Report Card
Erdman, Karen
REPORT CARD Karen Erdman Toward Safety PREVENTING ILLNESS AND INJURY IN THE WORKPLACE by the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402....
...The report challenges some of the traditional thinking about workplace accidents...
...The smokescreen of "unsafe acts" has often led to "a failure to recognize how the design of workplace equipment can minimize the occurrence of'unsafe acts' or reduce the probability and severity of human injury...
...The Commission has apparently violated the spirit and possibly the letter of the law on several occasions, altered its regulations to suit the industry, manipulated its tangle of bureaucratic red tape to protect plant operators, evaded Congressional oversight initiatives, and just plain ignored alarmingly hazardous situations...
...24 pp...
...The desire to sweep safety problems under the rug and to ignore those who attempt to air those problems is intensifying...
...Though the analysis of work-related illness is less exhaustive and conclusive, it does include useful case studies of major illnesses and detailed information on links between various chemicals and cancer...
...The wealth of information—on specific chemical and physical hazards, Federal actions and regulations regarding workplace safety, legal rights, and preventive measures—makes this a valuable resource for all workers and employers concerned with health and safety...
...It also addresses such issues as workplace education, incentives to employers, and the role of economic analysis in safety decisions...
...Preventing Catastrophe POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT: INSEPARABLE POLICY ISSUES by Lynton K. Caldwell The Environmental Fund, 1325 G Street NW, Suite 1003, Washington, DC 20005...
...More a call to action than an analysis, the article does not address the difficult question of how population growth should be controlled...
...Even environmentalists generally fail to realize the dangers of overpopulation, Caldwell argues...
...For example, it repudiates the widely held view that employees cause 90 per cent of such accidents through "unsafe acts," pointing out that this label unjustly blames workers and exempts employers from responsibility...
...Workplace hazards kill about 6,000 employees each year, injure between two and twelve million, and cause illness to many more...
...The second article, "Unrealized Possibilities in the National Environmental Policy Act," describes the 1969 Act (NEPA) as a potentially powerful weapon in the fight for more comprehensive and effective environmental regulation...
...The NRC "is not living up to its primary responsibility: ensuring the public's health and safety," the report states...
...The first article," 'People Pressure' and Environmental Consequences," presents a critique of the pro-growth bias of political discourse in the United States...
...sections on office work (including VDT hazards), biotechnology, and the semiconductor industry are helpful but brief...
...Unfortunately, he does not advise activists on how to reach this happy state of affairs, nor does he examine the potential hazards of vesting additional authority in the President...
...425 pp...
...After the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the NRC ostensibly tightened safety requirements and enforcement...
...But the reforms were "insufficient and fleeting," say the authors...
...The NRC's chief objectives appear to be speedy plant licensing and uninhibited reactor operation...
...The report focuses on heavy industry...
...231 pp...
...Population control and environmental protection "may be regarded as one issue, not two," Lynton K. Caldwell asserts in this two-part monograph...
...Readers who get through the bureaucratic terminology will learn why the potential of NEPA has never been fulfilled...
...The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ignores widespread hazards in nuclear power plants, actively prevents public participation in regulation of the industry, arbitrarily enforces its rules, and closely cooperates with the companies it is supposed to watch, says the Union of Concerned Scientists...
...Nuclear Energy Unlimited SAFETY SECOND: A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THE NRC'S FIRST DECADE by the Union of Concerned Scientists Union of Concerned Scientists, 26 Church Street, Cambridge, MA 02238...
...This report solidly documents the NRC's abuses of its power and of the public trust...
...They must abandon their acceptance of unlimited economic and population growth if the world is to avert "the worst of catastrophes...
...2 for single copies, $1.50 each for five or more...
...NRC officials believe serious accidents cannot happen, and they display "indifference and shortsightedness," as this report clearly shows...
...This comprehensive report assesses the available data on these dangers and examines possibilities for controlling or eliminating them...
...Caldwell envisions a renewed "relationship of understanding and trust between the society-at-large and the government" on environmental issues, a relationship in which the President would identify crucial problems and a network of local councils would work to solve them...
...The author argues that under the provisions of NEPA, the President and the executive branch can and should exert far greater power in the protection of the environment...
Vol. 49 • August 1985 • No. 8
