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More than 50 years ago, the best-selling book Silent Spring” warned of the dangers of pesticides not only to fish and wildlife, but to human health. The book struck a chord with the public, and some of the worst pesticides were banned. But dangerous and toxic chemicals continue to threaten public health and put many workers at risk. Only two months ago, a terrible explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas killed 15 people. This explosion was a devastating reminder of just how dangerous and highly combustible chemicals can be — and how important it is to have proper workplace safety protections for workers against toxic chemicals. In Maryland, the Baltimore Sun has been keeping track of chemical incidents in our state. Going back to June of 2001, the Sun has identified 102 instances in Maryland in which an emergency response was necessary. There have been six deaths caused by these chemical incidents. And the number of hospitalizations stands at 156. Of the 102 incidents, nine have affected schools. One of the most serious of these incidents was in 2009 at a middle school in Glen Burnie. The school had to be evacuated after chemical fumes from roof adhesives and coating came into the school due to a ventilation system that had been turned on by accident. Eighteen students had to be hospitalized in that incident. There were even more hospitalizations required after a chemical spill at medical production plant in 2007. In that incident in Elkton, Maryland, 35 people had to be hospitalized after the top broke off of a container holding heptane and butanol. Obviously dangerous chemicals put workers at risk of workplace accidents. An incident like the West, Texas, explosion should therefore be a catalyst for more attention to the dangers of hazardous chemicals in the workplace. Source: Baltimore Sun, “Maryland Chemical Incidents,” June 19, 2013

Roofers have dangerous jobs. By the very nature of their work, are particularly exposed to fall risks, as well as other types of construction accidents. Because they work in elevated settings, it is very important that they have all proper safety protections. But some employers fail to provide that protection. When this happens, in the Baltimore area or anywhere else, it puts workers at undue risk of falls and other injuries. As we discussed in our March 14 post, construction falls are one of the main causes of fatal work accidents. It is therefore always a concern when employers violate safety standards, particularly those on fall protection. This concern is compounded when an employer is found to have repeatedly violated safety standards. That is what happened, however, in a recent case. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited a roofing contractor for numerous safety violations. OSHA alleges that the contractor, KG Framing and Construction LLC, did not provide adequate fall protection for roofers at a work site in Missouri. There were also other safety violations. The proposed fines for the violations are more than $120,000. Of the 12 safety violations alleged by OSHA, three of them were repeat violations. Two of those repeat violations involved fall protection. One was for failing to provide fail protection training. The other repeat violation was for insufficient ladder extension. The company has already been cited six times for fall protection violations. OSHA has therefore placed the company in its Severe Violator Enforcement Program. In an inspection last October, an inspector from OSHA noted that roofers were working on a pitched roof without personal fall arrest systems such as harnesses. Other workers did have harnesses, but the harnesses were not attached properly. Source: “ Fall Protections Land Contractor in SVEP,” Occupational Safety & Health, 4-19-13 Please visit our page on construction accidents.

Back injuries are one of the most common types of work injury. Indeed, they are one of the most common types of injury – period. Not surprisingly, then, problems with back pain are frequently involved in workers’ compensation claims in Maryland and across the country. Because the problem of chronic back pain affects so many people, researchers continue to seek new ways to treat it. In one recent study, the use of osteopathic stimulation appeared to provide a modest reduction of symptoms for some sufferers from chronic pain the lower back. The study was, as one might expect, led by a doctor of osteopathic medicine. It should be noted that osteopathy is not a traditional form of medicine. Osteopathy is a system that emphasizes the musculoskeletal system as central to health. In that respect, it is in some ways similar to chiropractic medicine. Traditional medicine has tended to disregard both osteopathic and chiropractic approaches. Indeed, for doctors strictly committed to the traditional approach, using the word “medicine” in conjunction with “osteopathic” or “chiropractic” may seem like an oxymoron. But traditional medicine does not have a monopoly on approaches for treating chronic back pain. After all, many people have found osteopathic or chiropractic approaches helpful. In the treatment of back pain, an osteopathic approach involves the manipulation of joints to get them back in place. It also emphasizes relaxing strained muscles and the use of massage on soft tissue injuries. In the recent study, researchers concluded that osteopathic manipulation can achieve modest reduction in symptoms for at least some people with chronic lower back pain. Source: “Back manipulation may help relieve chronic pain,” Fox News / Reuters, 3-26-13

The term “grand bargain” is somewhat disfavored in Washington these days. But it shouldn’t be; after all, a civilized society requires compromise and negotiation to move forward. Without those things, the clash of competing interests can harm everyone. Workers’ compensation law is based on one such grand bargain. Workers give up certain rights to sue employers for work-related injuries. Employers, in turn, get a structured system for resolving injury claims by employees who suffered workplace injuries or illness. To make this system work, each side has had to give a little. Employers cannot require employees to be perfect – and so workers’ comp claims are generally allowed even if the employee may have been careless about his or her own safety. Similarly, employees give up the right to sue their employers directly for most workplace injuries. But they do detain the right to bring what are called “third party” claims, such as against negligent contractors or manufacturers of defective products. Overall, the system works quite well for both sides. Sometimes, however, there are attempts to change the system in a particular state. In New Mexico, for example, there was recently a legislative attempt to restrict workers’ compensation benefits for employees who were impaired by alcohol when their workplace injuries occurred. The proposal for this change came after a city worker with a blood-alcohol content of .12 fell off a garbage truck and was injured. The worker received workers’ compensation benefits that exceeded $100,000 that were eventually upheld on appeal. The appeals said that there was not sufficient evidence to show that drunkenness was the sole cause of the accident. Source: “Democrats block New Mexico bill regarding workers’ compensation,” El Paso Times, Milan Simonich, 2-8-13 Our firm handles situations similar to those discussed in this post in Maryland. To learn more about our practice, please visit our main workers’ compensation page.

It’s better, ultimately, to face your fears. Perhaps you’ve been injured at work but are reluctant to pursue a workers’ compensation claim because you fear your employer may hold it against you. If you are facing that situation, keep in mind that the employer is not legally allowed to do that. To be sure, sometimes employers violate the law and fire employees for exercising the right to obtain workers’ compensation after an injury or illness suffered on the job. Keep in mind, however, that if that happens, an employee can fight back not only with a workers’ comp claim, but with other legal actions as well. Maryland workers can therefore take heart from a current case in Washington State. The case involves employees asserting their rights despite egregious employer misconduct. Nine employees of a gun range became ill from lead poisoning after their employer made them sift through tons of soil contaminated with lead and other toxic substances. When the employees filed workers’ compensation claims and reported safety concerns to government regulators, the employer fired them. If the gun range owner thought the firings would end the matter, he was greatly mistaken. The employees have brought a lawsuit arguing that they were fired for retaliation for filing valid workers’ compensation claims and brining legitimate concerns about safety to appropriate government authorities. The damages they are seeking go well beyond workers’ compensation to include damages for retaliatory discharge under relevant labor laws. According to the employees, the employer did not only expose them to toxic chemicals without proper training or protective gear. The employers also committed glaring falsehoods by claiming that public agencies such as OSHA had approved the lead remediation project at the gun range. No such approval had actually been given. Source: “Fired for Getting Lead Poisoning, Nine Say,” Courthouse News, June Williams, 2-14-13

The healthcare industry employs many workers, from doctors and nurses to lab technicians and receptionists. All of the roles are important. Yet some jobs are more dangerous than others in terms of suffering workplace injuries. A new concern involves repetitive stress injuries and electronic medical records. In some ways, that sounds like an odd paring. But in two recent research publications, an ergonomics professor from Cornell University contends that medical offices are poorly designed to accommodate computers. This could lead to many repetitive stress injuries among doctors and nurses as electronic health records become the norm. The professor, Alan Hedge, says many hospitals are investing in new computer technology without properly assessing the ergonomic impact on the people who will be using those computers. Some of those workers may need to rely on workers’ compensation to help them after suffering injuries due to repetitive strain. In a sense, society has seen this movie before. After computers became common in commercial workplaces in the 1980s, there was an upsurge in musculoskeletal injuries for at least a decade. The same pattern could be about to happen in the medical field, now that electronic medical records are becoming more common. What type of musculoskeletal injuries are employees at risk of experiencing? They include wrist injuries, back pain and neck injuries. In Prof. Hedge’s research, more than 40 percent of the healthcare employees he studied suffered such symptoms. The upshot of the research is clear. Workplace safety for medical professionals should not only include efforts to prevent falls and handle patient safety. It should also include an awareness of the effect of increased computer use on the human body. Source: “ Health Care Workers Face Ergonomic Challenges,” EHS Today, 12-26-12 Our firm handles situations similar to those discussed in this post. To learn more about our practice, please visit our Maryland workplace injuries page.

Autumn has (finally) arrived, with cooler temperatures. But the brutal heat of the summer has scarcely been forgotten – especially for the family of a man killed on the job in a heat-related incident last summer in Washington, D.C. The man worked for a paving company based in Clarksburg, Maryland. He was paving a parking lot in June when he suffered heat stress. The man died after being taken to a hospital. The Baltimore / Washington office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has proposed $6,900 in fines against the company. The fines are for what OSHA alleges was a serious violation of the agency’s “general duty” clause. That clause imposes a duty on employers to take reasonable steps to safeguard the health and safety of employees. The acting director of OSHA’s Baltimore / Washington office, Robert Szymanski, argues that the case should remind employers of how important it is to protect workers from heat-related harm. “This tragedy underscores the need for employers to ensure that workers have frequent access to water, rest, and shade to prevent heat illness and injuries during the hot summer months, and also why it is important that workers are trained to recognize and respond to the signs of heat-related illness,” Szymanski said. On the work site in question, employees’ duties involved pouring hot asphalt under an unfiltered sun. Yet the company did not have an established work / rest schedule set up. The company also failed to train employees in how to recognize indications of heat-related health problems. Further, the company did not make sure employees drank enough water. It also failed to report the fatality to OSHA in a timely manner. Source: “ OSHA Cites Paving Company in Heat Fatality,” OHSonline, 10-10-12 Our firm handles situations similar to those discussed in this post. To learn more about our practice, please visit our Maryland workers’ compensation page.

As we’ve previously discussed in this blog, truck accidents have the potential to be extremely dangerous. The force of an 18-wheeler can do significant damage to a smaller vehicle, and the time and distance it takes for a fully loaded truck to effectively slow down or stop may not be enough to avoid a collision. As a result, truck accidents are often fatal for drivers and passengers of any cars involved. But truck accidents can also be deadly when they involve other trucks. If two trucks come too close to each other, they might not be able to avoid a collision on time due to the difficulty of stopping, and swerving to avoid that collision tends to be much more difficult due to trucks’ poor handling ability. An accident between two trucks recently caused the death of a man from Greenbelt, Maryland. The man was driving a commercial box truck on Interstate 95 in the early-morning hours of Aug. 16 when his vehicle collided with a tractor-trailer. According to a Delaware State Police sergeant, the tractor-trailer was heading north on I-95 when the driver decided to make an illegal U-turn by using an emergency cross-over. As he pulled onto the southbound lanes of the interstate, he entered the path of the box truck, which was in the left lane. The box truck driver attempted to swerve around the 18-wheeler, but hit the back of it on the driver’s side. The box truck overturned onto its left side, causing the cargo box full of soiled laundry to separate from the frame and spill its load. With the driver trapped inside the cab, the wreckage of the truck came to a stop in the right-hand lane. Most commercial truck drivers are under intense pressure to deliver their goods in the shortest time possible, so it’s not entirely surprising that the tractor-trailer driver chose to make a U-turn, rather than continue until he found an exit that allowed him to turn around legally. But turning in front of traffic only added to the many risks that the tractor-trailer driver carried with him. Either he or his transportation company may end up having to compensate the family of the other truck driver, who had his own load to carry and was doing so safely and responsibly. Source: Delaware Online, “Md. man killed in predawn I-95 crash,” Robin Brown, Aug. 17, 2012 Our firm handles situations similar to the one described in this post. To learn more about our practice, please visit ourMaryland truck accidentspage.

We often discuss the tragic car accidents that drunk driving can lead to, but plenty of crashes are also caused by operating a boat while intoxicated. In many ways, boating under the influence is even more dangerous because controlling a motorized vessel after drinking can be more difficult than driving a car, and many boaters overestimate their ability to see other watercraft and steer away from them in time. Most states have laws prohibiting boating under the influence that are similar to DUI laws. Ironically, a Maryland lawmaker has been accused of breaking one of the laws his government established. The state representative was driving a boat earlier this week when it crashed into another vessel carrying several children. The youngest, a 5-year-old girl, had to be taken to a hospital by helicopter and was still recovering as of Thursday. Not long after investigators said they suspected alcohol contributed to the accident, the 54-year-old legislator from Anne Arundel released a public statement saying that he’d been drinking before the crash. Appearing in front of reporters while sitting in a wheelchair and wearing a neck brace, he apologized for his actions, asked for forgiveness and said that his blood alcohol level at the time was .2, more than twice the legal driving limit for operating a car or a boat. A sergeant with the Maryland Natural Resources Police, which patrols the Magothy River where the accident happened, said he wasn’t sure where the representative got his blood alcohol level information, considering the official blood test results wouldn’t be available for at least two weeks. But the lawmaker’s public announcement of his drunkenness may contribute to any civil personal injury lawsuits the children’s families choose to file. When a person openly acknowledges such negligence, much of the burden of proof is lifted off personal injury plaintiffs hoping to recover damages they suffered in an accident. Source: The Washington Post, “Md. lawmaker was drinking before boat crash that injured 4 children,” Aaron C. Davis, Aug. 23, 2012 Our firm handles a wide variety of accident cases and other personal injury issues. To learn more about our practice, please visit ourBaltimore personal injurypage.

Anyone who commutes on a regular basis on Maryland’s roads accepts some level of risk. We all know in the back of our minds that car accidents are an inevitable part of modern life, but we tend not to think about that risk from day to day. So when a serious accident happens, it’s both upsetting and shocking — especially when someone is injured or killed due to the careless actions of another driver. The recent death of a 7-year-old girl in a car accident in Charles County, Maryland, is no exception. The accident, which involved a total of three vehicles, happened the afternoon of June 24 when a man driving an SUV north on Route 210 crossed the median and into southbound traffic. The vehicle first ran into the side of another SUV before colliding with a sedan. The young girl was a passenger in that sedan, and after suffering fatal injuries she was pronounced dead at the crash scene. The woman driving the car suffered life-threatening injuries and was airlifted to a hospital. Police suspect the SUV driver accused of causing the crash was drunk at the time. The 73-year-old Fort Washington, Maryland, man will likely face criminal charges of driving while intoxicated, but he might also find himself the defendant in a civil lawsuit if the girl’s family chooses to file one. A successful wrongful death lawsuit effectively demonstrates that someone who caused a fatal accident exhibited negligence and should pay damages to the people affected by the death. In many cases a wrongful death lawsuit demands compensation for lost wages, such as when the primary wage earner in a household is killed. But the death of a child is also a significant loss. In addition to compensation for medical, funeral and burial costs, a family may receive an award of damages for their emotional pain and suffering. This girl’s family may have understood the risks associated with her traveling in a car, but it would have been nearly impossible to anticipate her death in such a sudden accident. Source: The Baltimore Sun, “ 7-year-old girl killed in 3-car, alcohol-related crash,” Kevin Rector, June 24, 2012

When someone suffers a serious injury or death as a result of a medical error, a patient or the patient’s family may decide to file a civil lawsuit. One of the goals of most medical malpractice lawsuits is to see that the error doesn’t happen again to another patient. But in many cases, it does — often at another hospital far away, where doctors haven’t been warned about the potential for the error. These cases are especially troubling because they’re often easily preventable. Consider the case of a woman who donated a kidney to her brother. Kidney transplant surgery is performed thousands of times a year and is considered a fairly low-risk procedure. The problem in this case was a tiny surgical clip used to close off the renal artery. The clips are used successfully in many other types of surgery, but shouldn’t be used in kidney donors because they can easily slip off the artery. That’s what happened in this case, which caused the woman to die from internal bleeding. Transplant surgeons became aware of this problem as far back at 2004, when concerned doctors began notifying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, presenting the problem at surgical conferences and publishing articles in journals. Yet no warning exists on the surgical clips not to use them in kidney transplant surgeries. The manufacturers said they began sending warning letters to hospitals in 2006, but the hospital where the woman in this case died didn’t start using the clips until years later. By that time, the letter it had received was long forgotten. The hospital settled a civil lawsuit filed by the woman’s family, but still, the closest the clips come to having a warning is a symbol telling surgeons to read instructions on a device used to insert the clips. These instructions say not to use the clips on kidney donors, but they’re rarely kept in operating rooms. The letters the manufacturer sent also don’t indicate that people have died from their use, rendering the letters “meaningless,” according to one transplant surgeon. After the woman’s death, the FDA issued a safety notification about the clips. But what are the chances all hospitals who use the clips now or in the future will take note of it? It’s frightening to think more people undergoing surgery to save someone else’s life will lose their own as a result. Source: CNN, “ Kidney-donor deaths linked to surgical clips raise issues of alerts, warnings,” John Bonifield and Elizabeth Cohen, June 21, 2012

The family members of three people killed in a Baltimore fire truck accident will split a $40,000 settlement approved by the city’s spending board. The figure is the highest amount allowable for motor tort claims involving police and firefighters responding to emergencies. The December 2007 crash happened as a Baltimore County husband, wife and family friend were returning to the couple’s home around 3 a.m. A Baltimore City fire truck was responding to a report of an apartment building fire and had its lights and siren on as it sped through an intersection at 47 mph. The truck collided with the couple’s SUV, which was going about 23 mph. All three of its occupants died. The accident is thought to be the worst fatal collision between a fire truck and a civilian vehicle in the city in 50 years. No criminal charges were filed against the driver, who failed to stop at the intersection even though emergency vehicles are required to stop at all red lights when responding to emergencies. The 49-year-old woman who was driving the SUV left behind two grown children. She and her husband, who was 35, had been married for seven years. The 24-year-old man riding with them was engaged to be married. All were originally from Ukraine. The $40,000 settlement is a relatively small sum, but will help offset the funeral and burial costs their families paid more than four years ago. They also received some compensation in insurance, but needed to rely on donations from other family members and friends for financial support. What makes this case all the more tragic is that it was one of three civil lawsuits that the city recently settled involving its vehicles. One of the other crashes happened when a woman waiting for a bus was run down by a city Health Department worker who had either passed out or fallen asleep at the wheel. No one expects to suffer serious injuries or be killed by a public safety vehicle, but when it happens, it’s often up to the victims and their loved ones to pursue compensation and hold the municipality responsible. Source: The Baltimore Sun, “ City settles civil suits, one involving deaths in fire truck accident,” Peter Hermann, May 8, 2012