President Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 today giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) powers to regulate tobacco for the first time. The law bans tobacco advertising within a thousand feet of schools and playgrounds and curbs the marketing of products to children.

It allows FDA to take steps to reduce the harmful effects of smoking through a new Center for Tobacco Products. More than 400,000 people die each year from tobacco-related illnesses, according to the White House blog. The White House also issued a fact sheet on the bill.

The Salt Lake Tribune and the Mine Safety and Health News are reporting that families of victims in the August 2007 Crandall Canyon mine collapse have reached a settlement with the companies that owned and operated the mine and related insurance companies. The settlement involves three civil suits representing 16 groups of plaintiffs and includes seven defendants.

According to the Tribune, the civil settlement does not affect the criminal investigation being conducted by the U.S. Attorney for Utah, Brett Tolman. That investigation continues. The companies are still contesting more than $1.5 million in civil penalties proposed by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) for violations at the mine, according to Mine Safety and Health News.

The settlement is reportedly the largest in Utah mining history but terms of the settlement remain confidential. The largest prior mine settlement was in 1984 for more than $22 million. Attorneys for the two sides had been in mediated talks for more than a year trying to reach a settlement without going to litigation.

Six miners were killed in the initial collapse and just days later three rescuers were killed when another section of the mine collapsed. Litigation would have been long and costly because reports about the accident have assigned responsibility for the failure to various parties including MSHA for approving faulty mine safety plans.

Following last week's hearing by the House Education and Labor Committee on the underreporting of workplace injuries, the committee held a hearing today entitled, Is OSHA Failing to Adequately Enforce Construction Safety Rules?

Not too surprisingly, the answer is different depending on who you ask. If you ask the brother-in-law of a worker killed in a Las Vegas accident, or the Acting Building Commissioner in New York City, or the President of the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, the answer to the question is pretty similar. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) could be doing a lot more to save lives and prevent injuries.

Most of the questions, however, were directed to Edwin Foulke, Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA. In what has become the standard script for administration officials in testimony before congressional oversight committees, Foulke 1) talked about the progress the agency is making, 2) used a couple big numbers without providing a context in which to tell what those numbers mean, and 3) refused to answer questions about what resources the agency needs to do its job better.

No fewer than four times, committee members asked Foulke, in one way or another, if OSHA needed more resources for inspections, training, enforcement, or to get rules written to protect American workers. Foulke did not answer that question even once. His standard response was to talk about the progress OSHA is making in reducing the rates of injuries and accidents.

The irony of repeating that mantra before the committee — a committee that had, the week before, learned about the underreporting of injuries, that had just pointed out to him the soaring rates of increases in injuries among Hispanic construction workers, and that asked him to explain why the rates of fatalities in Canada and several European countries were about half the U.S. average — seemed lost on Foulke.

According to testimony at the hearing by the union representative, four construction workers die each day in the U.S., around 1,200 to 1,500 workers each year. That is 10 times the number of law enforcement officials and 10 times the number of firefighters lost each year. Let's stop asking the administration how it's doing and start documenting the uncomfortable facts about its performance. It may not change agency behavior at this late date, but at least such information can teach us how not to govern.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that one of the Chinese owners of the toy manufacturer tied to the Mattel, Inc. recall of 1.5 million toys committed suicide Aug. 11. Cheung Shu-hung, an owner of Lee Der Industrial Co., killed himself at his Chinese factory.

It is not clear if the suicide is related to the recall, according the WSJ article, but Mattel revealed late last week that Lee Der was the manufacturer of the recalled toys, which may have been coated with excessive levels of lead-based paint. After the Aug. 2 recall, China announced that Lee Der was prevented from exporting its products and was being investigated.

Chinese manufacturers face intense cost pressures and may be facing huge losses as U.S. companies begin to look elsewhere for their products. An Aug. 11 Washington Post story cited instances of U.S toy retailers looking to purchase more goods from domestic and E.U. sources, although many of their holiday orders for goods have already been placed. E.U. manufacturers have higher safety standards than the U.S. and test products made in China before exporting them. The Post also reports that the Toy Industry Association is working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to write legislation that makes testing mandatory for all toys. As we noted last week, CPSC has just had its full powers legislatively restored temporarily. If the two groups working together propose steps away from the current voluntary approach, it would be a great leap forward.