled Congress's Office
of Technology Assessment, a widely respected scientific advisory body, and
sought to slash funding for government scientific research. Throughout the
whole saga, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition cheered the regulatory
reformers along, sometimes explicitly. In an October 13, 1994 speech, TASSC
chairman Garrey Carruthers specifically endorsed a regulatory reform proposal
by Louisiana Democratic Senator J. Bennett Johnston (co-sponsor of the Dole
bill).

Then in 1995, the group released a study protesting negative media
coverage of regulatory reform, which Dole, in turn, cited in a statement.
Carruthers heralded the survey – without, of course, mentioning tobacco in
any way. "We want to offer information on how scientific issues are communicated
to the public as another means of ensuring that only sound science is used
in making public policy decisions," he stated. Ultimately, the regulatory
reformers went too far and their proposal died in the Senate –but not before
it had helped crystallize a new conservative lexicon. In a 1996 report, the
late Rep. George Brown, ranking Democratic member of the House Science Committee,
issued a long and anguished reflection on the Republican Party's adoption
of "sound science" principles entitled "Environmental Science Under Siege:
Fringe Science and the 104th Congress." Brown's report provides a powerful
riposte to the "sound science" movement, whose proponents he accused of having
"little or no experience of what science does and how it progresses." Brown's
ire had been raised by a series of hearings by the Republican-controlled
Energy and Environment Subcommittee entitled "Scientific Integrity and the
Public Trust," which were a closely related offshoot of the regulatory reform
movement. Presided over by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California – who notoriously
derided climate change as "liberal claptrap" – the hearings levied charges
of science abuse across three environmental issues: ozone depletion, global
warming, and dioxin risks. After an analysis of the hearings, Brown found
"no credible evidence" of scientific distortion in the interest of environmental
scare-mongering. But he did come away with a definition of "sound science"
as used repeatedly by the Republican majority. "The Majority seems to equate
sound science with absolute certainty regarding a particular problem," wrote
Brown. "By this standard, a substance can only be regulated after we know
with absolute certainty that the substance is harmful. This is an unrealistic
and inappropriate standard." Nevertheless, invocations of "sound science"
to prevent regulation remain a core component of the conservative science
agenda today.

In 2002, Republican pollster and strategist Frank Luntz – who
did polling work for the GOP's 1994 Contract with America – wrote in a memorandum
for GOP congressional candidates that "The most important principle in any
discussion of global warming is your commitment to sound science." But what
was most intriguing was what "sound science" actually meant to Luntz on climate
change. "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed,"
he added cynically. "There is still a window of opportunity to challenge
the science." It's hard to read Luntz's words as anything but yet another
call for "paralysis by analysis." Conservatives and liberals both agree
that science is crucially important for making public policy. But the answers
provided by scientific research are rarely certain and always open to disputation
or challenge. When conservatives today call for "sound science," the evidence
suggests that what they really want is to hold a scientific filibuster –
and thereby delay political action.

Welcome to my blog

2006-05-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

Hello, world. Here is my new blog. I'm going to keep this about safety, protection and consumer rights, perhaps with a few personal details thrown in. This website is not sponsored by Baron and Budd, nor does it purport to give legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. But I will pass along information about the legal process, about being safe and making this world work for regular people.

http://www.baronandbudd.com/carolin-shining.html

//////////////////////////////////////////////

Key sites to read:

National Safety Coucil:
http://nsc.org/library/facts/lead.htm

Consumer Protection Agency:
http://www.cpsc.gov/

California Attorney General Safety:
http://safestate.org/index.cfm?navID=263

OSHA Asbestos Safety:
Website:http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/index.html

test test

2006-05-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

Testing

2006-05-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

SF Bay Legal