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Protect workers from silicosis and silica diseases
2005-05-25 - All workers, especially those from rural areas, should be better protected from occupational diseases, says an article in People's Daily. An excerpt follows:
Two years ago, a group of migrant workers working in Donghu, Fujian Province, started suffering from silicosis, a lung disease caused by long-time exposure to dusty air loaded with silicon dioxide. The victims are still in pain because of this fatal disease. Some have already lost their lives.
Migrant workers are vulnerable to professional diseases because employers fail to ensure they have a safe working environment. Worse, they are excluded from health insurance programmes. In many work places their rights are only limited to asking for full and on-time payment of their wages, they have no other benefits such as medical insurance and endowment insurance that are enjoyed by their peers from the cities.
The very existence of more than 16 million factories producing toxic and poisonous products is the main cause of occupational diseases, yet we cannot put an end to their business all at once.
In fact, China has a complete set of laws on occupational disease prevention. There are specific regulations on almost every detected work-related disease. However, many of the regulations are carelessly observed. Some factories are too profit-oriented to care about their employees' health.
To get rid of occupational diseases, or at least to minimize their occurrence, all employers should provide a safe working environment for their workers, including migrant workers who have always been placed at the lower echelons of society. Equipment to prevent workers' exposure to toxic substances is needed, while workers should have free medical examinations on a regular basis.
Government agencies should take up their responsibilities to supervise toxic substance manufacturers to make sure there are adequate prevention measures.
Sandblasters urged to undergo silicosis test
June 21, 2005 - Sandblasters who worked at the Darwin RAAF base in the 1960s and 1970s are being urged to have a test for silicosis.
An Australian National University academic, Dr Thomas Faunce, says it is possible the workers have the potentially fatal lung disease and do not know it.
He estimates as many as 10,000 Australians could have silicosis because they were not given adequate safety gear when doing sandblasting.
"They may just feel lethargic, they may be unable to exercise," he said.
"They may just think it is something to do with their smoking habits.
"They must just feel it is something to do with getting into middle age but many of them could well have lung disease."
Dr Faunce says people can contact the Australian Sandblasting Diseases Coalition which is lobbying for a Senate inquiry into the effects of the fatal lung disease.
Silica Case Fraud Exposed in Texas
by Luke Boggs
July 19, 2005 - There’s a courtroom drama unfolding in Texas with all the makings of a great Hollywood movie.
A massive lawsuit. Corporate defendants. 10,000 plaintiffs. A gaggle of unscrupulous lawyers and doctors. And a straight-shooting judge talking about “great red flags of fraud.”
But this is one true-life legal yarn that won’t be coming soon to your neighborhood multiplex.
Why? Because the corporate lawyers are the good guys, the plaintiffs’ lawyers are the bad guys, and most of the so-called injured aren’t. Doesn’t exactly fit the Hollywood mold, does it?
The case involves 10,000 claims of silicosis, a lung affliction caused by the inhalation of sand dust. While silicosis is distinct from asbestosis, the two maladies both impact the lungs – and attract trial lawyers like buzzards to road kill.
Overseeing the case is US District Judge Janis Graham Jack, a Clinton appointee. Jack knows the law and has – as a doctor’s wife and former nurse – more than a passing familiarity with medicine. Neatly summing up, she said, “This case is more about fraud and money than it is about criminal liability.”
The case has exposed lawyers and doctors willing to do just about anything for cash, including manufacture plaintiffs.
Crafty, the lawyers started out with thousands of folks identified in earlier cases as having lung troubles. Problem is, these people were said to have a different lung ailment, asbestosis.
In fact, more than half of the plaintiffs – 5,174 out of 10,000 – had previously filed asbestos claims.
That’s obvious fraud, given that independent doctors say the occurrence of both silicosis and asbestosis in the same patient is very rare.
And what of the other plaintiffs, those who weren’t asbestos retreads? While sleazy lawyers have traditionally chased ambulances, attorneys in the silica case didn’t trail anyone to a medical facility. Instead, they set up their own, putting an x-ray machine and a doctor in a trailer in the parking lot of a Western Sizzlin’ restaurant. Seriously.
Not only that, but the x-ray machine was owned by a real estate broker, the doctor wasn’t a radiologist, and no one had a license to take x-rays. Talk about a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Once this mess – the double-dipped plaintiffs, the trailer-made x-rays – came out in court, case doctors couldn’t abandon their diagnoses fast enough.
One doctor, who has since been subpoenaed by a New York City grand jury, flatly denied diagnosing the 3,617 plaintiffs he had diagnosed. Still unclear is what he thought his lawyer pals expected him to do for the $250,000 they gave him.
Another doctor blamed his secretary. Yet another said he hadn’t read the 255 diagnoses he signed because he is “very, very busy.” Probably safe to assume he wasn’t too busy to cash the lawyers’ checks.
Given the decades of abuse contingency-fee attorneys have given public companies, the public treasury and the public at-large, it’s nice to see the hunters become the hunted for a change.
Lawyers behind fraud-fattened silica and asbestos suits are also reeling from reform legislation enacted last year in Ohio and this year in Georgia, Texas and Florida.
Basically, legislators in these states think plaintiffs should show injury before being compensated. Seems like a pretty obvious, common-sense reform, but it is raising howls of protest from dollar-chasing lawyers.
In Washington, lawmakers are struggling to organize a massive industry fund to settle all outstanding asbestos claims. Some insurers and industry players are now balking at the scheme’s price tag ($140 billion) – and a clause that would allow more lawsuits when the money runs out.
A better approach would be a federal medical criteria statute that, like the state laws mentioned above, would require plaintiffs to be sick. Given all the lawyers and trial-lawyer money in Congress, however, it’s safe to say such reform won’t come quickly, if at all.
Even so, after the courtroom quake in Texas, mass substance-related lawsuits may never be the wide open playground they once were. And that would be great news for everyone but the black-hat lawyers.
Mr. Boggs is a corporate speechwriter and freelance columnist in Atlanta, Ga. He worked for Zell Miller's Republican challenger in the 1994 Georgia governor's race.
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