Many US workplaces required to report injuries flouted new Labor Department rule

Hundreds of thousands of large or high-risk workplaces were required by law to submit injury and illness records to the federal government. These records, which offer a detailed breakdown of injuries at a given workplace, are critical to understanding whether employees are being adequately protected on the job.

But new court documents have revealed a staggering number of companies that have failed to hand over their records in recent years. The result: Many employers remain cloaked in secrecy.

These documents came to light only after we sued the federal government to get them. Our analysis found that only about 60% of the establishments expected to submit 2016 data to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration responded. And less than half of the roughly 463,000 workplaces required to report their injury numbers in 2017 and 2018 did so. 

In the 2016 data, we found that even some Fortune 500 companies neglected to fully report their numbers. McDonald’s and The Home Depot appeared to be missing entirely, while only one establishment with 58 employees appeared for Boeing, one of the nation’s top federal contractors. Representatives for McDonald’s, The Home Depot and Boeing did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In/Vulnerable

Dr. Rajnish Jaiswal works in the emergency room at a public hospital in New York’s East Harlem. In March, he and his colleagues bore witness to COVID-19’s chaotic, terrifying first wave.

“It was like nonstop, basically,” he recalled. “You had a patient come in every five minutes. We never turned anyone away.”

Jaiswal contracted COVID-19, recovered and returned to work. Later, one of his colleagues was admitted with a severe case of the disease. His X-rays showed signs of seriously compromised lung function. His skin turned blue and gray as he struggled to breathe.

“To see someone who you've worked with so closely and is sort of like a fellow soldier, it really hit hard,” Jaiswal said. “But none of us had the time to process the emotional aspect of it. We just had to make sure that we saved him.”

The nurse survived and returned to work in June.

This is the latest installment of In/Vulnerable, our ongoing comics series with The Nib investigating inequity during the pandemic. Check out all of the installments here.

This week’s episode: The refuge revealed

The 40-year fight over drilling for oil in one of the world’s wildest places, Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is coming to a head. On Aug. 17, the Department of the Interior removed the final hurdle to allow oil industry bids for the right to drill in the refuge. Opponents say climate change is warming the Arctic twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and the plants, animals and people living there are struggling to adapt.

But this isn’t just a fight between environmentalists and oil companies – the Indigenous communities in the region also are fighting to be heard. Both the Iñupiat and the Gwich’in have roots in the refuge that go back thousands of years. The refuge is sacred land, and some Indigenous people are fighting to prevent drilling. But others say oil development is the best hope for the future of their community.

This episode, which first aired March 7, is a collaboration with the award-winning podcast Threshold, which focuses on one pressing environmental issue each season. This season of Threshold was supported by the Pulitzer Center. 

What we’re reading

What happened in Room 10? – The California Sunday Magazine

Later, the story of the Life Care outbreak would be flattened by the ubiquitous metaphors of pandemic. People would say that COVID-19 hit like a bomb, or an earthquake, or a tidal wave. They would say it spread like wildfire. But inside the facility, it felt more like a spectral haunting. A nurse named Chelsey Earnest said that fighting COVID was like “chasing the devil.” 

They know how to prevent megafires. Why won’t anybody listen? – ProPublica

The pattern is a form of insanity: We keep doing overzealous fire suppression across California landscapes where the fire poses little risk to people and structures. As a result, wildland fuels keep building up. At the same time, the climate grows hotter and drier. Then, boom: the inevitable. The wind blows down a power line, or lightning strikes dry grass, and an inferno ensues. This week we’ve seen both the second- and third-largest fires in California history. “The fire community, the progressives, are almost in a state of panic,” (Tim) Ingalsbee said. There’s only one solution, the one we know yet still avoid. “We need to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load.”

Coronavirus has left the Rio Grande Valley riven by death and anxiety – The Washington Post

Graveyard workers lower caskets into the earth three or four times a day instead of once or twice a week. Masked mourners surround fresh mounds of dirt by the hour. Curanderas perform cleansing rituals for the grief-stricken. A parish priest cannot remember how many times he has rung the funeral bell. Helicopters swoop in, as if in a war, to spirit away the critically ill.

Most residential addiction treatment programs don’t offer life-saving medication – WBUR CommonHealth

Patients seeking treatment for an opioid addiction have limited access to a life-saving medication, buprenorphine, in residential treatment facilities across the U.S. Research published in JAMA finds that 29% of 368 programs contacted offer the drug that helps reduce cravings for heroin or fentanyl. Another 21% of the treatment centers contacted discouraged its use.

‘You’ve got to do something’: Pa. rehabs buckle, begin to close under COVID-19 strain – Spotlight PA

Faced with the financial burdens of COVID-19 and a lack of state support, drug and alcohol treatment facilities in Pennsylvania could begin closing at an alarming rate, even as overdose deaths rise and the need for treatment is expected to grow.