Robert Harrison, MD, MPH, Chair

OHS Section

Robert.Harrison@ucsf.edu

Since my last message to the Occupational Health & Safety Section, the choices for November 2008 have now become clear.  I know that many of us may be working over the next several months on the national, state and local elections. Some of you may not be attending the APHA Annual Meeting in October to devote the election campaign full-time before Nov. 4, 2008. 

Over the past 25 years of my career in occupational safety and health, the number of critical issues for improving the workplace environment has perhaps never been greater.  The list of needed interventions to improve worker health and safety is long and the challenges daunting.  Just to name a few: reducing the racial and ethnic disparities in workplace fatalities, adopting tougher crane safety and combustible dust standards, banning asbestos use, and accurately tracking injuries and illnesses.  What about the list of chemicals needing stronger Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs)?  From old hazards (such as silica) to new hazards (such as diacetyl), there is a large backlog of scientific data that should be driving the prompt adoption of protective PELs.  The adoption of the REACH initiative in Europe is stimulating greater discussion in the United States of eliminating hazards at the “source” such that worker exposures could cease completely. And lest we not forget about the ergonomic standard that quickly came and went in the early 1990s, what about the continued enormous morbidity and cost of musculoskeletal disorders?

In the next few months, our Section leadership will be engaging the OHS Section membership in discussions with our colleagues in the health and safety movement to debate and discuss priorities for the next administration.  I am certain this will be a robust topic during our San Diego meeting as well – including a special Monday afternoon session with John Howard, Michael Silverstein, Linda Rae Murray and Jordan Barab.  This should be an opportunity to collaborate and strategize so we can maximize our opportunities to improve worker safety and health as we head into 2009.

P.S.  For those of you who haven’t seen the documentary series “Unnatural Causes,” which aired on many PBS stations this past spring, it is one of the best films I have seen on the relationship between health and wealth.  Although there is a relatively short discussion of the relationship between the work environment and health, this series is a powerful presentation of the well-known social gradients of health, combining human stories with epidemiological data.  More information about the film can be found at http://www.pbs.org/unnaturalcauses/about_the_series.htm.