Delegates at the International Labour Conference (ILC) overwhelmingly adopted (439 for, 7 against) on June 21, 2019, the Violence and Harassment Convention and Recommendation. The new convention views occupational safety and health (OSH) as a subset of overall work well-being.
Next to the real thing, virtual reality training is the best way to learn. VR training has been around for many years and in many forms, but generally was limited to people with deep pockets such as the military, NASA and the airline industry with use of flight simulators, for example.
Appendix A to federal OSHA’s 1978 lead standard (current today) provides that blood lead level (BLL) of workers, both male and female, who intend to have children should be maintained below 30 micrograms per deciliter (ug/dL) “to minimize adverse reproductive health effects to the parents and to the developing fetus.
In 2019, 1,762,450 new cancer cases and 606,880 cancer deaths are projected to occur in the United States1. It is statistically improbable for someone in America not to know someone close who had or has cancer.
A basic understanding of the toxicological dose-response curve is a necessity for OHS pros. People fear most what they understand the least. New and vast toxicological information can trigger fear and irrational actions.
Standard 1910.1020 “Access to employee exposure and medical records” is the most important and far-reaching of OSHA’s regulations. When the standard became effective more than two decades ago, it could not have envisioned the explosive growth of global chemical exposure information.
The World Economic Forum “Global Competitiveness Report 2018” ranked the U.S. as the most competitive country in the world with an overall score of 86. The U.S. ranked 1st in labor market, financial systems and business dynamism categories.
Class action lawsuits regarding reproductive health rights were recently filed against Walmart, the U.S.’s largest private employer, in Illinois, New York and Wisconsin. Many other employers such as Amazon, Merck and Novartis face similar lawsuits, too, relating to pregnancy discrimination, failure to provide reasonable accommodations and violations of EEOC rules.
An OSHA health compliance officer (an industrial hygienist -- IH) recently put me in an ethical dilemma. While conducting “side-by-side” air sampling as the employer’s representative during an OSHA inspection, I observed that the OSHA IH was not sampling for asbestos correctly.