5 on the Frontline

Welcome to "5 on the Frontline" with AIHA's Director of Government Relations, Mark Ames.

From time to time, Mark will do a short interview with an expert in the public health and safety-related fields (such as industrial hygiene, occupational health, and safety science, etc.) to talk about current and future policy action points that affect the lives of workers and their communities, worldwide.

In this episode, Mark Ames talks with Chuck Johnson, President of the International Safety Equipment Association, about how manufacturers are responding to PPE shortages and President Biden's use of the Defense Protection Act.

In this episode, Mark Ames talks with Ronn Nozoe, CEO, of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, about school leaders’ concerns as President Biden seeks to reopen schools during his first 100 days in office.

Ronn Nozoe is a lifelong educator and the CEO of NASSP, an organization dedicated to transforming education through school leadership. Nozoe has served as associate executive director, interim executive director, and senior adviser at ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) since 2015. During that time, he led the development of some of ASCD’s most high-profile programs, including the ASCD Whole Child Network and ASCD Activate, an online professional development library of resources. Nozoe joined ASCD after an appointment as deputy assistant secretary for policy and programs at the U.S. Department of Education, where he worked on initiatives to build state and local capacity in the areas of teacher quality, school safety, rural education, and migrant and Indian education.

Resources:

• NASSP Restart and Recovery Guide brief series.
• NASSP legislative priorities for 117th Congress.
• AIHA Back to Work Safely Guidance documents.

In this episode, Mark Ames talks with Kirk Phillips, HS&E Practice Leader for LJB Inc., about what workers and employers need to know when it comes to Total Exposure Health.

Philips is chair of AIHA’s Total Exposure Health/Total Worker Health Advisory Group and a member of the ASSP Total Worker Health taskforce.

For 28 years he served as a Bioenvironmental engineer in the Air Force culminating as the Associate Chief of Bioenvironmental Engineering in the Office of the Air Force Surgeon General. In 2013 he created the Total Exposure Health framework to effectively respond to the changing work environment, increased sensing capacity and precision health adversaries and is editor of “Total Exposure Health-An Introduction”.

In 2013 he created the Total Exposure Health framework to effectively respond to the changing work environment, increased sensing capacity and precision health adversaries and is editor of “Total Exposure Health-An Introduction”.

In this episode, Mark Ames talks with Travis Parsons about Virginia becoming the first state to mandate COVID-19 precautions in all workplaces.

Travis Parsons is the Associate Director of Occupational Safety and Health for the Laborers’ Health & Safety Fund of North America. At the Fund, he provides an array of safety and industrial hygiene services to affiliates of the Laborers’ International Union of North America.

Travis is a current member of the Virginia Safety and Health Codes Board, which is the body that establishes Virginia Occupational Safety and Health regulations and standards in the Commonwealth. He is a recognized OSHA Master Instructor for the North America’s Building Trades Unions, is a co-chair of the NORA Construction Sector Council’s COVID-19 subgroup, and serves as the Vice President of the Labor Division within the National Safety Council.

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Here are 5 additional points that Travis Parsons wants you to know:

• Virginia's standard sets expectations on worksites across the state of Virginia for both employers and employees.
• It is a strong worker protection standard that lays out proven infection control provisions and best practices.
• Specific requirements for employers in the standard vary based on a risk profile, ranging from very high for occupations like health care workers treating COVID-19 patients to low for workers not dealing with the general public and able to maintain social distancing.
• A clear-cut rule lets everyone know how to protect themselves, how to protect their co-workers, and how to fulfill the employers’ responsibility to provide a safe and healthy workplace.  
• Vaccines have been proven safe and effective. When it is your turn to get the vaccine, you should go do it.

In this episode of Five on the Frontline, AIHA's Director of Government Relations Mark Ames talks with Fred Boelter of Boelter Risk Sciences and Engineering LL about risk management and decision-making in communications with workers about Covid-19 exposure.

Fred has since 1973 been professionally assessing and resolving questions and concerns with his technical and management skills in industrial hygiene and environmental engineering.

He has consulted with clients throughout the United States, the UK, and Europe as well as in more than 30 other countries abroad on a wide range of risk characterization, risk communication, and risk management matters in occupational health, public health, and environmental impacts.

Fred is Certified in the Comprehensive Practice of Industrial Hygiene, a Licensed Professional Engineer, and a Board Certified Environmental Engineer. Fred is also a Fellow of the AIHA and a recipient of national awards including the Edward J. Baier, the Henry F. Smyth, and the Donald E. Cummings.

In this episode of 5 on the Frontline with AIHA's Mark Ames, Mr. Boelter references a few articles on this topic in the time of COVID-19 that he has written for RHP Risk Management. To read these articles, please visit AIHA's website.

In this episode of Five on the Frontline, AIHA's Director of Government Relations Mark Ames talks with Ms. Jill Asch about vaccine availability and classifying IH/OEHS science professionals for COVID-19 vaccine distribution.

Ms. Asch has over 25 years of experience in the environmental consulting and industrial hygiene field. Her experience encompasses expertise in field performance, quality assurance, and health and safety. As a Certified Industrial Hygienist and Certified Safety Professional, Ms. Asch is committed to protecting people's health and safety in the workplace and our community.

Ms. Asch’s expertise includes comprehensive health and safety compliance programs, process hazard analysis reviews, and facility-wide inspections for compliance and hazards, including lead, asbestos, and indoor air quality. In addition to providing technical expertise to our clients and staff, Ms. Asch also develops health and safety training programs, provides OSHA-10 and OSHA-30 Outreach Training for both Construction and General Industry, and is experienced in right-to-know reporting for New York City clients.

Ms. Asch has expertise in indoor air quality; potable and non-potable water sampling; and microbial investigation, delineation, and remediation management. She supervises work practices and controls per job specifications and governing regulations for remediation projects in commercial, industrial, and multi-family residential buildings. Lastly, Ms. Asch is a member of the Hillmann 24-hour Emergency Response Team and Chairwoman of the Hillmann Health and Safety Committee.

Visit AIHA's website for Ms. Asch's recommendations and observations.

For this end-of-the-year episode, Mark chats with Dr. David Michaels about implementing an OSHA emergency standard to help further protect workers during the COVID-19 crisis.

Dr. Michaels is an epidemiologist and Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

He served as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health at the US Department of Labor from 2009 to 2017. He’s the longest-serving administrator in OSHA’s history. During the Clinton Administration,

Dr. Michaels served as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety, and Health, charged with protecting the workers, community, and environment around the nation’s nuclear weapons facilities. Much of his research focuses on protecting the integrity of the science underpinning public health, safety, and environmental protections.

Dr. Michaels is a member of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.

Two links to resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Halting Workplace COVID-19 Transmission: An Urgent Proposal to Protect American Workers
• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration at 50: Protecting Workers in a Changing Economy

This episode was first published on Dec 25, 2020.

In this episode, Mark talks with Estella Cisneros, Legal Director of the Agricultural Worker Program at California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc (CLRA). Mark asks four crucial questions about how rural farmworkers are currently impacted between the wildfires raging in the western United States and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why are these farmworkers vulnerable to wildfire smoke? What protections do these workers have available to them? What else is needed to protect these valuable workers from this hazard? Estella oversees the organization’s statewide work with agricultural workers, which includes farmworkers as well as those employed in dairies, packing houses, nurseries and meat and poultry processing operations, such as meat packing plants. She is based in Fresno, CA, where her practice focuses on employment and workplace health and safety matters, including sexual harassment and assault in the workplace.

The daughter of Mexican farmworkers from Planada, California, Estella graduated from Stanford University in 2007 and Yale Law School in 2012. In 2013, she was named one of Forbes Magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30” in Law & Policy and in 2015, featured as one of Huffington Post’s “30 Women Under 30 Changing Food.”

Download today the Five Ways to Protect Farmworkers from Wildfire Smoke.

This episode was first published on October 5, 2020.

In this episode, Mark talks with Jennifer Maclachlan, Managing Director at PID Analyzers, LLC and Chair of the AIHA Teen Workplace Health & Safety Committee, about young worker health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this episode Mark talks with with Dana Stahl, CIH, and Rick Gleason, about the heat hazards that farmworkers face in their daily work.