Occupational Hazards

Re "FBI to Probe Fatal Reseda Police Shootings" Aug. 17. The FBI has been called in to investigate the shooting of two robbery suspects, allegedly shot in the back by pursuing police. This brings to mind the caveat placed on all hazardous occupations: Firefighters can be trapped in flames, policemen can die in shootouts, fighter pilots can get shot down, roofers can fall and break their necks, etc. Persons choosing these occupations know this and accept it. Otherwise they pursue other occupations.

Shift work is becoming increasingly common in this 24/7 world, but it may come at a price: worse health for workers. An editorial published today in the journal PLoS Medicine draws attention to the health risks of shift workers, including a greater chance of developing obesity and type 2 diabetes from bad eating habits and sleep disorders because of disrupted circadian rhythms. The authors (PLoS Medicine editors) cite a study published in the journal this month in which 69,269 women were followed for 18 to 20 years.

One of the occupational hazards of being a working cowboy is that all of those headfirst falls off of presumably gentle horses could affect a person's memory. So it may be that The Times has had a policy of printing unprovoked personal attacks on its editorial pages, but I cannot recall that it had ever engaged in that practice until I read Letters to The Editor (March 31) and the letter from Julie Brinkerhoff-Edwards questioning what I have done for Orange County. It is also difficult for me to remember as a volunteer in local community affairs over the last 25 years what little part I may have played by participating in causes that I considered to be of consequence to me and my fellow citizens.

Occupations such as those underway in cities across the country pose staggering logistical problems. Large numbers of people must be fed and kept reasonably warm and dry. Trash has to be removed; medical care and rudimentary security provided. But for the individual occupier, one problem often overshadows everything else: Where am I going to pee? Some of the Occupy Wall Street encampments spreading across the U.S. have access to portable toilets (such as those on the City Hall lawn in Los Angeles)

Survivors of government employees who developed cancer after exposure to radiation from atmospheric nuclear testing cannot sue the government or its contractors for damages, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. In a landmark decision that could bar legal compensation for an estimated 250,000 workers who may have been exposed to radiation during atomic weapons testing in the 1950s, the U.S.

The felony conviction of Sen. Joseph B. Montoya makes it clearer than ever that state lawmakers should not be collecting outside income or speaking fees and that the taxpayers, not special interests, should be financing campaigns, state Controller Gray Davis said Tuesday. "There ought to be public financing for every campaign," Davis said in a breakfast interview with The Times' Sacramento bureau. "It works for the President. There is no reason it can't work for other offices."

Dozens of scientists gathered Friday to examine health dangers to workers cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Among the scientific papers scheduled for presentation at the conference is one from Michael Guerin of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who has found that crude oil can release toxic fumes known to be cancer-causing. As many as 17 cleanup workers exposed to fumes reportedly became ill and were hospitalized.

Occupations such as those underway in cities across the country pose staggering logistical problems. Large numbers of people must be fed and kept reasonably warm and dry. Trash has to be removed; medical care and rudimentary security provided. But for the individual occupier, one problem often overshadows everything else: Where am I going to pee? Some of the Occupy Wall Street encampments spreading across the U.S. have access to portable toilets (such as those on the City Hall lawn in Los Angeles)

Shift work is becoming increasingly common in this 24/7 world, but it may come at a price: worse health for workers. An editorial published today in the journal PLoS Medicine draws attention to the health risks of shift workers, including a greater chance of developing obesity and type 2 diabetes from bad eating habits and sleep disorders because of disrupted circadian rhythms. The authors (PLoS Medicine editors) cite a study published in the journal this month in which 69,269 women were followed for 18 to 20 years.

What is the most dangerous job in America today? Police officer? Fire fighter? Lumberjack? According to an HBO special, "Death on the Job" (10:30 p.m. Sunday), it's commercial fishing, and the program offers graphic footage of the danger as a fishing trawler sinks, taking several hands with it. But commercial fishing isn't the only dangerous profession. In fact, this thought-provoking show insists that one of the most dangerous things you can do in America today is show up for work.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a prodigious consumer of information about healthcare, but one document she doesn't seem to have read (or at least profited from) is a Canadian report titled "Once Upon a Time Otherwise, she might not have told campaign audiences about Trina Bachtel, a pregnant Ohio woman without health insurance who, Clinton said, had been turned away twice by a hospital that demanded she pay $100 to be examined.

Cal State Fullerton's baseball season ended Sunday in a Game 3 super-regional loss to Arizona State that also concluded the Titans' quest for a second consecutive national championship. So now that Fullerton no longer is focusing on finishing No. 1, it can focus on another important number: 14. That's how many Titan players were selected last week in Major League Baseball's amateur draft, tying the record set by Arizona State in 1982.

I had been teaching all day and was in no mood for chitchat. As I drove toward the gallery near Venice Beach, a selfish fantasy filled my head: I was alone in a brightly lighted room filled with new paintings. My fantasy shattered as I turned a corner and pulled into a line of cars waiting for valet parking. The opening-night crowd spilled out of the gallery's entrance, filled its courtyard and spread across the sidewalk.

Despite threats to American journalists made by the Pakistani kidnappers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, executives at major U.S. news organizations said Wednesday that they have no plans to pull their reporters or photographers out of the country. Most said, however, that they have reinforced earlier warnings to their journalists in the region to exercise extreme caution and to take no unnecessary risks.

More than 670,000 California workers were injured on the job in 1997, the latest year for which statistics are available, and the National Safety Council says that figure is rising. These injuries have broad repercussions, because employees struck down by work-related illness aren't the only ones who suffer. Lost production time and health insurance payouts affect a company's bottom line as well.

Re "FBI to Probe Fatal Reseda Police Shootings" Aug. 17. The FBI has been called in to investigate the shooting of two robbery suspects, allegedly shot in the back by pursuing police. This brings to mind the caveat placed on all hazardous occupations: Firefighters can be trapped in flames, policemen can die in shootouts, fighter pilots can get shot down, roofers can fall and break their necks, etc. Persons choosing these occupations know this and accept it. Otherwise they pursue other occupations.

I had been teaching all day and was in no mood for chitchat. As I drove toward the gallery near Venice Beach, a selfish fantasy filled my head: I was alone in a brightly lighted room filled with new paintings. My fantasy shattered as I turned a corner and pulled into a line of cars waiting for valet parking. The opening-night crowd spilled out of the gallery's entrance, filled its courtyard and spread across the sidewalk.

When the lantern over the Capitol signifying that Congress is in session burns past 7:30 p.m., you can bet that in at least one grand house the hostess is worrying that: --Her guests will drink too much in an effort to assuage their hunger. --The cook will quit because the fish course is browning around the edges and the souffle is collapsing. --War is being declared, and even now the bombers are on their way.

Working in the summer or after school is part of growing up as a middle-class kid in America. Unknown to most teen workers and their parents, so is getting injured--or killed--on the job. With unemployment at a historic low, the work force is expanding--including at the bottom of the age ladder. And a mixture of inexperience, inadequate training and eagerness to please makes young workers the nation's most injury-prone.

An unhealthy thinness may not simply be an occupational hazard for ballet dancers. Some researchers fear that it may also be an occupational disease. One report finds many dancers have eating disorders. But the study also indicates that dancers' problems may not be as bad as those facing non-dancers who have eating disorders. It says non-dancers are more likely to also abuse drugs.