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Ken Belson of the Times reported in June that state investigators had “suggested … ways that Consolidated Edison and the New York City Fire Department can better coordinate their response to gas leaks.”

After a seven-month investigation, the Public Service Commission is recommending that the utility ask firefighters to remain until safe conditions are restored, improve the way information about gas leaks is shared and set parameters for ordering evacuations.

The Fire Department and Con Edison were criticized for how they handled the deadly explosion, at a house in Sunnyside, on Nov. 21. The Fire Department said it did nothing wrong when it left after checking a report of a gas odor because Con Edison officials had taken control of the situation. The utility said it acted appropriately because it did not have information suggesting that any of the people in the houses in the area were in danger.

A 69-year-old woman, Kunta Oza, who lived at 48-19 41st Street, died a day after being burned in the explosion.

Con Edison, which said it followed its established procedures for dealing with gas leaks on the day of the explosion, has since improved its protocols, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

“We’ve worked closely with the Fire Department with respect to improving procedures for responding to gas complaints, maintaining emergency personnel presence on site and coordinating evacuations when necessary,” said the spokesman, Michael Clendenin.

Con Edison has already implemented some of the “actions to improve safety” that were recommended by the Public Service Commission. On Wednesday, staff investigators discussed their findings from the explosion at a commission meeting in Albany. The investigation is complete, but the report has not yet been released.

But Kenneth P. Thompson, a lawyer who is representing Mrs. Oza’s family in a civil suit against Con Edison, said the investigators’ findings showed that “Con Ed was negligent and caused Mrs. Oza’s death.” The report, he said, includes details about rusted gas pipes.

“Con Ed had a duty to fix that pipe, and that it wasn’t on their priority list shows they were negligent,” Mr. Thompson said. Mrs. Oza’s family is seeking $100 million in damages from Con Edison.

Officials for Con Edison said the utility did not comment on pending lawsuits.

Councilman Eric N. Gioia, who represents Sunnyside, said the commission had ignored the destruction caused by the explosion and should penalize Con Edison. (The commission did not assess penalties as part of the investigation.)

“The Public Service Commission continues to confirm our worst fears that they are little more than a public shield for Con Ed’s behavior instead of being the watchdog they need to be,” Mr. Gioia said. “Whether it’s getting electrocuted, steam pipe explosions or this, at most, the Public Service Commission gives them a slap on the wrist.”

Con Ed Urged to Improve Its Response to Gas Leaks, June 19, 2008.

Interestingly, the Public Service Commission entitled its press release

GAS DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES IMPROVE SAFETY RECORD
-Effort Underway to Further Improve Safety Performance-

On the same day that it expanded the definition of “major” system failure so that it means a system failure for 10% or more of Con Ed’s customers a maximum fine of $10 million, and a maximum of three incidents per year. “PSC Redefines Major Outages for Con Edison.” Have three major incidents - and the fourth, fifth and sixth - and every later one - are on the house. - Con Ed admits to having 3.176 million customers (See Con Ed Fact Sheet here) - so the message here is - try to keep the system failures to 300,000 customers or less - but if things get very bad - you’ll never have to pay more than $30 million in fines.

This doesn’t seem like a particularly effective deterrent.

See also:

Queens Crap Blog coverage of Con Edison issue(s)

New York Sun coverage of Con Ed

According to Gardiner Harris and Wald Bogdanich of the Times,

• The FDA has received reports of 785 serious  injuries and forty-six (46) deaths associated with Heparin;
• But the FDA has taken the position that only 19 of the 46 deaths are in fact, related to Heparin;
• Baxter International says it’s only four deaths.

Harris and Bogdanich also make it clear how difficult it can be to investigate these typpes of cases after the fact:

Federal drug regulators said Wednesday that a critical blood thinner that had been linked to at least 19 deaths and whose raw components were produced in China contained a possibly counterfeit ingredient that mimicked the real drug. (emphasis added)

Routine tests failed to distinguish the contaminant from the drug, heparin. Only sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging tests uncovered that as much as 20 percent of the product’s active ingredient was a heparin mimic blended in with the real thing. Federal officials said they did not know what the contaminant was.

In their piece the following day, Harris and Bogdanich reported that:

Food and Drug Administration officials announced that they were asking all companies in the United States that produce heparin to test it with two new procedures.

The complex tests, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and capillary electrophoresis, are the only ones that can uncover whether the drug contains a possibly counterfeit ingredient.

“German Authorities Report Problems With Blood Thinner,” March 7, 2008.

The Times has been  on top of this story: a search for “blood thinner China” on the Times website yielded at least eight articles on the subject in the last five weeks.

Perhaps it’s time to think about making our drugs at home - rather than becoming dependent on  a country without real regulation to produce medication,  a commodity for which quality control is asolutely critical. One wonders what the those who are rosy-eyed about free-trade think about this. (We’ll keep an eye out to see if The Times’s Thomas Friedman weighs in on this).

Chinese government hasn’t been tracking drug manufacturers, much less regulating them, or ensuring drug safety. This arises out the investigation of (at least) four deaths linked to heparin sold in the United States by Baxter International, which contained ingredients made by a firm called Changzhou SPL, which is in China but whose majority ownership is held by the American company Scientific Protein Laboratories.

Excellent recent account (from which most of the details above were obtained can be found in Blood Thinner Might Be Tied to More Deaths,” by Walt Bogdanich, and “China Didn’t Check Drug Supplier, Files Show,” by Bogdanich and Jake Hooker, both of The New York Times.

Since getting drug companies to behave themselves responsibly is often so difficult - and setting up regulatory schemes is difficult even in the absence of an industry determined to resist regulation - we’d like to propose an interim solution: require that all pharmaceuticals which contain any ingredients, packaging, or in any other way have been produced in China, be explicitly and brightly labeled. The text might be only “Some components may have been made in the People’s Republic of China.” As an interim measure, this might allow the market to assist in reducing the risks associated with taking medication.