G. Dwiggins, Wachovia Corporation, Charlotte, NC.
Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has generated much confusion for employers and much business for attorneys practicing employment law. What began as a laudable attempt to halt unwarranted discrimination against individuals who—with a little help—could perform well in the workplace has become for many a morass of seemingly contradictory definitions and rules. Decisions of federal courts and interpretations of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was charged by Congress with enforcement of Title I, regularly rearrange the landscape for employers and for employees claiming a covered disability.
Employers were shocked by the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Echazabal v. Chevron in 2000. The judges found that the rights of the plaintiff under the ADA had been violated by Chevron’s medical qualifications for employment. This decision, which affected employers in the nine western states of the Ninth Circuit, was disturbing because the medical requirements at issue seemed so reasonable. Employers commonly exclude employees, or applicants, with evidence of liver impairment from jobs involving solvent exposure.
The United States Supreme Court reversed the Echazabal decision in 2002, using language that validates medical qualifications of the type at issue in that case. The Echazabal reversal offers substantial support for employers who desire to implement reasonable medical qualifications for potentially dangerous work.
K. Neufeld, U.S. Army CHPPM, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD.
Scenario: Obtaining resources to fund interventions that reduce occupational exposures continues to be a challenge. Department of the Army (DA) industrial hygienists (IHs) can make recommendations about reducing occupational exposures to management, but they have no authority to provide financial resources to implement them. Within DA, funding for operations and maintenance is the responsibility of mid-level management. This causes conflict, as the parties responsible for identifying occupational exposures are not responsible for implementing control initiatives. This presentation describes a strategy for presenting a compelling case for funding interventions. It includes tracking both IH metrics and recommendations, and estimating return on investment.
Problems: (1) DA IHs make recommendations to mid-level management to reduce occupational exposures but have no authority to implement recommendations or allocate financial resources to mitigate hazards. (2) DA mid-level management has no financial incentive to invest in interventions that reduce exposures.
Resolution: Senior level management within the Army Medical Department created a political incentive for implementing IH recommendations by: (1) aligning and tracking IH performance metrics with IH business practices, (2) tracking implementation status of all recommendations, and (3) aggregating recommendations and presenting a business case for an Army-wide intervention to include corporate funding.
Benefits: Convincing management to fund interventions that reduce exposures is a challenge many OEHS professions face. This presentation describes a strategy that can be used to demonstrate the value of funding interventions.
D. Groover, Behavioral Science Technology Inc., Ojai, CA.
Managers and supervisors, as we all know, play a pivotal role not only in safety activities but also in managing and reducing employee exposure to risk. They also are pivotal in leading employee involvement activities and opportunities. A common problem organizations have is that, in many cases, they have not been successful in developing a clear picture and understanding of the desired safety practices and roles for the managers and supervisors. This situation leaves these key leaders in the dark or to their own devices about how to effectively reduce risk taking and in gaining meaningful involvement from the workforce. Finally, there can be confusion about what safety practices will truly strengthen the safety culture.
Senior leadership impacts the process by determining how the actions of supervisors affect a safety process and by providing the training followed by performance feedback that sets the supervisors up for success. The result is that alignment between safety objectives and what is actually done is increased. This involvement boosts perceptions of management’s commitment to safety and increases the likelihood of the organization moving beyond a compliance mindset.
This presentation describes how supervisors are applying the principles of behavior-based safety to develop a “passion for safety.” These supervisors are helping to move their companies toward an injury-free culture—a culture where risk taking is not acceptable, where all levels of the organization are meaningfully involved with safety, and where hourly, supervisory, and executive level employees are dedicated to continuous improvement in safety performance.
B. Monsalve, McManis & Monsalve Associates, Manassas, VA.
Mentoring is a “buzz-word” for the age old process of a seasoned, caring professional guiding, advising, teaching, befriending, role-modeling, and advocating for a less-experienced young professional. We are particularly interested in exploring the use of mentoring by consultants to leverage professional industrial hygiene practice as outreach, assistance, and support for non-traditional industrial hygienists to promote healthful and safe working conditions in the varied settings in which they work. Non-traditional industrial hygienists do not have classic industrial hygiene academic preparation nor credentials, yet carry the title and responsibility for occupational and environmental health in many workplaces. They are often alone in the field without adequate oversight and support from professional industrial hygienists. They include general college graduates in entry- and mid-level consulting and training jobs, often pigeon-holed in narrow technical areas such as lead, asbestos, and indoor air quality. They include safety engineers and security, fire protection, and facility management personnel who have “collateral duty” responsibilities for occupational and environmental health. Non-traditional industrial hygienists need mentoring because they often have gaps in development and practice including: lack of historical and ethical perspective, inadequate scientific base, tunnel vision based on specific hazard specialization, and inadequate grasp of the environmental and occupational health business case. Using the AAIH Mentoring Project as a model, we propose an adaptive approach for the non-traditional industrial hygienist that may differ from traditional mentoring by use of consultants as mentors, types of outreach to learning partners, structure of mentoring guidance, and accountability metrics.
C. Ficklen, Hazmed Inc., NASA LaRC, Hampton, VA.
Hurricane Isabel hit the Mid-Atlantic Coast in late September 2003. The storm delivered rainfall, high winds, and significant storm surge/tidal flooding. NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, Va., felt the effects from the storm for approximately 16 hours. NASA LaRC consists of over 200 facilities that lie in close proximity to the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. The Safety and Facility Assurance Office utilized a multidisciplinary team consisting of safety professionals, industrial hygienists, engineers, mangers, and workers to deal with the effects of the storm in three phases: (1) storm tracking and preparation, (2) storm rideout, and (3) storm damage assessment/recovery.
The NASA LaRC Emergency Operation Center was activated for the duration of the three phases and served as a central location for coordination of activities to deal with Hurricane Isabel and the effects. In the storm tracking and preparation phase, meetings were held to plan to deal with electrical safety issues related to flooding and power outage, high pressure air and steam systems servicing wind tunnels, and a variety of other facility safety and industrial hygiene concerns related to the high winds and flooding. In the storm rideout phase, a team remained on site with fire and emergency personnel to address issues that came up as the storm moved through the area. Following the storm, teams were used to assess damage and ensure that facilities were safe for reoccupancy. Indoor environmental quality issues following the storm were less serious than anticipated.
The presentation will detail these efforts and focus on the planning and teamwork that addressed the hazards posed by Hurricane Isabel to minimize property damage and potential for worker injury, illness, and accidents.
D. McLean, GenPrime Inc., Spokane, WA.
While the publicity surrounding bioterrorism, which accompanied the post 9/11 anthrax scares, no longer fills the nightly news, First Responders across the country understand that the dramatic impact of these incidents has in no way subsided. The perpetrators of these threats are well aware of the enormous economic damage they are able to cause with either an actual biohazard or merely coffee creamer. The purpose of these threats, the vast majority of which are hoaxes, is to create fear and uncertainty, shut down facilities, disrupt services, and tie up critical resources. The damage caused by each incident continues to increase until reliable information verifying the presence of a credible threat becomes available. Until recently, verification of a bioterrorist threat was available only through either lengthy laboratory analysis, or agent specific field tests, which are unreliable, and rule out less than 25% of the CDC-identified bacterial agents of concern. As an alternative, we have developed a broad-spectrum fluorometric assay, the Prime Alert Biodetection Threat Verification System, for the rapid on-site detection of microbes. This novel technology, based on an intercalation between a fluorescent dye and a universal target molecule present in all bacteria and bacterial spores, can be used to determine if a substance contains organisms. The Prime Alert method was compared to plate counts for the prediction of cell concentration in spore forming Bacillus cultures including B. subtilis, B. subtilis var. niger, and B. thuringiensis. Fluorescent intensity using this method correlated well to culturable concentration with R2 values of 1.0, .954, and .985, respectively, P<.0001. These results indicate that the Prime Alert is effective in detecting the presence of microorganisms including bacteria and bacterial spores. In addition, the assay is easy to use and can be carried out in the field in less than 5 minutes.
G. Earnest, K. Dunn, R. Mickelsen, J. Bennett, NIOSH, Cincinnati, OH.
Over the past decade, nearly 500 carbon monoxide (CO) poisonings have been reported on recreational boats in the U.S. This problem has gained increasing attention following the CO-related deaths of two young boys vacationing with their family on a houseboat at Lake Powell, Ariz., in 2000. Many CO-related poisonings have resulted from uncontrolled emissions from gasoline-powered engines used on over 15 million recreational boats in the U.S. In March 2003, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the U.S. Coast Guard sponsored a national workshop on control technologies to prevent CO poisonings on recreational boats. As part of a broad effort to improve understanding of how CO poisonings occur, identify the most hazardous conditions, and prevent future poisonings, NIOSH researchers performed computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling of CO emissions and exposures on ski boats. Fluent 6 software was used to develop the model and solve the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow, contaminant transport, and heat transfer. The computational domain consisted of approximately 80,000 cells. Operational parameters such as CO emission rates, exhaust terminus location, boat speed, wind speed, and exhaust location were chosen on the basis of recreational boating field evaluations. Study results indicated that stationary operating conditions are generally the most hazardous; however, hazardous CO concentrations (exceeding 1000 ppm) were found near the stern deck of many boats while moving at high speeds. The CFD model, validated with field data, showed that boats operating below 5 mph could have hazardous CO concentrations as much as 20 feet to the rear. Several boat design changes could reduce the number of poisonings, including greater use of cleaner burning engines and catalysts. CFD modeling is a useful tool for assessing the impact of these and other design changes on boating safety.
D. O’Brien, F. Mirer, S. Johnson, International Union, UAW, Detroit, MI.
Air handling units are typically situated on the roof of plants in locations that are decided independently of machinery locations. Usually a fraction of the air that is supplied comes from the outside, the balance recirculated from the plant, typically from the ceiling area. Often these return air intakes are located above machinery producing relatively high levels of air contaminants. Although most air handling units are equipped with air filters, the efficiency is low for the size of aerosols typically encountered. Since the performance of the filters in the make-up air units has a direct effect on the quality of the workplace environment, an extensive evaluation of the air handling unit performance was undertaken. The evaluation was performed in a large automotive machining plant. Measurements of particle size and concentration on both the “dirty” and “clean” sides of the filters were made in five air handling units using a single particle optical counter and an aerosol photometer. These units employed 60% nominal efficiency filters. The size of the metalworking fluid mist was about 0.5 µm (mass median diameter). Because the mist was so fine, the mass removal efficiency of the existing 60–65% filters was only about 30%. If a switch was made to a 95% filter, calculations indicate a mass removal efficiency in excess of 80% could be achieved. A statistical analysis was performed to look at the effect of the filter age and the inlet concentration on the efficiency. This analysis indicated that the inlet concentration (which depends on the area of the plant served) is the primary factor affecting filter life (efficiency). Aerosol photometer measurements correlated well with the mass concentration computed from the particle count data. This suggests that “quick and dirty” evaluations of filter performance could be done using that instrument.
N. Wong, T. Johnson, L. Wash, S. Waisanen, 3M Company, St. Paul, MN.
As a large manufacturing company with numerous processes involving the use of chemicals, industrial ventilation has been an integral exposure control method. Because controlling exposures depends highly on a well performing system, it is important that ventilation systems are well maintained and work properly to ensure adequate contaminant control. To address this issue, a ventilation management program was developed to verify that new and existing ventilation systems perform effectively as intended and needed to protect employees from exposures. This presentation will provide an overview of the ventilation management program implementation steps and identify and discuss challenges faced by both corporate and location staff.
Major challenges for implementation include:
J. Withers, Ames Laboratory, Ames, IA.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has been scrutinizing the management of peroxide-forming/shock sensitive (PFSS) chemicals at its research laboratories. Ames Laboratory was audited by the DOE’s Inspector General Office to assess the adequacy of management practices of these PFSS chemicals. Deficiencies identified included chemical containers that were not labeled with purchase and/or opening dates, chemical containers that had exceeded the recommended shelf-life time stated in the chemical hygiene plan (CHP), and lack of a life cycle management system that assured these materials were disposed of in accordance with recommended timelines. ES&H personnel instigated several corrective actions as a result of the audit. A comprehensive walkthrough inspection of laboratory spaces was conducted that identified additional chemical containers that were not in compliance with labeling requirements. A quarterly walkthrough program was established to assure that PFSS chemicals were identified and tracked to disposal. Finally, a working group composed of ES&H and research personnel was established to update the current CHP information and make it more useful to the chemical user. Many challenges were encountered during implementation of these corrective actions. The information available on the Web pertaining to PFSS chemicals is contradictory and confusing. Hazard information is lacking on Material Safety Data Sheets and container labels. Research chemists disagreed with current safety literature on the severity of the hazards associated with PFSS chemicals. Tracking of chemicals was made more difficult by the facility being contiguous with other non-DOE laboratories. Finally, the quarterly inspections required a significant commitment of time on the part of the ES&H staff. Despite the aforementioned challenges, an effective PFSS chemical management system was implemented. This case study demonstrates the challenges associated with management of chemicals with unique hazards. Effective management of PFSS chemicals can result in a safer work environment and avoid unnecessary waste disposal costs.
Posted May 30, 2004