Bob Whitmore, director of the recordkeeping system for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), says his agency doesn't have a good idea of how many injuries and illnesses are actually occurring in U.S. workplaces, according to The Charlotte Observer:

Whitmore has directed OSHA's record-keeping system since 1988. Early in his career, he said, OSHA looked closely at companies' injury and illness logs and issued big fines to businesses that underreported such incidents.

But by the 1990s, he said, industry groups and pro-business lawmakers were accusing OSHA of focusing on what they perceived as frivolous paperwork violations. Today, he said, the agency is conducting fewer inspections and issuing fewer fines, leaving businesses to police themselves.

The government, he said, has no clear picture of the hazards that lurk inside some of America's most dangerous manufacturers.

Whitmore's claims jibe with a 2006 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine which looked at injury and illness data from a variety of sources for workers in Michigan. (OSHA only uses business reporting.) The study concluded that the current national surveillance system (which is based on OSHA data) is missing about two-thirds of workplace injuries and illnesses. That's some serious underreporting.

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A post at the Pump Handle blog gives some much-needed attention to a big problem in workplace safety. Two recent fatal chemical plant explosions, one in Florida and one in Georgia, may have been avoided if the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration had taken the advice of the Chemical Safety Board — an independent federal agency that often makes recommendations to OSHA on chemical hazards in need of regulation.

Read the post here: "Outcry," by Francis Hamilton Rammazzocchi

In today's Washington Post, David Brown writes a gruesome yet compelling article on a new illness that may be caused by inhaling microscopic bits of pig brain.

Twelve workers in a Minnesota slaughterhouse were suffering from similar symptoms — burning sensations, weakness, and numbness of the extremities — but the cause was a mystery to doctors. Luckily, a translator (most of the patients are Hispanic) noticed that two patients with different doctors who both worked at the slaughterhouse had developed the same mysterious symptoms.

The article explains how such a strange link between working in the slaughterhouse and developing the symptoms could occur:

One of the steps in that part of the operation involves removing the pigs' brains with compressed air forced into the skull through the hole where the spinal cord enters. The brains are then packed and sent to markets in Korea and China as food.

Investigators say there is no reason to suspect that either the brains or the pork cuts were contaminated. Their working hypothesis is that the harvesting technique -- known as "blowing brains" on the floor -- produces aerosols of brain matter. Once inhaled, the material prompts the immune system to produce antibodies that attack the pig brain compounds, but apparently also attack the body's own nerve tissue because it is so similar.

The article doesn't mention OSHA, but the Occupational Safety and Health Act requires OSHA to regulate workplace emissions that have adverse health effects. Brown reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the potential link, but pressure may begin to build for OSHA to look into matters as well.