Workers input on IBM study welcomed Press SunBulletin

Workers input on IBM study welcomed pressconnects.com Press Press August Print this page E mail this article Share this article Del.icio.us Facebook Digg Reddit Newsvine What s this A . million study to determine cancer rates of IBM employees is being designed to withstand the rigors of scientific review and pitfalls of public skepticism. At least that s the intention of its authors at the National Institute of Occupational Safety Health. Officials at the federal agency are scheduling a meeting this fall to get feedback from peer review scientists to ensure details are technically sound. Community members and labor advocates will also be invited and encouraged to offer suggestions of their own. The date and place are yet to be determined although the meeting will be in the Triple Cities area possibly in November. It s part of the attempt to involve workers and their representatives friends and families said Fred Blosser a spokesman for NIOSH. Wanda Hudak put it this way We r! e trying to bring the regular Joes to the table. Hudak is coordinator of a citizens group called the Western Broome Environmental Stakeholders Coalition which works with health and environmental officials to understand environmental and health issues affecting Southern Tier communities. The study expected to take years plans to tap personnel files dating to the early s that document the IBM work force at the microelectronics campus on North Street. Researchers plan to cross reference the IBM records with cancer and death records kept by state and federal government agencies to log the number of workers who developed cancer during their employment or any time after. Researchers from the state Department of Health are seeing if it s also feasible to cross reference the IBM files with records kept by the state to determine if children of women employed at the Endicott plant were more likely to suffer birth defects. IBM is providing the employee files along with information abo! ut what chemicals were used in various parts of the plant now owned by Huron Real Estate Associates. IBM will continue to cooperate with NIOSH just as we have done in the past said IBM spokesman Michael Maloney. He could not say whether the company would have a representative at the fall meeting. NIOSH officials said it is unlikely the study will provide a causal relationship between illness and exposure to a specific chemical because so many different chemicals were used at the plant many of them known toxic substances and carcinogens. Nevertheless documenting illnesses among workers is a critical starting point to fruitful discussions about worker safety said Rick White a labor advocate with AllianceIBM a labor group. It moves us into other areas of discussion he said. How do you keep it from happening in the future and where do we go from here . Without this discussion and information from the study there s no place for health and safety anymore. In your voice Read reactions to this story Newest first Oldest first Add your comment max maxch! ars characters You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login Register characters left staffMark authorIcon authorHandle wrote commentBody commentTimestamp commentBody authorNameHandle recommendLink newpostLink replylink reportAbuseLink Report item as required X Obscenity vulgarity Hate speech Personal attack Advertising Spam Copyright Plagiarism Other Comment optional Missing input fields. You must fill out the comment body in order to submit a comment. Comment too long. The comment you have entered is too long. Please limit your post to maxchars characters or less. Links More TCE coverage More News headlines Bus junction to move this month Chance of storms today Binghamton University clinic offers help OT pay for cops strains Endicott budget Workers input on IBM study welcomed Partners Jobs CareerBuilder.com Cars Cars.com Apartments Apartments.com Shopping ShopLocal.com Home News Towns Sports Business Viewpoints Life Family Entertainment Obituaries Multimedia Weather Buy! Sell Customer Service Site Map Terms of Service Privacy Policy Contact Us About Us Work for Us Subscribe GANNETT NEW YORK NETWORK Binghamton Elmira Ithaca Poughkeepsie Rochester Westchester WGRZ TV Buffalo Copyright Binghamton Press Sun Bulletin Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy updated March . Initializing ms Starting first parse .Parsing macro pluck InitializeArticles .Build ms Article .Build ms Article .Build ms Content .Completed macro pluck InitializeArticles .Build ms Article .Parsing macro seo .Build ms Misc .Completed macro seo .Parsing macro pd search .Completed macro pd search .Parsing macro loginbox branding .Build ms Content .Completed macro loginbox branding .Build ms Article .Parsing macro footerart .Parsing macro sitecatalyst .Build ms Misc .Completed macro sitecatalyst .Build ms Content Starting first parse .Build ms Misc

Source: http://www.pressconnects.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080818/NEWS01/808180336

Read also car loan mistake