EPA's proposed Worker Protection Standard and the burdens of the past.

Background: An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommendation for extensive changes to the Agency's 40-year-old Worker Protection Standard is currently stalled in the "proposed rule" stage. The proposal, which was available for public comment until 18 August, would improve safety, training, and hazard communication policies for agricultural pesticides. Exposure to hazards, including high heat, heavy machinery, stoop labor, and pesticides, makes occupational illness uncommonly common among the USA's estimated 2.

Secrecy and justice in the ongoing saga of DBCP litigation.

Since the 1980s, banana workers from Central America and elsewhere have filed cases in the United States for sterility damages caused by exposure to the nematicide dibromochloropropane (DBCP) used during the 1960s and 1970s. These plaintiffs' efforts at holding fruit and chemical corporations accountable have been met with numerous obstacles. Many cases have been dismissed on the grounds that they would "more conveniently" be tried elsewhere, despite the fact that significant barriers exist to bringing such cases in many of these workers' home countries.

Beyond reputation: debate on the role of corporate influence in occupational and environmental medicine.

In his article in this issue, Tee Guidotti casts recent works addressing corporate influence on occupational medicine as "collective act[s] of disparagement ...

Code of Sustainable Practice in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety for Corporations.

At a conference held at Stony Brook University in December 2007, "Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard across a Globalizing World," participants endorsed a Code of Sustainable Practice in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety for Corporations. The Code outlines practices that would ensure corporations enact the highest health and environmentally protective measures in all the locations in which they operate. Corporations should observe international guidelines on occupational exposure to air contaminants, plant safety, air and water pollutant releases, hazardous waste disposal practices, remediation of polluted sites, public disclosure of toxic releases, product hazard labeling, sale of products for specific uses, storage and transport of toxic intermediates and products, corporate safety and health auditing, and corporate environmental auditing.

Manipulated data in Shell's Benzene Historical Exposure Study.

In 1983, in the face of mounting evidence of excess leukemia among workers at Shell Oil's Wood River (IL) and Deer Park (TX) petroleum refineries, Shell initiated the Benzene Historical Exposure Study (BHES). Shell's prior research had implicated occupational exposure to benzene as the source of the excess leukemia. The BHES report submission, which ultimately found no link between exposure and the excess morbidity, coincided with OSHA's planned hearings over a new regulatory standard for benzene.

Maximizing profit and endangering health: corporate strategies to avoid litigation and regulation.

Corporations and industries use various tactics to obscure the fact that their products are dangerous or deadly. Their aim is to secure the least restrictive possible regulatory environment and avert legal liability for deaths or injuries in order to maximize profit. They work with attorneys and public relations professionals, using scientists, science advisory boards; front groups, industry organizations, think tanks, and the media to influence scientific and popular opinion of the risks of their products or processes.

Over a barrel: corporate corruption of science and its effects on workers and the environment.

Although occupational and environmental diseases are often viewed as isolated and unique failures of science, the government, or industry to protect the best interest of the public, they are in fact an outcome of a pervasive system of corporate priority setting, decision making, and influence. This system produces disease because political, economic, regulatory and ideological norms prioritize values of wealth and profit over human health and environmental well-being. Science is a key part of this system; there is a substantial tradition of manipulation of evidence, data, and analysis, ultimately designed to maintain favorable conditions for industry at both material and ideological levels.

The beryllium "double standard" standard.

Brush Wellman, the world's leading producer and supplier of beryllium products, has systematically hidden cases of beryllium disease that occurred below the threshold limit value (TLV) and lied about the efficacy of the TLV in published papers, lectures, reports to government agencies, and instructional materials prepared for customers and workers. Hypocritically, Brush Wellman instituted a zero exposure standard for corporate executives while workers and customers were told the 2 microgram standard was "safe." Brush intentionally used its workers as "canaries for the plant," and referred to them as such.

Exposing the "myth" of ABC, "anything but chrysotile": a critique of the Canadian asbestos mining industry and McGill University chrysotile studies.

Background: Beginning in the 1930s, the Canadian asbestos industry created and advanced the idea that chrysotile asbestos is safer than asbestos of other fiber types.

Methods: We critically evaluate published and unpublished studies funded by the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association (QAMA) and performed by researchers at McGill University.

Results: QAMA-funded researchers put forth several myths purporting that Quebec-mined chrysotile was harmless, and contended that the contamination of chrysotile with oils, tremolite, or crocidolite was the source of occupational health risk.