Occupational Health and Safety
Section Newsletter
Winter 2004

Chair's Message

In preparing for this, my first column as your new Section Chairperson, I had a chance to look at some of the wrap-up, end-of-the-year actions by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and I was thoroughly disturbed by what I saw. It was a paradigm, I believe, of what OSHA has become under the Bush Administration.

On Dec. 30, 2003, OSHA, under Director John Henshaw, announced that it was dropping its rulemaking for two glycol ethers (2-ME and 2-EE) and their acetates (2-MEA and 2-EEA), better known as glycol ethers or Cellosolves. There was much concern about Cellosolves and Cellosolve acetates in the 1980s and 1990s, and studies among paint strippers and in the semiconductor industry showed evidence of serious reproductive disorders among male and female workers.

In light of OSHA’s action, what are the standards which govern workers exposed to Cellosolves? These standards are the old OSHA standards for these substances (Table Z-1), namely PEL’s of 200 ppm for 2-EE, 100 ppm for 2-EEA, 25 ppm each for 2-ME and 2-MEA, developed long before the recent reproductive studies at IBM and the Digital Equipment Corporation.

Let’s compare these to ACGIH’s current standards for these same chemicals: ACGIH has set the TLV for 2-EE at 5 ppm, a factor of 40 times smaller than OSHA’s PEL, based on 2-EE’s reproductive effects. The TLV for 2-EEA is also 5 ppm, compared to OSHA’s 100 ppm. For 2-ME and 2-MEA the TLV’s are both 5 ppm, only (!) a factor of 5 times smaller than OSHA’s PEL’s (ACGIH TLV and BEI booklet, 2001).

OSHA’s rationale for leaving these old, outdated standards in place is the “decline in production and use of ethylene glycol ethers and their acetates” (OSHA Trade Release, 12/30/03). In Henshaw’s words: “The evidence that we’ve collected, including the comments we received after reopening the record last year [my emphasis], indicates that there is little future potential exposure to the four glycol ethers because their use has largely been phased out. Based on that evidence, we’ve concluded that the rule is no longer appropriate and that we can focus our resources on regulatory efforts that will have a greater impact on workplace safety and health.”

That’s quite a shameful rationale, in my opinion. Henshaw is saying, it seems to me, that since fewer working people are using these toxic materials, we don’t need to bother lowering the standard for them – it would be an inefficient use of OSHA’s resources. But what are the potential effects to these workers? A higher rate of miscarriages (in the late 1980s a study found a 40 percent higher rate among females in the semiconductor industry), more stillbirths and birth defects among the children of these workers. Indeed this is part of the terrain for the trials now going on in the semiconductor industry – a fact Mr. Henshaw must surely be aware of.

In 1989, when the senior George Bush was President, his assistant secretary for OSHA, John Pendergrass, updated OSHA’s regulations by simply adopting wholesale the existing ACGIH standards. Why doesn’t his son, George W. Bush, do the same, through his head of OSHA? This would remove the gross disparities between the two sets of standards and give exposed workers a modicum of protection based on recent science.

By the way, how does Henshaw know that workers are not being exposed to the chemicals? Because the industrial users of these chemicals told him (see emphasis on the above Henshaw quote). Would you trust the semiconductor industry to give a reliable report today, given the lawsuits they are facing? I wouldn’t. How about a series of OSHA inspections to ascertain that the information they got was reliable? Henshaw doesn’t speak of this. He also doesn’t cite production and industrial use statistics for these chemicals, which should reflect and support his statement.

Perhaps some of our OHS members need to look into this, and into the conditions of use they have observed or were reported to them. I’d like to hear from you about the situation today with the glycol ethers on our OHS Listserve at <occ-hlth-l@liststar.apha.org>.

I’d like to hear your thoughts as well about how we can more effectively do the work that OSHA isn’t doing (and in many respects has never done) and substantively improve working conditions in some/many plants and industries in this country.

One way we can help, as so many of us know, is to help labor unions not only in their health and safety efforts, but in their ongoing efforts to survive and protect their members’ living and working conditions. Long experience tells us that it is hard to protect the health and safety of unorganized workers; workers need unions to protect, among other things, their workplace health and safety.

On this note, I’d like to bring to your attention the bitter, four-month-long strike now being conducted by 70,000 supermarket workers in Southern California over their health benefits. To find out more about the circumstances of this strike, and the major cuts being proposed by employers on these workers’ health plans (65 percent cuts in funds for new employees), do go to the United Food and Commercial Workers website <www.ufcw.org>. There you will also find a petition of support for these workers by health professionals, <http://www.ufcw.org/hold_the_line/petition_hcprof.cfm>. I signed the petition, and I hope you will as well – and pass the word on to your colleagues.

These workers have been on strike through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. They need your help. And by helping them and their union you are also helping support the fine work by their devoted UFCW health and safety staff members, who are also, I am proud to say, active members of our OHS Section.

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The APHA Action Board

The American Public Health Association has an Action Board. The Action Board is comprised of representatives from each APHA section, several of the state affiliate associations (the state associations of public health), and three at large representatives. Action Board representatives are not elected, but rather they are appointed by their section and serve a three-year term. The Action Board serves the role of facilitating action by APHA members on policy issues. It helps to activate the Sections, Caucuses, Special Interest Groups (SPIGS), Affiliates, and the general membership. I am the Occupational Health and Safety Section’s Action Board representative.

This year the Action Board will continue with its efforts to support and facilitate the APHA policy development and review process. This includes the process of archiving existing policies that lack relevance other than for historic purposes. Guidelines for the policy process can be found at <http://www.apha.org/private/ppolicy.htm>. The OHS Section is one section that has taken a lead in working with APHA staff to move this process forward. Mary Miller has been coordinating our effort to review APHA’s occupational health and safety policies. Anyone interested in working on this ongoing effort is encouraged to go to the APHA policy Web site and review the policies and consider which could be revised or updated to either better address or include workers’ health and safety issues. You can contact Mary Miller by e-mail at: <marymiller@inwa.net>.

When you look at the APHA policy Web site, you will see a calendar of important dates and deadlines for each step of the policy development and review process. Two key dates to keep in mind this year are: Jan. 12, when suggestions for subject areas in need of review are due and Feb. 13, when proposed new policies are due.

In order to access the site, you will need your username and password for the "Members Only" section of the APHA Web site to view this information. If you have any questions about the information on the site, you can e-mail APHA staff at <policy@apha.org>.

The Action Board has formed three working groups based upon the priority action areas established by the APHA Governing Council and Executive Board: Access to Care, Public Health Infrastructure, and Health Disparities. The working groups are given general assignments based upon the Association’s efforts in each of these areas. Last year, each working group reviewed a set of selected policy statements related to its action area. Each then made recommendations for keeping, updating, or archiving the policies. This year’s role will continue to include support for the archiving process but also for taking political action related to the action areas.

This year, the APHA will actively promote National Public Health Week, April 4 – 11, 2004. The focus for this week of activities will be Eliminating Health Disparities. Look at APHA’s Web site, <http://www.apha.org/nphw/>, to learn about the ways that APHA is considering action related to that goal.

For National Public Health Week (NPHW) 2004, APHA will be collecting and highlighting a wide variety of innovative projects/interventions that have been implemented in communities to tackle health disparities. The Association’s goal is to inspire other people who work on public health issues and want to reduce health disparities in their communities. OHS Section members who want to take part in this effort can begin now to consider presenting occupational health and safety/workers’ health projects and interventions that have been successful in helping to reduce and/or eliminate occupational illness and injury disparities. By moving APHA to present one or two of such efforts, we could help to demonstrate that these disparities exist, that there are ways to successfully address them, and that occupational health and safety is an important aspect of public health. This would even have the potential of helping us to recruit people to our work and membership in our section. Although APHA states that it would like to highlight efforts to secure Environmental Justice, it does not list Work Environment Justice. This is a perspective that our section could promote.

Finally, OHS Section members are encouraged to regularly look at the APHA Legislation, Advocacy, and Policy Web site at: <http://www.apha.org/legislative/> . This site provides news, links to updates of APHA actions and the APHA Legislative Action Center. At the latter, you can find Action Alerts – calls for specific actions on the part of APHA members. This page also provides information about your local Congressional delegation legislative and electoral issues, and a media guide providing you contact information for media organizations, by zip code. APHA has established these links to better support successful political action by the membership.

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Environment Section Meeting Report

In the spirit of fostering greater cooperation between the Occupational Health and Safety Section and the Environment Section of APHA, a group of about five OHS section members, many of them secondary members of the Environment section, attended the Environment Section’s business meeting on Wednesday night at the San Francisco APHA meeting. This business meeting was devoted largely to conference program planning for the 2004 meeting in Washington, DC. Below are some notes on the meeting.

Before beginning the discussion about future APHA Annual Meetings, the results of the APHA elections that day were announced. The group was elated that for the first time in some years, the candidates it supported for APHA officers and Executive Board won (These were essentially the same candidates the OHS Section Councilors had supported). Also, Environmental Councilors Paul Locke and David Walinga reported that all the good resolutions had passed as well, mentioning specifically the successful resolution opposing federal interference with science review panels by OHS Section member David Michaels and others.

Environment Section members were pleased with the choice of theme for the 2005 APHA conference, namely “Evidence-Based Science and Policy.” Possible keynote speakers Section members suggested included former EPA Director Carol Browner, former WHO Director-General and former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Brundtland, Senator Hillary Clinton, scientist Jane Goodall, and authors Michael Lerner and Eric Schlosser.

Larger themes for 2005 which members discussed, possibly for plenary sessions, included: Workplace/Community Pollution, Evaluation of Federal Oversight of Government Regulatory Agencies, Environmental Problems and Access to Care. Participants also strongly recommended a special session on the upcoming 20th Anniversary of the Bhopal Tragedy in India, and what has been done there and here to improve chemical safety for workers and residents of surrounding communities. In these and following discussions, note was taken by the body of the presence of OHS members, and participants welcomed co-sponsorship and further participation with the OHS Section.

A variety of topics was proposed for regular conference sessions. These were listed by the meeting secretary, but in most cases not further discussed by the body. They included:

Environmental Health Education for various Public Health Professionals

Environmental Health and Economics

Environmental Determinants of Health Disparities

The Built Environment and Environmental Justice Issues

Community-Based Environmental Research

Links between Ecological and Environmental Health

Food Health and Safety from Farms to Forks

“Dropping the Ball” at the World Trade Center

The Retreat from an Active Governmental Role in Regulation: Will it Improve or Harm Community and Worker Protections?

The Impact and Implications for Health in a Deregulatory Environment

Attacks on Public Health Science

Alternatives to Petroleum

Use of Bioterrorism Monies

Medical Wastes

One session which was strongly endorsed at the meeting was the so-called “Talking Agency Heads” session, which is held annually and co-sponsored with the OHS Section. This session was not held at the San Francisco Annual Meeting this past year, and Environment Section members would like to resume it next year, especially since we will be meeting again in Washington. (It was understood and discussed that we may not agree with the sentiments expressed by the Agency Heads, but we should hear them and hear their plans for the future of the agencies they direct. One caveat expressed: If the Administration changes based on the outcome of the preceding week’s national Presidential elections, we should also seek to hear informally from spokespersons for the new administration.)

Finally much sentiment was expressed for sponsoring a Continuing Education session of the Application of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) Software Programs to Public Health.

As OHS Section members organize and develop sessions for the 2004 conference, we should keep the above topics in mind, and seek out co-participation and co-sponsorship with the Environment Section and its members.

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Update on International Work

APHA Occupational Health Section members Betty Szudy, from the Labor Occupational Health Program at UC Berkeley, and Garrett Brown, from the Maquiladora Health and Safety Support Network, continue to do work to build health and safety capacity among unions and non-governmental organizations in various parts of the world.

Recent activities have included a four-day training in Antigua, Guatemala in September 2003 that involved four independent monitoring groups, three trade unions, and eight women's and human rights organizations. The participants came from four Central American countries: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. The Regional Initiative for Social Responsibility and Decent Work, a grouping of Central American independent monitoring and research organizations, was the sponsor of the training
funded by the International Labor Rights Fund in Washington, DC. Guatemala's COVERCO (Comision de Verificacion de Codigos de Conducta) was the host organization, and Abby Najera was the local coordinator.

The goal of the training was twofold: 1) to build the capacity of the independent monitoring organizations to conduct more rigorous evaluations of health and safety conditions in the maquiladora sector plants in Central America; and 2) to increase the understanding of health and safety issues among non-governmental organizations working closely with maquila workers in the region, especially in the garment and textile sector.

In Fall, 2003 Garrett Brown and Professor Dara O'Rourke of UC Berkeley were guest editors for a special issue of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health (October-December 2003) focused entirely on occupational health and China. Articles written by academics, occupational health professionals, and NGO activists focus on: rules and regulations in Chinese factories; occupational safety and health legislation in China; developing an action-based health and safety training
for workers in southern China; and incentives and impediments to improving workplace conditions in China.

The project is currently seeking funding for a part-time staff member based in the States along with funding for local project partners based in southern China and Central America. For additional information about the project and/or to share funding possibilities, please go to <www.igc.org/mhssn> or contact <gdbrown@igc.org>.

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Hill Day and Every Day – Working With APHA’s Government Relations Staff

APHA’s Government Relations staff are always eager to work with APHA sections and members to coordinate and s