This is Jay Farrar doing the Josh White tune we posted earlier, recorded at a club in North Carolina in November 2006.

Mayberry Sheriff Andy Griffith narrates a 1983 video about silicosis, with a Flatt & Scruggs soundtrack.

Sandblasting has become the key method for finishing most modern jeans requiring that ‘worn-out’ look. Under the sandblasting process the denim is smoothed, shaped and cleaned by forcing abrasive particles across it at high speeds. The process is fast and cheap and demand for pre-worn denim has led to a massive rise in its use. But this fashion comes at a price: the health and even the lives of sandblasting workers.

Video exposure monitoring (VEM) is a technique that uses a direct–reading measurement to test a worker’s exposure while performing a task as it is being recorded on videotape. Thus, VEM consists of logged real-time collection superimposed upon worksite video.

As part of an ongoing project to demonstrate the effectiveness of engineering controls used to reduce the amount of worker exposure to airborne crystalline silica dust, the NJDHSS and other partners are conducting a series of VEM studies.

Shown below are the products of two VEM studies, one on jackhammering concrete and one on overhead sawing. Each study includes a comparison between a dust-suppression engineering control versus a no-control scenario.

The Upper East Side is all aflutter this week on the heels of a report released by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration concerning carcinogen levels underneath Second Ave. As The Post first reported yesterday, OSHA found found higher-than-acceptable levels of silica in the Second Ave. Subway work area, 70 feet beneath street level, and fined three contracts a total of $8500 for “serious” health violations. The full report is available here.

On March 1 at the Waterford Conservation Commission meeting regarding the application for the proposed rock crushing and mining operation on Industrial Drive by Kobyluck Brothers, a new piece of information came to light. The town’s third party reviewers stated that the amount of dust that will be produced will be between 150,000 to 200,000 pounds per year. That ends up equaling between 12 to 17 12,000-pound dump-truck loads.

Besides the volume of dust is its composition. Much of the bedrock that is to be excavated and processed contains silica. Silica is a known carcinogen and causes a condition called Silicosis. This dust can travel a mile or more before settling. There will be a long period of time where there will be no containment building surrounding the processing equipment allowing this dust to travel far and wide.

transportworkers:



On Friday, March 23 people will gather on Washington Place and Green Street in New York from noon to 1 p.m. for the 101st Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Commemoration.




The commemoration is for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that occurred on March 25, 1911 when a fire erupted on the…