1. Senado dos Estados Unidos elimina (mata) legislação que requeria correção de violações graves em segurança por parte de empresas.
USA: Senate votes to kill worker safety rule
President Trump and congressional Republicans are rolling back a series of Obama-era worker safety regulations disliked by business groups. Last week the Senate voted to kill a rule requiring federal contractors to disclose and correct serious safety violations. In a narrow result (divided along party lines), the Senate voted 49 to 48 to eliminate the regulation, dubbed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule. Finalised last August but blocked by a court order in October, the rule would have limited the ability of companies with recent safety problems to complete for government contracts unless they agreed to remedies. The measure to abolish it had already cleared the House. The next step after the Senate vote will be the White House, where Trump is expected to sign it. A half-dozen other worker safety regulations are in the Republicans' sights. "This is the opening salvo of the Republican's war on workers," said Deborah Berkowitz of the National Employment Law Project. "It sends a signal that Congress and the administration is listening to big business and their lobbyists and they are not standing up for the interests of the American workers." Republican lawmakers are employing the rarely used Congressional Review Act (CRA) to target safety rules. The CRA allows Congress to roll back recently enacted regulations by a simple majority vote. Once a rule is killed, it is killed forever. No future administration can pass a substantially similar measure unless Congress is persuaded to pass a law instead — a far more difficult task.
Read more: NELP news release. Washington Post. The Hill. Source: Risks 791
2. ONU (Nações Unidas) critica como mito a ideia de "necessidade dos pesticidas"
Global: UN experts slam myth that pesticides are necessary
Two United Nations experts have called for a comprehensive new global treaty to regulate and phase out the use of dangerous pesticides in farming, and move towards sustainable agricultural practices. The report, which is highly critical of the claims made by the pesticide industry, notes: "The assertion promoted by the agrochemical industry that pesticides are necessary to achieve food security is not only inaccurate, but dangerously misleading." It adds: "The industry frequently uses the term 'intentional misuse' to shift the blame on to the user for the avoidable impacts of hazardous pesticides. Yet clearly, the responsibility for protecting users and others throughout the pesticide life cycle and throughout the retail chain lies with the pesticide manufacturer." Farmers and agricultural workers, communities living near plantations, indigenous communities and pregnant women and children are particularly vulnerable to pesticide exposure and require special protections, the report notes. It was authored by the UN's Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver, and the Special Rapporteur on Toxics, Baskut Tuncak. They told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that widely divergent standards of production, use and protection from hazardous pesticides in different countries are creating double standards, which are having a serious impact on human rights. The Special Rapporteurs pointed to research showing that pesticides were responsible for an estimated 200,000 acute poisoning deaths each year. The overwhelming number of fatalities, some 99 per cent, occurred in developing countries where health, safety and environmental regulations were weaker. Urging a new approach to farming, they say: "It is time to overturn the myth that pesticides are necessary to feed the world and create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production."
Read more: UN news release. UN OHCHR news release and report, which is available here. Source: Risks 791
3. Acidentes, mortes e problemas de saúde no trabalho na Europa. Estudo procura estimar custos desses impactos na Europa
Europe: Accidents, deaths and health problems at work
Each year, work-related accidents result in long periods of absence from work, and even death. Furthermore, a significant proportion of Europe's working population suffers from one or more work-related health problems.
As a first step towards estimating the Europe-wide costs of work-related health problems, accidents and deaths, EU-OSHA has produced a new report evaluating the quality and comparability of the available data that can be used to determine those costs. Although the authors identified a lack of robust and reliable data in this area, they suggest methods that would allow a partial estimation of costs to be made.
Read more: EU-OSHA (Download the report or the summary here)
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