That judgment came into play in dramatic fashion during a spaceflight nine years later. While conducting a planned spacewalk, Cassidy’s partner experienced a malfunction with his spacesuit that resulted in water entering his helmet, obscuring his vision. Sensing his partner’s distress, and acting on instinct, Cassidy helped him return to safety.

Cassidy expressed thankfulness for being among the small group of people who know what it’s like to leave earth’s atmosphere, and he reminisced about looking down from space and seeing the planet’s surface zip by. “I think the world would be a better place if every single one of us could look out that window,” Cassidy said. “It really made me appreciate earth for what it does for all of us.”

MEASURING WORKER WELL-BEING On May 23, NIOSH’s Chia-Chia Chang introduced the agency’s Worker Well-Being Questionnaire, or WellBQ, a tool intended to assess quality of working life, circumstances outside of work, and physical and mental health status. The development team, which included researchers from NIOSH and the Rand Corporation, first completed a literature review that informed the creation of a worker well-being framework, which comprises work evaluation and experience; workplace policies and culture; workplace physical environment and safety climate; health status; and home, community, and society. People don’t work in a vacuum, Chang said, and these areas outside of work all relate to one another.

According to Chang, the data from the NIOSH WellBQ can be used to assess the impact of interventions and compare results between groups, including groups within the same workplace or across worker populations. She recommended using the questionnaire in its entirety to ensure that the full concept of worker well-being is captured—and because many parts of the tool were adopted from other instruments and permissions to use copyrighted pieces of the tool are granted only when using it in full. For more information, visit NIOSH's website.

THE CHALLENGES OF BIOAEROSOL SAMPLING During the COVID-19 pandemic, OEHS professionals have been called on to conduct sampling designed to determine the presence and concentration of SARS-CoV-2. But, as bioaerosol scientist Quinn Aithinne demonstrated in a presentation on May 23, that seemingly simple charge is fraught with difficulty.

The first challenge, Aithinne said, is that “anyone who is breathing is a potential source.” As a result, deciding where to collect a sample is highly uncertain, and sample sizes are typically low. Often, the analytical laboratory is unable to detect any virus in the sample. If a biological assay will be conducted, the virus must be alive, but sometimes the sampling method kills what it collects. A smattering of viral parts will work for analysis by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which can verify the presence of virus in a sample but can’t say whether it’s infectious. And trying to determine whether the amount of virus exceeds what would be expected from background is impossible because no information on background levels exists. For these reasons, Aithinne said, “all your estimates are low-faith.”

Even if OEHS professionals overcome these challenges, the lack of an enforceable OSHA standard for infectious diseases means that it’s difficult to know what to do with the information they’ve obtained. As if these complications weren’t enough, the equipment used to conduct bioaerosol sampling is expensive and limited by design flaws. “That’s why we need industrial hygienists in research design,” Aithinne said.

PANDEMIC PLANNING AND COMMUNICATION In the early 2000s, the focus of pandemic planning was on a potential flu outbreak. As Dana Stahl explained in a presentation on May 23, much had been learned about the flu virus, and planners assumed a vaccine could be developed within six months and that demand for the vaccine would create significant challenges in determining how to distribute it equitably. Public health interventions such as school closures would be difficult to achieve, they thought, and would probably last only for short durations.

Of course, the pandemic these planners prepared for didn’t occur. The pandemic they got instead stemmed from a novel coronavirus about which nothing was known when it was first detected in December 2019. Schools were closed almost immediately, and in many parts of the United States, they stayed closed for more than a year. While a safe, effective vaccine was developed with astonishing speed, the anticipated demand never materialized. Against expectations, the main problems were distrust of the vaccine and disbelief in the seriousness or even the existence of the viral threat.

Among the issues that pandemic planners hadn’t considered was the extreme difficulty of communicating effectively. Stahl listed several reasons for the communication struggles, including distrust of government and the ease with which social media allowed individuals who were not experts or who wished to spread misinformation to reach a huge following. She suggested that communication during the pandemic has not fully accounted for the public’s incomplete understanding of the scientific method. While scientists expect recommendations to change as more data becomes available, these changes have confused people and fostered distrust.

The respirator shortages at the beginning of the pandemic further complicated communication efforts, leading OEHS professionals to recommend actions that they wouldn’t have contemplated otherwise. “In all of our pandemic planning, we never considered that we would be recommending people wear cloth masks,” Stahl said. “In the end, we recommended it because it was the least bad option.”

USING ROBOTS TO SIMULATE HUMAN EXPOSURES One of Jennifer Shin’s first projects for ExxonMobil was measuring dock workers’ exposures to hydrocarbons during transfer of a petroleum product. The task was carried out only once or twice a year, and if she wasn’t available to take samples on the appointed day, or if someone neglected to tell her when the task would be performed, she had to wait months before getting another chance. In addition, the limitations of data collection methods meant that she might get only one or two samples. Was this enough data to make confident assessments of worker exposures?

Since transferring to ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences Inc. in 2012, Shin and her colleagues have been exploring ways to use robots to generate more high-quality personal exposure data. As she explained in a presentation on May 23, Shin and her team partnered with a robotics group at the University of Texas at Austin, which developed a robotic arm that could hold a spray can and mimic the motions of human workers performing two different spraying tasks.

“We felt that robots offer a unique advantage,” Shin said, because they can perform tasks repeatedly and allow the collection of potentially endless samples. She added that using robots eliminates any ethical or privacy concerns that may apply when trying to measure human exposures.

The sampling equipment Shin’s team used included photoionization detectors, whole air sampling canisters, and charcoal tubes. Measured parameters included the volume of the experimental area, room ventilation and airflow, temperature and relative humidity, sampling duration, the amount of product released, and the amount in the air. The results, Shin said, showed that exposures were low—and that the use of robots has the potential to fill some of the data gaps that have long plagued OEHS professionals.

IMPLEMENTING EHMRS IN HEALTHCARE Two representatives from a regional hospital system joined AIHce on May 24 to discuss practical considerations related to distributing elastomeric half-mask respirators, or EHMRs, to a large population of healthcare workers. Because EHMRs can be cleaned, disinfected, and reused, they have potential to meet the needs of healthcare workers and can ease concerns about personal protective equipment supply during shortages of N95 filtering facepiece respirators.

As shortages of N95 FFRs at the onset of the pandemic created high demand for respiratory protection for healthcare workers, Hope Waltenbaugh, the vice president of surgical services at Allegheny Health Network (AHN), arranged to have a team of surgeons, nurses, and support staff wear the masks and provide feedback. “The first thing they said was, ‘We feel safe’” wearing EHMRs, Waltenbaugh told attendees.

While EHMRs and FFRs provide an equal level of protection, healthcare workers’ acceptance of the new devices was vital to their success. Waltenbaugh felt that the decision to first seek workers’ approval instead of simply mandating EHMRs helped overcome barriers to their use.

Sara Angelili, AHN’s director of perioperative education, was responsible for implementing EHMRs across nine hospitals and training workers on how to properly wear and clean the devices. Workers were given written instructions and videos, followed by small group demonstrations on how to don, doff, and decontaminate the respirators, and how to perform a seal check. According to Angelili, surveys indicated that 93 percent of staff members were satisfied with their training and 97 percent were confident they knew how to use EHMRs correctly.

OSHA’S FREDERICK DISCUSSES AGENCY PRIORITIES OSHA Deputy Assistant Secretary James Frederick addressed attendees at the closing session on May 25, summarizing the agency’s priorities and providing updates on several rulemakings. Addressing the ongoing pandemic, Frederick asked attendees to review OSHA’s “Guidance on Mitigating and Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in the Workplace,” which the agency continues to update. Despite the Supreme Court’s action vacating OSHA’s Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard, the agency continues to investigate complaints from workers related to COVID-19 and is using the General Duty Clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act for enforcement purposes. Frederick said that a forthcoming rule on infectious diseases will provide “ample opportunity for stakeholder engagement and involvement” on matters related to COVID-19.

In recent months, OSHA has been particularly active in relation to heat hazards at work. In addition to an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on heat injury prevention, the agency has also launched a National Emphasis Program to protect workers from outdoor and indoor heat hazards.

Frederick also mentioned the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which will provide $500 million for construction projects around the country. The influx of workers on these projects will be enormous, Frederick said, and will require health and safety protections from the outset.

Frederick ended his prepared remarks by providing perspective on OSHA enforcement efforts. He acknowledged that most employers try to protect their workers but need help from OSHA, particularly through the agency’s compliance assistance program and other training initiatives. “We really want to make sure employers are going well above OSHA regulations,” Frederick said.

ED RUTKOWSKI is editor in chief of The Synergist.

KAY BECHTOLD is managing editor of The Synergist.

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