Occupational Safety

Cal/OSHA resumed operations for the first time since July 1, 1987, when it closed down after Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed its funding. At that time, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration assumed responsibility for protecting California's 9.5 million private-sector workers. Last November, California voters passed an initiative to restore the state agency. The next five months will be a transition period, during which federal officials will retain some jurisdiction, while the state agency becomes fully staffed and changes some of its regulations to bring them into conformity with federal safety standards that were enacted during the last two years.

A brake malfunction caused Knott's Berry Farm's WindSeeker ride to shut down suddenly Wednesday, leaving riders dangling midair for hours. "When the brake froze, the ride safety mechanism did what it was supposed to do; it stopped the ride," said Erika Monterroza of the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. The abrupt stop left 20 passengers suspended 300 feet in the air. It took maintenance crews 31/2 hours to lower all of the passengers. The lengthy delay getting passengers to the ground was blamed on a brake that work crews had difficulty releasing to lower the ride to the ground.

Traffic radar guns, which save lives by catching speeders, have come under suspicion as a possible cause of cancer in traffic officers exposed to their microwave beams, triggering a series of lawsuits by an Agoura Hills lawyer. Attorney John E. Sweeney has filed suits on behalf of five former traffic officers who contracted cancer and are seeking millions of dollars in damages from radar equipment manufacturers, whom they accuse of failing to warn of health risks.

State regulators have fined two warehouse operating companies more than a quarter of a million dollars for allowing unsafe working conditions at four San Bernardino County distribution centers. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health said Wednesday that it issued $256,445 in citations for more than 60 violations found during a recent inspection of warehouses in Chino. Cited were warehouse owner National Distribution Centers and its temporary staffing contractor, Tri State Staffing.

A Superior Court judge on Thursday overturned San Francisco's landmark video display terminal safety ordinance, the only law in the United States that required private companies to protect workers from the muscle-straining dangers of VDT work by providing rest breaks and properly designed office furniture.

The government proposed a $5.7-million fine today against Phillips 66 Natural Gas Co. for alleged safety violations in connection with last year's explosion at a Texas chemical plant that killed 23 people. Phillips was cited for 575 willful and serious safety violations at its Houston Chemical Complex, where an Oct. 23 blast killed 23 workers and injured 130 others.

The byword of business is "productivity." Do it faster, and do more with less. Assembly lines have been speeded up. Some jobs have been redesigned for efficiency so that workers perform fewer tasks but do them more frequently. The changes have translated into day-to-day workplace practices that have resulted in higher injury rates and--gradually--public outrage over the fragile health of the American worker.

Kelly Garrison knew the risk every time she ran down the runway toward the vaulting horse. She knew that proper timing and accuracy were a must in international gymnastics and that the slightest slip could mean the difference between winning and losing, or between winning and injury. But while training at the University of Oklahoma for the 1988 Olympics, Garrison decided to take an extra risk. Her hopes of making the team had been sinking, along with her vaulting scores.

The mother of actor Brandon Lee has filed suit against the Edward R. Pressman Film Corp. and 13 other corporations and individuals, alleging that their negligence was responsible for her son's "agonizing pain, suffering and untimely death" last March on the set of the movie "The Crow."

State regulators voted unanimously Thursday to create an advisory committee to consider increasing regulation of California's porn industry, including mandating the use of condoms and testing for sexually transmitted diseases. Guy Prescott, director of safety for Operating Engineers Local Union #3 and one of six members of the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health's standards board, said he had planned to vote against the measure but changed his mind after hearing from performers and others in the porn industry.

A year before a UCLA staff research assistant was fatally burned in a lab fire, a graduate student was seriously injured in a similar accident that university officials failed to report to state regulators, records released Friday show. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health this week fined UCLA $23,900 for the earlier incident, which occurred in November 2007 -- 13 months before Sheharbano "Sheri" Sangji suffered burns that took her life and prompted a campuswide review of lab safety.

The head of the state Senate's Labor Committee accused a workplace safety board Wednesday of being biased toward employers and ignoring a law that requires fines for failing to report on-the-job injuries. After a hearing, Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said he might introduce legislation that could lead to criminal charges against board members if they continue to disregard the law that calls for a $5,000 fine for employers' failing to report accidents in a timely manner. The hearing came after a Times investigation last fall that found that the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health appeals board repeatedly dismissed and reduced the penalties levied by division inspectors, even in situations in which workers had died or were seriously injured.

As prominent AIDS advocates called Thursday for Los Angeles County officials to require condoms on porn sets or shut down production, more questions arose about why the Public Health Department has not investigated 18 HIV cases reported in the last five years by the clinic that serves the adult film industry. "L.A.

It was just another work day for Rafael Jimenez, a veteran tree trimmer in his 24th year on the job. But as he stuffed branches from a Chinese elm tree into a wood chipper that sunny day in April 2008, his right hand became entangled in the branches and Jimenez found himself being jerked toward the steel knives. The machine, which devours a 20-inch branch in a second, consumed nearly his entire body.

Despite porn industry assurances that an adult film actress' recent positive HIV test is the first since a 2004 outbreak shut down production for a month, Los Angeles County health officials said Thursday that at least 16 additional unpublicized cases of HIV have been confirmed in adult film performers. The newly released data bring the number of HIV cases in porn performers in the last five years to 22, including the case disclosed this week.

Newly obtained information about a devastating blast at Mobil's Torrance refinery reveals that human error caused an explosion that has triggered two years of legal, political and regulatory battles for the nation's fifth-largest industrial corporation. A federal safety report says that in the days before the accident, Mobil failed to follow its own written procedures, which call for alarms to be working during refinery operation.

Clinton Names Choices for OSHA, AID: President Clinton said he will nominate Joseph Dear, former director of Washington state's Department of Labor and Industries, to be administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. If confirmed by the Senate, Dear will become assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health. Clinton also named Carol Lancaster as his choice for deputy administrator of the Agency for International Development.

Like a lot of other boys from his high school, John Vincent went to work in Wyoming's oil fields the day after graduation, hauling mud, unloading pipe and erecting rigs. One winter night, the older roughnecks sent him out into the cold to clean up after a drilling fluid accident. "I was flopping around in the wind and mud, and that's when I thought maybe my mother was right and school wasn't such a bad idea," he said. Vincent went on to college and eventually law school.

A recently hired plumber was sent into the bowels of the Orleans hotel and casino last year to unplug a sewer pipe in a large grease trap -- an assignment that would be his last. The hotel had no permit or training program to allow plumber Richard Luzier to enter a confined space where he might inhale poisonous sewer gas. He had no breathing apparatus or emergency rescue harness -- all routine precautions. Luzier fell 12 feet and landed face down in fatty sewage.