THE SUZIO STORY 125 YEARS OF FAMILY ENTERPRISE PHILANTHROPY AND SERVICE
The Meriden Historical Society is hosting an exhibit entitled "The Suzio Story - 125 Years of Enterprise, Family, Philanthropy, and Service" at its Museum and History Center, at 41 West Main Street in Meriden every Sunday in October from 11:00 to 3:00
Featuring memorabilia and photographs from Suzio headquarters on Westfield Road as well as videos of interviews with past and present employees
Capturing the remarkable story of a 21 year old Italian immigrant, Leonardo Suzio, who grew Suzio York Hill into one of the most successful and enduring family-owned businesses in Connecticut history starting in 1898
Including the role of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation Suzio members and Henry Altobello in the evolution and growth of the business from building (1910's) to road construction (1930's) to building materials (1955 - today)
Highlighting Suzio loyalty to its origin city Meriden, its employees, its vendors, and its community.
Aetna Bridge Leads Goldstar Bridge Rehabilitation Job
CHUCK
MACDONALD – CEG CORRESPONDENT
Built in the 1940s, the northbound span of the Goldstar Memorial Bridge continues carrying five lanes of I-95 traffic safely across the Thames River from New London to Groton in Connecticut.
Although inspectors have declared the bridge to be safe, the
Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) has decided to keep it safe
well into the future by commissioning a project to strengthen the northbound
bridge.
The job will have three phases, totaling approximately $407
million, with the entire project due to be completed in 2029. The phases
include rehabbing the truss spans, work on the approach span, fixing bearings,
concrete repairs, improved drainage systems, and finally a full deck
replacement.
The box truss bridge, the largest bridge in the state, is just
more than a mile long and carries approximately 60,000 vehicles daily. The
bridge also passes over railroads and local roads, making it a key
transportation artery in the state.
Scott Thompson is the project manager of Aetna Bridge, who
was awarded the contract for Phase 1, and supervises a team of approximately 70
workers for the current phase of the project. The job is not for the faint of
heart as the workers do their jobs on a bridge that soars 110-150 ft. above the
water at the midpoint of the bridge. The upper platform is 140 ft. above the
water.
The bridge was bult with silicon steel, at the time a best-of-its-kind alloy, but now known to become brittle.
"We will be strengthening the structure to meet current
standards," said Thompson. "We will be removing 7/8-inch rivets and
replacing them with 1-inch high-strength, galvanized bolts. We will also be
adding strengthening plates at key points on the bridge trusses. In all, we
will be putting 1.4 million pounds of steel into the bridge."
Thompson estimates that the bridge was last given a full
paint job 50 years ago. He understands that the coating system being applied
will provide rust protection for an additional 50 years.
The strengthening plates vary in size from 1 ton to 200 lbs.
Aetna team members work closely with the painting team. After Aetna's team
supplies the new bolts and plates, the painting contractor paints the newly
finished area.
Aetna Bridge's activity required the company to build
specialized work platforms to support the heavy lifting needed to hoist the
metal into place for installation by the workers. The team used rough-terrain
cranes and rough-terrain forklifts to wrestle the material into place. From
that point, workers used electric chainfalls for moving steel into place for
final bolting onto the trusses. The team made extensive use of other heavy-duty
equipment such as mag drills, rivet busters and impact guns.
Working over the Thames River means that workers are paying
careful attention to environmental issues.
"We are using water soluble and biodegradable cutting
oils for all of our metal machining," said Thompson. "We are also
trying to minimize our use of throw-away plastics. In addition, we have
engineered environmental protections into our processes to protect the river
from our construction operations."
Aetna Bridge has placed considerable emphasis on worker
safety for the project, including project safety officers and requiring safety
officers for subcontractors. The safety team is using a CTDOT-sponsored plan to
control motorists driving under the bridge. A safety boat patrols the water
under the bridge when construction activity is under way above. Boaters are
being alerted about the activity.
"One of the biggest challenges for the job has been the
aggressive schedule for our work on the bridge," said Thompson. "We
were given very strict criteria for our work and the engineering we had to do.
There was very little give in our schedule especially since we are the first
phase of the project with others following closely after our part."
Another unexpected wrinkle in the schedule was the directive
to avoid disturbing the nest of a peregrine falcon who made its home on the
adjacent bridge.
"Ours is a painting and steel project, so this
restriction was an enormous reduction in the time we could be working on the
bridge."
Thompson estimates that the work on the first phase of the
project is 50 percent finished. He believes that when the project is completed
it will have a sizeable impact on traffic in the state.
"This project will enable oversized vehicles and
permitted trucks to now use the Goldstar Memorial Bridge. Before this they had
to use a 17-mile detour. The work will increase the strength of the bridge and
remove a restriction on a major artery for northbound traffic in
Connecticut." CEG
$2M Air Line Trail grant to help connect Middletown, Portland to 11-mile Central CT Loop
MIDDLETOWN — A $2 million state grant for the engineering
and construction of a Middletown connection to the Air
Line State Park Trail in Portland has the potential to unlock another
$8 million in federal dollars for the overall project.
The State Bond Commission will be issuing the funds to
the Lower Connecticut River Valley
Council of Governments, of which Middletown, Portland and other Middlesex
County municipalities are members.
The Air Line, a former railway that takes its name from the
imaginary line drawn from New York to Boston, according to the state Department
of Energy & Environmental Protection, is a stone dust trail used by
walkers and cyclists.
The trail now has two sections: south from East Hampton
to Windham and north from Windham to Pomfret with the Thompson
addition and beyond, according to DEEP.
Plans are for it to eventually connect the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail with
Middletown at the center, according to a news release from state Sen. Matt
Lesser.
The lawmaker was instrumental in advocating for and securing
the money, according to RiverCOG Executive Director Samuel Gold.
The Air Line and Farmington Canal trails are the two
longest such routes in the state, said Gold, who has biked the Air Line Trail
all the way to Willimantic. “I love it,” he said Monday, speaking from
Colorado. He cycled Glenwood Canon on Sunday.
“You can see in places like Colorado, where it’s a huge
tourism draw,” Gold added.
Once finished, the 23-mile ALT-FCT Connector would complete
the 111-mile Central Connecticut Loop Trail.
The local portion now ends at 82 Middle Haddam Road in
Portland, which goes to East Hampton and beyond.
The town of East Hampton just received funding to complete
its gap in the trail, Gold explained. Meriden, through the South Central Regional Council of Governments,
has finished its plan, as has Cheshire, in the Naugatuck Valley.
“We’re all working together toward this vision … and now we
have money to build,” Gold said. The Portland-to-Middletown connection would
make its way over the Arrigoni Bridge, which spans the Connecticut River.
“This is a once-in-a-career time for me when there’s money
in Washington (D.C.) for projects like this” through the Rebuilding American
Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant, Gold said.
The entire initiative is expected to take longer than a
decade, according to John Hall, executive director of the Jonah Center for Earth and Art in
Middletown. “As the state invests in it, it becomes more and more
likely to happen, because now it’s becoming a major project," he said.
The Air Line passenger trail was built in the late 19th
century. It was called the Air Line "as if it were how the bird flies,”
Hall said. “It was the most direct line between New Haven and Boston.”
Already, the Naugatuck River
Greenway and Farmington Canal Greenway projects received federal
support. All these require a 20 percent nonfederal match, Gold added.
The $10 million will allow the overall project to be
realized, he said. “It’s much bigger than the trail, because once you complete
this, what becomes possible is a 111-mile loop in the center of Connecticut.”
It will create a “very significant recreational and
transportational facility … that will connect neighborhoods to retail and
workplaces, make walking and biking a viable option for people, and create more
safe spaces to recreation with their families,” Gold said.
He envisions a tourism connection could follow. “There are
people who do the East Coast
Greenway, and this would be a very convenient route for them,” Gold added.
The ECG is enjoyed by pedestrians, horseback riders,
cross-country skiers and many others who can travel from Maine to Florida.
Some portions of the old railway exist under the Portland
Bridge, Gold pointed out.
“This construction money makes this project so much more
feasible and have much better legs than it did before,” the executive director
added. “This is a great position to be in.”
The original Air Line leads to Marlborough Street at Anderson Farm Supply in
Portland, said Hall.
“If we can get the trail to there, it would either cross
Marlborough Street (Route 66) and continue along the railroad spur to Pickering
Street, up to the bridge, and use the sidewalk to get across,” he said.
It will eventually hook up with both the Mattabassett
and Westfield bike trails in Middletown. The city is working on
the Newfield Corridor Trail, so named for Route 3, that will extend the
Mattabassett Trail south at least to the high school, and possibly Veterans
Memorial Park, Hall said.
Already, Hall said, the project has received $900,000 from the state to conduct
a route study from Portland to Cheshire, $100,000 of which was used for the
Meriden section, Hall said.
“The federal
transportation department likes these multi-use trail projects,
because they’re trying to reduce traffic on the roads …” he added.
Electric bikes are becoming all the more popular, Hall said.
In fact, this summer, DEEP created an eBike Incentive Program,
where Connecticut residents, 18 and older, can apply for a voucher of up
to $500 toward the purchase of an eligible bike.
Demand has been so high, according
to the Lamont Administration, that DEEP has increased the first
year of funding from $500,000 to $750,000.
Shelton gets $2M in state funds for Canal Street work
SHELTON — The city is receiving $2 million in state funds
toward reconstruction of Canal and Wooster streets, including the reopening of
the long-closed Wooster Street railroad crossing.
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The funds are part of more than $1.1 billion in state
funding — approved Friday by the State Bond Commission — that will be used to
perform various improvements to Connecticut’s transportation system.
"Right now, we are at a point where we need to do something,”
said Mayor Mark Lauretti about needing to reopen the railroad crossing, which
has been
closed for 14 years. “The goal was always to upgrade the
crossing."
The funds will go toward road and lighting improvements
along Canal Street as well and reopening of the Wooster Street railroad
crossing.
For more than a decade, the road that connects Howe
Avenue to Canal Street has been blocked with fencing and concrete blocks near
the Housatonic Railway Company tracks.
Construction is moving to this area of Canal Street near the
Wooster Street connection. Most recently, developer Don Stanziale, Jr.,
received approval for Cedar
Village at The Locks, a four-story building at 287 Canal St., known as the
Ascom Hasler site. Cedar Village is planned to have 129 apartments and 1,745
square feet of retail space.
Plans are expected to be filed soon for development of the
former Star Pin site, which was destroyed in a fire in 2020. The fire was so
massive fire crews needed to force entry through the long-closed Wooster Street
railroad crossing to battle the blaze that ultimately gutted the historic Star
Pin factory building.
It was that fire that prompted
fire officials at that time to call for the crossing to be
reopened.
“This reopening will relieve downtown traffic and will also
improve emergency vehicle access,” said state Rep. Jason Perillo.
Perillo said he worked with state Sen. Kevin Kelly and
fellow state Rep. Ben McGorty in obtaining the $2 million in grant funds.
“I am excited to see these funds deliver a more accessible
economic and recreational environment for both Shelton residents and business
owners,” Perillo said.
Perillo says he looks forward to the positive impact this
reconstruction project will have on making Shelton a “competitive community for
new families and additional business growth.
The city had called for the temporary closing of the
crossing 14 years ago during construction of Avalon Shelton, which is now the
Merion Riverwalk Apartments. To reopen the crossing, it had to be built to the
current engineering requirements.
“The city’s ongoing efforts to revitalize Canal Street will
benefit local businesses, support historic preservation of our community,
environmental restoration, and the creation of open space,” Kelly said.
McGorty praised the continued investment to strengthen
Shelton’s historic downtown waterfront area.
“This will absolutely empower local business owners and
provide Shelton residents and guests with a revived experience when they visit
our city,” McGorty said.
This latest state grant comes only a week after the city
received $500,000 to help cover costs of turning the lower grass field at
Shelton High into an artificial turf field.
Sherman rejects $47M plan to save its only school. One option is to bus students to nearby districts
SHERMAN — Voters widely rejected a $47
million plan to renovate the outdated Sherman School, leaving the town
with few options to save the pre-K-8 building.
The town must now consider alternatives that include
building a new school, eliminating its middle school program or closing its
only public school, the Board of Education chairman said. Sherman would be
the only
town in the Connecticut without a school, state education department
officials have said.
“Ultimately, the viability of repairing the school, the way
that it is now, is no longer an option,” said Matt Vogt, Sherman’s Board of
Education chairman, after the vote. “Any alternative would be over $50 million
and will not be recommended to the town.”
At Saturday's referendum, residents voted 914-509 against repairing the
school. The town, which has about 3,500 residents, would have sought a
state grant to cover $11 million of the cost.
The $47 million plan would have reduced the K-8 school’s
size by replacing a wing that’s no longer used and addressed various
deficiencies in a 86-year-old building that is in such poor shape
that local officials weighed whether to close it as enrollment declines.
“To keep what we have as a pre-K-8 in that school, this 'no'
vote will not allow that to happen anymore," Vogt said. "So the
options that we have left will be try to renovate to a pre-K-5 school, try to
build a new pre-K-5 school or build a new pre-K-8 school.”
On Tuesday at 6.p.m., The Sherman School Building
Committee will discuss the remaining options for the future of the school.
The meeting will take place in person in the school’s library media center and
live on Zoom. To access the link, visit shermanschool.com and search
for the meeting agenda.
“The options that will be discussed will likely be
eliminating a middle school from the town and building a small pre-k-5 school…
This may or may not be less expensive than the proposed renovation, building a
new school for pre-K-8… which will have a higher price tag than this project
and be smaller, or closing the Sherman School entirely,” Vogt said.
If the school were to close entirely, pre-K-8 students would
be sent to neighboring school districts, just like Sherman's high-school age
students. That idea faced
backlash from parents when it was discussed last year.
The school has 250 students this year, compared to 440
students in 2009, officials have said.
Why did the referendum fail?
Vogt said he thinks the referendum failed because there’s a
“misconception” among many residents that there’s a cheaper way to fix the
school, which, “unfortunately, is sadly not true,” he said.
Vogt continued: “Depending on the weather we have this year,
we may see some school closures due to heating issues, and there is still no
water available for children to drink. We, as a town, will spend tens of
thousands of dollars to keep the doors open while we figure out the next
steps.”
On a social media post Saturday, Vogt said, the school “is quickly becoming a place that is not safe for children to attend. There is some time for now but as of next year, we will not meet the state air quality standards which will be in place.”
Vogt told Hearst Connecticut Media the building committee, for which he is a member, will determine the next plan to present at its next meeting on Tuesday.
“Whatever that plan is, the school will not be the one all of you know,” he said. “It’s time for everyone to start paying attention.”
EB’s shipyard workers ratify new pact providing 21.4% hike in wages over five years
Brian Hallenbeck
Groton ― Electric Boat and the Metal Trades Council, a labor
union representing more than 3,400 shipyard workers, announced that union
members have ratified a new five-year contract that grants them significant
increases in compensation and benefits, including a 21.4% hike in wages over
the life of the deal.
The announcement came late Friday afternoon, a week after
the parties’ negotiating teams had tentatively agreed to the new contract on
Sept. 30, the day a previous, four-year contract expired.
MTC members work in the skilled trades, and include welders,
electricians, machinists, pipefitters, laborers, painters and transportation
services and administrative support employees.
In addition to the wage increases totaling 21.4%, the new
contract provides for:
∎ Retention and sign-on bonuses of up to $6,000.
∎ A one-time, $2,500 contribution to employees’ 401(k)
retirement savings accounts.
∎ Continuation of a comprehensive, competitive medical
plan with modest premium and deductible increases.
∎ Increases in vacation days and paid sick time for most
members.
“This is the largest wage package in more than 30 years and
demonstrates the value we place on the skills and experience necessary to build
the world’s finest submarines,” Kevin Graney, Electric Boat’s president, said
in a statement released by EB, a division of General Dynamics. “This investment
in our people complements investments by General Dynamics in our facilities and
infrastructure and is a key element of our strategy to grow our production rate
to deliver more submarines faster to the U.S. Navy.”
EB, in the midst of unprecedented expansion, is currently
increasing production of Virginia-class fast-attack submarines and the Columbia
class of ballistic missile submarines. The company is the prime contractor for
the Columbia class, which the U.S. government has designated the nation’s No. 1
defense priority.
EB, which announced plans early this year to hire 5,750 new
employees in 2023, advises potential job applicants to visit EBCareers.com to check on available positions.
“This new agreement will help attract and retain new
employees while providing for the current membership,” Peter Baker, president
of the Metal Trades Council, said. “This will also provide Electric Boat with a
stable workforce that will continue to build our nation's defense. We want to
thank the membership for their support throughout the negotiations process.”
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, hailed the new contact.
“Ratification of this robust contract is a five-year
ironclad guarantee of economic security for the Electric Boat metal trades
workforce, which they richly deserve,” he said. “It also sends a powerful
message to the Navy and Congress, who fund their work, that the Groton
waterfront is in for the long haul as our nation grows its undersea fleet, a
decades-long enterprise.”
“Kudos to Peter Baker and the Metal Trades Council team, and
Shawn Coyne from Electric Boat Human Resources, who spent months hammering out
the many details of this historic contract,” Courtney added.
EB, which designs, builds, repairs and modernizes nuclear
submarines for the Navy, employs more than 21,500 people. General Dynamics, a
global aerospace and defense company, employs more than 100,000 people and
generated $39.4 billion in revenue in 2022.
Breaking ground on mental health, one conversation at a time
It’s a familiar sight: Workers clustered together on a job
site, with hard hats and safety vests clearly visible. This image showcases a
laudable commitment to the physical safety of its workforce, a necessary aspect
of any construction company.
Construction workers wear Personal Protective Equipment
(PPE) daily, but protecting mental health alongside physical health is equally
important. Sadly, construction workers have among the highest suicide rates by population. With
staggering mental illness and suicide rates in construction reported across
regions including the U.S., U.K. and Australia, it’s clear that improving
working conditions and addressing mental health is critical. In the U.S. alone,
men working in construction are four times more likely to die by suicide than the
general population.
In an industry where stoicism and a reluctance to ask for
help are common, it’s essential for construction leaders to actively work to
remove the stigma around mental illness and advocate for their employees’
psychological and physical well-being. Efforts like Get Construction
Talking, championed by Procore and The B1M, are an example of how some organizations are
helping to break down the stigma associated with mental health challenges and
bolster the efforts of charities committed to improving mental wellness in
construction.
Launched in London in June, Get Construction Talking aims
to empower everyone in construction with the tools to look out for their
colleagues, by starting with a conversation. The program is also collecting
funds to raise $1 million to donate to construction-based mental health non-profits
around the world like The Lighthouse Charity; Construction Sport; The Construction
Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention; Mates in Mind;
and Mates in Construction.
While the construction industry is one of enormous physical
labor, including significant physical stress, mental health is being elevated
on the job site – modern safety programs are approaching safety as a holistic
issue, mind, body and spirit.
Change Starts with a Chat
Creating a holistic safety program that focuses on mental
and physical well-being means going beyond standard physical safety practices. And while combating
negative attitudes toward mental illness may seem daunting, conscientious
leaders have the power to influence positive change in their industry.
Here are three strategies for cultivating a workplace
dedicated to safety and wellness.
1. Start the conversation.
Increasing communication and visibility around mental health
issues can go a long way to reducing stigma and creating an inclusive
environment. For leaders looking to address the issue of mental well-being,
talking about it openly goes a long way. Including recurring mental health
training and policies in safety meetings are one way to ensure mental health is
at the forefront of the safety conversation.
2. Check on your teams.
Research indicates that acknowledging and talking
about mental health can actually improve it. This can be seen through
successful efforts such as the Australian program, R U OK? In a free,
downloadable toolkit, Get Construction Talking outlines signs to look for in
colleagues who may be struggling with mental health, along with conversation
starters. Simple statements can have a big impact:
I haven’t seen you lately. Is everything OK?
I know things have been tough – I’m here if you want to
talk.
It’s been a while, want to grab a cup of coffee?
3. Create a supportive culture.
Sometimes there are no visible signs of the struggle
happening inside. However, leaders and team members have an opportunity to
create a culture where it’s OK to not be OK. When talking about mental health,
active listening and encouraging professional help can make a difference in the
next actions people take.
Keeping people safe is more than just the right protection
and equipment; it’s also about workers’ well-being. As business leaders and
companies enact positive changes for employee mental health, the construction
industry will become safer and more inclusive. To learn more about how you can
help tackle this crisis and get access to a free, downloadable toolkit,
visit www.getconstructiontalking.org.
Drug overdose deaths in America have doubled since
2015. They’ve more than quintupled since 2001. As we struggle to understand the
risk factors, could we be overlooking jobs?
Overdoses killed 163 of every 100,000 people who usually
worked in construction and extraction in 2020, whether they were on the job or
not, making it by far the most dangerous major occupation, drug-wise.
Restaurant jobs were second at 118 deaths per 100,000, according to new
data from Rachael Billock, Andrea Steege and Arialdi Miniño at the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the National Vital Statistics
System collects state and local data on every death in the country.
This is the first time the CDC has published such comprehensive and detailed numbers linking jobs and overdoses, which the authors separately wrote was made possible by “funeral directors across the country who take time to speak with decedents’ loved ones and record [industry and occupation] on the death certificate.” This first release lacks data from D.C. and a few states (Iowa, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Arizona), but the data gaps should close in coming years.
The results are fairly startling: 1 out of every 5 people who died of an overdose in 2020 usually worked in construction or restaurants. These folks lived in a different universe from those who worked the safest jobs in the country: Education and computer work lost 6 and 9 people per 100,000, respectively. Combined, about 1 in 100 overdose victims nationwide worked those jobs. (This data set assigns jobs based on your usual occupation — meaning the one you held the longest, regardless of what you were doing at time of death.)
The substance most likely to cause a fatal overdose —
no matter your occupation — is a synthetic opioid such as fentanyl. The
category that includes meth usually comes next, then cocaine and heroin. The
vast majority of deaths (92 percent) were deemed accidental rather than suicide
or homicide.
What other factor ties them together? We guessed education.
Occupations with a higher share of workers who earned only a high school
diploma (or less) are more likely to rack up drug deaths, and construction has
the lowest share of workers with at least a bachelor’s degree (7 percent).
That matches other data showing a wide and growing education gap in overdose deaths. In 2015, less-educated women and men were seven and eight times as likely to overdose as their peers with bachelor’s degrees. By 2021, less-educated folks of both sexes were 13 times as likely to die from drugs, according to a recent preprint analysis of the same federal data for people age 25 to 64, from Jay Xu, Marissa Seamans and Joseph Friedman at the University of California at Los Angeles.
How
deeply did prescription opioid pills flood your county? See here.
From 2015 to 2021, the fatal overdose rate rose an alarming
52 percent among U.S. men with a bachelor’s degree or higher, but it jumped an
appalling 151 percent for men with a high school diploma or less. For women,
the increase was 13 percent among college graduates and 101 percent for those
without college degrees.
That observation dumps us square in the path of an onrushing
freight train of academic research. Overdoses are often considered, along with
suicide and alcoholism, to be deaths of despair. And since Anne Case and Angus
Deaton set the train in motion in 2015, education (and its
fellow traveler, income) has long been understood to be the fulcrum upon which
your odds of an early death pivot.
Our colleagues on the Health desk just released an immense investigation into America’s life expectancy crisis that explored this fact. And just a few days ago, Case and Deaton presented their latest research at the Brookings Institution, showing just how wide and pervasive America’s education gap has become. If you didn’t go to college, you’re more likely to struggle with everything from colon, liver and pancreatic cancer to low odds of marriage, more mental distress and even difficulty socializing.
All of these cataclysmic outcomes seem to be deeply entwined with social problems that have accumulated over decades — and probably would take just as long to unpack. But UCLA’s Friedman mentioned something about the jobs data we just couldn’t shake: Well-off Americans also do drugs. They just aren’t nearly as likely to die from them.
Why are drugs so much deadlier for the less educated?
We were at a loss. But our friend Haley Hamblin had a theory. Haley — a photo editor at
The Post responsible for maintaining the Department of Data’s supply of
hilarious vintage photos — pointed to an obvious differentiator: insurance
coverage.
She’s absolutely right! The share of workers in an occupation
who are uninsured correlates even more strongly with its overdose death rate
than education. As Haley says, folks working blue-collar jobs could be both
more likely to get injured than their white-collar peers and less likely to get
that injury treated by the formal health-care system. That could lead many to
self-medicate.
“Occupations with the largest rates of overdoses are also generally ones that require a lot of physical mobility/strength,” University of Southern California health economist Rosalie Liccardo Pacula told us via email. “Many workers in these positions develop chronic pain conditions. Chronic pain is the leading reason why people use opioids long-term, and those with long-term use are now facing greater hurdles maintaining access to their opioid prescriptions in light of changing medical recommendations … so they may be more likely to turn to the illegal market.”
This also explains what we saw when we looked deeper at
detailed overdose data for construction jobs. The construction workers most
likely to die from drugs are roofers, and roofing is super dangerous. It
produced the third most work-related deaths overall of any occupation from 2019
to 2021, behind fishing and hunting, and logging.
When we looked more broadly at the individual, detailed
occupations in which workers are most likely to die from drugs — whether
work-related or not — we saw a similar pattern. Commercial anglers and sailors
are even more likely to die of an overdose than roofers by this metric, and
forest and conservation workers aren’t far behind.
So, though the classifications differ slightly, the three occupations that are most dangerous overall are also among the jobs most likely to overdose.
But there’s more to the story. UCLA’s Xu points out
that the education-overdose gap widened substantially in recent years, even
though these jobs are not growing many times as dangerous.
To untangle what’s really happening, we called two addiction
specialists at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. They
explained that the overdose crisis in the area used to follow the
classic model: Worker gets hurt, receives prescription opioids, runs out, turns
to heroin, ends up with fentanyl.
Follow
The Post’s investigation of the opioid epidemic
That still happens, said Michael Baca-Atlas, a UNC family-
and addiction-medicine specialist who also saw patients at a
residential detox unit in Raleigh, N.C., until UNC’s contract with the
facility ended Sept. 30. But those classic patients are being
replaced by “younger adults — late teens, early 20s, mid-20s — who are trying
fentanyl for the first time.”
These patients “haven’t progressed their way from pain medicine. They’re not following that traditional trajectory that we saw through 2010-2015,” Baca-Atlas said. “We’re seeing people just straight going to a pressed pill” of fentanyl that can be crushed and ingested easily, without the complicated steps needed for intravenous drug use.
These new patients don’t have the same consistent
occupational profile, said Joseph Williams, a psychiatrist and
addiction-medicine specialist who treated patients at the detox unit.
“I can’t identify any clear pattern where they’ve had a job
that puts them at risk of physical injury or pain,” Williams said. “It’s
skipping those steps.”
So jobs aren’t the defining risk factor they once were. These new patients often hail from poor, marginalized groups and have had mental health issues since childhood or adolescence. With little contact with the official health-care system — North Carolina’s belated Medicaid expansion won’t take effect until December — they turn to street drugs. Fentanyl’s potency and availability has thus seized the existing fissures in American society and pushed them wider.
The opioid crisis is “the wound that exposes these
inequities and how hard it is to make it in America when so much of health care
and jobs and opportunity — all these advantages are founded for the wealthy,”
said Georgetown University’s Emily Mendenhall, who conducted a large review of the drivers of the opioid epidemic
with student Jake Lang and Adam Koon of Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg
School of Public Health.
The huge
disadvantages faced by certain populations tend to compound one another, said
UCLA’s Friedman. That not only explains why overdoses kill less-educated
Americans at higher rates, but also why they kill Americans more often than
folks in comparably wealthy countries.
Consider naloxone, the active ingredient in the nasal spray Narcan, which can reverse an overdose in almost miraculous fashion. In a recent analysis of more than 700,000 pharmacy claims, Pacula, along with Evan Peet and David Powell of the Rand Corp., found that an American with private insurance paid an average of $28 for the drug in 2014. By 2018, it averaged $35. But if that American didn’t have insurance? The average out-of-pocket cost of naloxone soared from $35 in 2014 to $250 in 2018.
Today, Narcan is finally available over the counter, but it costs
$44.99 for a two-dose pack — a steep price to pay for struggling
humans on the wrong end of America’s education divide. Given that a
regular fentanyl user can overdose a half-dozen times or more each week, and
each overdose can require multiple doses of naloxone, the UNC doctors told us,
the Narcan bill can really add up.
And that’s just the cost to put out the immediate fire — the
overdose. A lack of insurance also makes it more difficult to get the kind of
coordinated mental and physical health treatment needed to control an addiction
long-term. And a lack of insurance, often caused by the loss of a job, is
just one of many causes behind the runaway feedback loop that drives
disparities in overdose deaths.
According to almost every doctor we spoke with, these deaths
are driven in part by the many holes in America’s ragged social safety net —
and the nation’s deep economic inequality.
“These are basically deaths of structural abandonment,”
Friedman told us. “These deaths are occurring among the groups of Americans
that the system is just not taking care of.”
Hi! The Department of Data answers quantitative questions. Who
still smokes cigarettes? What else do we know about the counties with the
highest early-death rates? Have wildfires undone the effects of the Clean Air
Act? Just
ask!
If your question inspires a column, we’ll send an official
Department of Data button and ID card. This week we’ll send buttons to our
brilliant colleague Laura Reiley, the business-of-food writer who sent us this
data set, as well as to previous button winner Craig McLane in New Carrollton,
Md., who asked about the links between fossil-fuel jobs and early death.