Environmental Health and Safety

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A week after a similar incident killed people in Nigeria, a pipeline explosion in Mexico has claimed 85 lives, and injured 58, with dozens more still missing. According to news sources, the disaster occurred as people filled containers with gasoline from a pipeline that was illegally punctured. Fuel theft is widespread in Mexico, causing pipelines to be shutdown repeatedly for the repair of punctures.

Evidence from NIOSH surveillance studies indicates gaps in hospitals’ respiratory protection programmatic operations and healthcare workers’ (HCWs) marginal compliance with respiratory protection recommended practices.

Pollution at London Underground tube stations is up to 30 times higher than in busy roads in the capital, research has found, potentially putting the health of staff and thousands of London commuters at risk. The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) said there is “likely” to be some health risks associated with the high concentrations of particulate matter (PM) on the London Underground network.

An environmentally friendly diet proposed by scientists that would radically transform food production and the types of food we eat; how the shutdown is affecting federal workers’ mental health and a look back at one of the strangest and deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history. These were among the top stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

Cleaning and disinfecting products are complex mixtures of chemicals that can irritate the skin. Evidence also shows that exposure to these products may increase the risk of work-related asthma among healthcare workers. But the effects of specific chemicals remain unclear. Now, a NIOSH study published in the journal Annals of Work Exposures and Health has added to our understanding by linking products and tasks to specific exposures.

OSHA has cited RKM Utility Services Inc. for failing to protect workers from hydrogen sulfide after an employee died after exposure to dangerous levels of the gas while working in a trench in Dallas, Texas. OSHA inspectors determined that the company exposed employees to a hazardous atmosphere, failed to train employees on the health hazards of hydrogen sulfide, and did not drain water from the trench.

Most of the emergency responders dispatched to a serious incident involving a toxic gas exposure did not use required respirators for breathing protection, according to a NIOSH-funded investigation published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The gas, phosphine, forms when pesticides containing aluminum phosphide mix with water.

Want to be healthier and help save the planet at the same time? A “planetary health diet” unveiled yesterday in the medical journal Lancet will do both, according to the international team of scientists who developed it. The authors of the report say changes to the way we eat - across the globe - are urgently needed amid increasing obesity and climate change made worse by population growth, which is expected to reach 10 billion people by 2050.

With the recent resurgence of the most severe form of black lung disease among coal miners, especially in central Appalachia, understanding and preventing exposure to the respirable, or inhalable, dust generated during the extraction of coal is paramount. Black lung is a form of pneumoconiosis, or scarring lung disease, caused by breathing in dust that can occur with exposure to respirable coal mine dust.

OSHA standard 1910.242(b) relating to hand and portable powered tools and other hand-held equipment is clear on using compressed air for cleaning. “Compressed air shall not be used for cleaning purposes except where reduced to less than 30 psi and then only with effective chip guarding and personal protective equipment.”