Health Administration

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it plans to fine Simpson Paper Co.'s Humboldt pulp mill $666,000 for last December's collapse of a 200-ton, high-density wood pulp storage tank that permanently disabled two workers. OSHA officials said an investigation disclosed that the company had information showing that the storage tanks were structurally unsound because of deteriorating steel hoops and that they were filled beyond a safe capacity.

As the head of a Los Angeles nonprofit organization that bills itself as "the nation's largest public health plan," Howard Kahn knows a thing or two about public options for health insurance. And he gives cautious approval to the compromise plan unveiled in the Senate last week to break the logjam on healthcare reform and steer negotiations into the homestretch. The Senate proposal, which is still a work in progress, would forgo a purely public insurance plan in favor of a government-administered program offered by private insurers.

Cincinnati police concluded that equipment failure caused an aerial performer's fatal fall during a Christmas pageant. Keri Shryock, 23, fell about 25 feet to a concrete floor during Wednesday's opening night performance at Crossroads Community Church and died a few hours later. Because Shryock was a volunteer, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration does not have jurisdiction, an agency official said.

Cincinnati police concluded that equipment failure caused an aerial performer's fatal fall during a Christmas pageant. Keri Shryock, 23, fell about 25 feet to a concrete floor during Wednesday's opening night performance at Crossroads Community Church and died a few hours later. Because Shryock was a volunteer, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration does not have jurisdiction, an agency official said.

Gerard Scannell announced his resignation as director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Monday. He is stepping down to become a vice president at Johnson & Johnson, the New Brunswick, N.J., company where he had worked for 10 years before taking over at OSHA. Before Scannell's tenure, OSHA had come under fire as being either pro-business or pro-labor, depending on which political party held the White House.

The Times carried an article (March 14) stating that Cal-Occupational Safety and Health Administration has announced that the companies that were involved in the death of three construction workers in downtown Los Angeles last December may be fined as much as $560. This proposed penalty shows three things: 1--Cal-OSHA appears powerless to enforce safety for construction workers. 2--Employer will continue to expose their workers to serious industrial hazards unless they have genuine fear of the consequences.

The government today fined General Dynamics Corp., the nation's largest defense contractor, $615,000 for what it called 122 "willful" violations of the law in not reporting job injuries and illnesses among shipyard workers at its Electric Boat Division yards at Quonset Point, R.I. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it was fining the company $5,000 each for 121 alleged instances of failing to record or misrecording job-related injuries and illness at the yard in 1985 and 1986.

In January of this year, Gov. George Deukmejian made public his plan to eliminate Cal/OSHA and turn the protection of workers in California over to the federal Occupational, Safety and Health Administration program, allegedly to save the taxpayers $8 million. This is a terrible blunder that will cost the people of California dearly in terms of increases in worker illness, injury and death. If the Cal/OSHA program is abandoned, there surely will be annual losses of untold millions of dollars due to lost worker productivity, increased medical costs and escalating workers' compensation expenditures.

State officials will resume enforcement of job safety and health laws at California's private sector workplaces on May 1, California and federal authorities jointly announced today in San Francisco. The announcement was the product of lengthy negotiations and an outgrowth of the victory last November of an initiative--Proposition 97--to restore the state program. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration assumed responsibility for protecting California's 10.5 million private-sector workers on July 1, 1987.

A Senate committee on Wednesday rejected the nomination of Texas lawyer Robert E. Rader Jr. to the panel that oversees workplace safety conditions after he was accused of trying to undermine enforcement of employee safety laws. In two 8-8 votes, the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee killed President Reagan's nomination of Rader, refusing either to approve the nomination or to send it to the Senate floor without a recommendation. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.

The Clinton administration will propose a $1-billion initiative aimed at improving medical care for many of the nation's 32 million uninsured by encouraging community clinics and hospitals to collaborate in keeping track of patients and making sure they get the treatment they need. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said the initiative, part of the fiscal 2000 budget President Clinton will recommend to Congress in two weeks, eventually would provide 100 U.S.

The Clinton administration declared Monday that needle exchange programs reduce the spread of AIDS and do not encourage illegal drug use--but it will continue to oppose federal funding for this approach, a decision that provoked anger on both sides of the long-raging debate.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture received reports earlier this year that a San Diego firm was illegally purchasing foreign-grown strawberries for use in school lunches but failed to act before the recent hepatitis outbreak, a department official told lawmakers Thursday. Kenneth Clayton, deputy administrator of agricultural marketing services, said USDA officials had been informed that Andrew & Williamson Co.

The Clinton administration is considering a controversial policy shift that would reduce some inspection activities at the nation's nursing homes. A draft proposal being circulated among nursing home operators, patient advocates and consumer groups calls for reductions in the scope of federal inspections, as well as a possible cut in the number of patients interviewed. Required reviews of medical records and other documents also would be reduced.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has appointed an Encino resident to the county's Commission on Aging. Elaine C. Pang, a health administrator at the UCLA School of Medicine, has a master's degree in public health from Cal State Northridge.

The White House is nearing the conclusion that action on meaningful health care reform is all but impossible this year and has begun laying the groundwork for moving the debate into the next session of Congress, according to Administration and congressional sources. Even though officials continue to voice hope that Senate leaders can craft a workable compromise from two competing health care reform plans, time and tempers are growing short on Capitol Hill.

The Clinton Administration vowed Tuesday to press ahead with its embattled preschool vaccination initiative even as lawmakers released a congressional report raising fundamental questions about the program. "This is no time to reverse course," Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said at a news conference called to respond to the report by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm. "Congress and the President have set a course and our goal is within reach."

The secretary of health, education and welfare during the Jimmy Carter Administration told Congress on Tuesday that--had he and other federal officials known more about secret tobacco industry research into the properties of nicotine--they would have declared cigarettes addictive and moved to regulate them. "Unfortunately (we) were all victims of the concealment and disinformation campaign of the tobacco companies," said Joseph A. Califano Jr.