Several policies sponsored by the OHS will be presented at Governing Council during the Annual Meeting in November. Below is a quick summary of these policies. Each of the policies have been posted on the APHA website and can be accessed at: http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy.
Policy Statement A-3: Submitted by OHS and Co-sponsored by the Population, Family Planning and Reproductive Health Section
Title: Prevention and Control of Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV among Performers in the Adult Film Industry
The adult film industry (AFI) produces between 4,000 and 11,000 films each year with an estimated gross revenue of $13 billion. At the same time, there is a lack of sufficient STD/HIV prevention efforts within this industry. Analysis of data from Los Angeles County between 2004-2008 found that 18-26% of performers were diagnosed with at least one infection of gonorrhea and/or chlamydia each year, 72% of those being among females. Nearly 25% of all STD cases among women were reinfections within one year, compared to 15% of women seen in family planning and STD clinics.
Both Federal OSHA and in California, Cal/OSHA require employers to provide a safe and healthful workplace for employees to include the use of condoms, medical monitoring and worker health and safety training by AFI employers. Despite these requirements, there has been little compliance by the industry and a lack of employer responsibility for worker health and safety. Attempts to encourage the industry to regulate itself have for the most part failed, leading to the need for national regulation of the industry and multifaceted efforts to ensure enforcement.
APHA supports the following:
- Federal and state mandates to reduce the epidemic of STDs in the adult film industry, which would require (a) the mandatory use of condoms, (b) appropriate medical monitoring that respects and protects the confidentiality of the performer; and (c) performer health and safety training.
- Increased resources for enforcing occupational health and safety standards in the adult film industry for local health departments, state health departments and OSHA.
3. Increased resources to investigate and control occupational exposures to infectious diseases in order to reduce exposure to infectious diseases within the adult film industry.
Policy Statement B-6: Submitted by Occupational Health and Safety Section
B6: Occupational Injury, Illness and Fatality Prevention through Design (PtD)
Each year in businesses across the United States, 5,800 people die, 3.9 million suffer serious injuries, and 228,000 become ill from work-related exposures. The annual direct and indirect costs of occupational injury, disease and death range from $128 billion to $155 billion. While the underlying causes vary, recent studies implicate design in a large proportion of all workplace injuries. A 2006 CPWR study analyzed 450 reports of construction workers’ deaths and disabling injuries to determine whether addressing safety in the project’s designs could have prevented the incidents. This and other studies demonstrate that design is one of the original influences in determining eventual workplace safety.
To protect lives and livelihoods of stakeholders across all sectors of the economy a comprehensive approach is needed for including worker health and safety considerations in the design process. Prevention through Design is an occupational health and safety strategy that identifies, and eliminates workplace hazards during a project’s design and engineering stages. The purpose of PtD is to provide a systematic approach of including hazard prevention strategies at the design and project development stages that affect individuals in the occupational environment to stop or reduce occupational-related injuries, illnesses, fatalities and hazardous exposures.
APHA urges the inclusion of the safety, health and well-being of workers into the design, re-design and retrofitting of new and existing workplaces, tools and equipment, and work processes. APHA also encourages the environmental sustainability movement and LEED Green Building Certification process to include the safety of workers as a sustainable design criterion. In addition, APHA advocates that design, architectural, and engineering schools include PtD principles in curriculum, and cross discipline association between architects, industrial designers, engineers, purchasing, finance, and human resource professionals, with environmental, health and safety experts.
Policy Statement B-5: Submitted by Erin Hurley and Tegan Callahan on behalf of students in the UW School of Public Health and Endorsed by the APHA International Health Section, the APHA Occupational Health Section, and the APHA Peace Caucus.
Title: Prioritizing Cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation to Protect the Public’s Health
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation [Hanford], where the United States manufactured the fissionable materials for the world’s first atomic bomb, is the largest, most complex contamination area in the United States, encompassing four current and past Superfund sites and spanning a history of both deliberate and accidental hazardous material releases. Hanford nuclear site remediation delays and mismanagement represent a mounting threat to public and environmental health.
The purpose of this paper is to update policy positions for the American Public Health Association [APHA] on the issue of hazardous waste cleanup at Hanford. In 1989, the APHA passed a resolution titled Public Health Hazards at Nuclear Weapon Facilities (policy # 8917). The current position paper augments APHA’s 20-year-old resolution and provides the scientific basis and justification for ensuring cleanup at Hanford is done in a timely manner with adequate oversight.
To ensure clean up of the nuclear waste at Hanford is adequate to safeguard the public’s health, APHA adopts the following positions:
1. Reassert that the cleanup of nuclear waste sites is a public health priority. Increase awareness among public health professionals regarding the public health threats at Hanford and all nuclear waste sites to promote stronger public health policy to support comprehensive cleanup.
2. Expand the body of independent public health research on current and future health risks from Hanford.
3. Call for reasonable and effective external oversight of Hanford cleanup effort.
4. Assert that no new waste should be brought to and stored at the Hanford site until the site is cleaned.
5. Support formally incorporating tribal exposure scenarios and cleanup standards in the Hanford cleanup plan to restore the Hanford region and greater Columbia River Basin to where it can safetly be used by tribes as guaranteed by the Treaty of 1855.
Policy Statement B-7: Submitted by Tegan Callahan and Erin Hurley on behalf of students in the UW School of Public Health and Endorsed by the APHA International Health Section, the APHA Occupational Health Section, and the APHA Peace Caucus.
Title: Intrastate and Interstate Transportation of Spent Nuclear Fuel is a Public Health Risk
Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) is a ‘back-end’ by-product of commercial nuclear energy generation, defense plutonium production, and research activities that utilize nuclear reactors or fission product nuclides. Transportation of SNF between production and storage sites increases the possibility of ionizing radiation exposures, which could result in adverse health outcomes.
Between 1964 and 2004, the US transported an estimated 3,056 metric tons of commercial SNF. In the event of consolidation of SNF in a federal repository, transportation of up to 70,000 metric tons of SNF may be required in merely two decades. This increase in volume suggests that previous experience is too minimal to serve as a basis for conjecture of future risk.
In addition new policy directions suggest an increasing reliance on nuclear energy. In February 2010, President Obama announced conditional commitments for $8.3 billion to construct and operate two new nuclear reactors in Burke, Georgia. The American Power Act, introduced to the US Congress in May 2010, calls for significant increases in nuclear energy development as a means to generate non-fossil energy, yet contains no provisions for addressing the resultant problem of such increases—how to transport and store the SNF. These policy shifts are silent on health and safety issues of the intrastate and interstate transport of SNF.
It is an opportune time for APHA to adopt a position that ensures the public’s health is considered in nuclear energy policy discussions. The position outlined in this paper builds off the history of APHA’s involvement in the nuclear waste and energy policy to:
1. Eliminate transport of spent nuclear fuel as much as possible through commitment to an energy system reliant on renewable, non-nuclear sources.
2. Minimize transport of spent nuclear fuel through rejecting consolidated interim storage and endorsing onsite storage as the responsible option in the absence of a national waster repository at Yucca Mountain.
3. Ensure safe transport of spent nuclear fuel when necessary through use of the safest modes possible and the genuine engagement of all stakeholders.