OSHA Releases New Respiratory Protection Directive

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued directive number CPL 02-00-158 "Inspection Procedures for the Respiratory Protection Standard".  This new directive gives instructions to OSHA compliance safety officers and area directors on interpretations and enforcement policies for enforcing the respirator standard 1910.134.  This directive cancels and supersedes the previous directive CPL 02-00-120 dated September 25, 1998.  Directives are used by OSHA to ensure the standards are enforced uniformly across the country.  These directives are useful resources in that they inform the industry, and employers how OSHA intends on enforcing the respirator standard.

Changes to this revision include: updated definitions section to include definitions for assigned protection factors (APF) and maximum use concentrations (MUC); greater clarification on voluntary respirator use, and a better explanation of a compliant respirator program and provides additional acceptable methods to assess respiratory hazards; updates the directive with information related to the revised Hazard Communication standard (1910.1200); and provides guidance on evaluating the need for respiratory protection for chemicals used in workplaces by referring to employer's Hazard Communication program wherein chemical manufacturers communicated the need for respiratory protection.

Muster einer Atemluft-Einwegmaske (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to this directive if employers require employees to wear respirators for the protection against TB they must be in compliance with the respirator standard 1910.134.  Probably the most interesting portions of the directive are the modifications to voluntary use of respirators.  According to the directive, it was the intent of the standard that the employer would not be required to incur any costs associated with voluntary use of filtering  facepiece respirators (dust masks) other than providing a copy of Appendix D of the standard to each user.  OSHA is concerned that voluntary use may cause an employee's health being jeopardized by the wearing of a respirator, or the wearing of a dirty respirator that can cause dermatitis or ingestion of a hazardous chemical, and the sharing of a respirator that leads to transmittal of disease.

Voluntary use of filtering facepiece respirators is one of the most misunderstood sections of the respirator standard.  Some points from the directive: NIOSH-approved filtering facepieces are strongly recommended but are not required; voluntary use does not require the employer to have a written program; and merely posting Appendix D is not considered adequate.

The directive is a useful resource to give employers an indication of how OSHA will enforce the respirator standard and it is a useful tool to help avoid citations or to fight violations.  

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Future Environment Designs Sponsoring PACNY's 18th Annual Environmental Conference #FEDTCPACNY

Future Environment Designs is looking forward to attending the Professional Abatement Contractors of New York (PACNY) 18th Annual Environmental Conference being held at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino from Wednesday, February 26 till Friday, February 28, 2014.  As has become our habit we will be at the tradeshow with our display booth and brochures.  However, this year you will see someone new at our booth.  Come by the booth and meet the newest member of our team Kimberly Granmoe.  Ms. Granmoe is from the Plattsburgh area of New York, and has been increasing our presence in the North Country.  Ms. Granmoe has worked for several companies in the Plattsburgh area and has served our country in the United States Marine Corp as a Desert Storm Vet (earning the Good Conduct Medal & National Defense Ribbon).

Turning Stone Resort & Casino is Beautiful in Winter

Angelo Garcia, III is proud to be on the discussion panel on Friday with Special Guest Christopher Alonge, PE and moderated by Kevin Hutton.  The panel will be after Dr. Eileen Franco, of the NYS Department of Labor (NYSDOL), who will be discussing the "Annual DOL Update" including the NYSDOL's current initiatives to educate the Code Enforcement Officers across the State and explain the enforcement strategies and statistics.

New this year to the Environmental Conference is an additional day meant for training providers and trainers.  Mr. Kevin Malone MPH, Director of the NYS Department of Health's (NYSDOH's) Asbestos Safety Training Program, will be discussing an "Overview of the Asbestos Training Program" including DOH training trends and initiatives.

The conference promises to be very informative as usual with Craig Benedict Assistant US Attorney discussing "Current Enforcement of the Clean Air Act and the Asbestos Work Practice Standard"; and Dr. Barry Castleman discussing the "The Current Global Asbestos Trade".  Visit PACNY's website for the conference flyer and registration information.

As we did last year, we will be posting updates on our twitter feed (https://twitter.com/angelogarcia3) with the hashtag #FEDTCPACNY.  We hope to see you there this year, come down to the booth and say hello.

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Protecting Yourself During Restoration or Renovation Projects

Many of you know one of our main issues is protecting yourself and your family from the contaminants that you can be exposed to in construction work (including remodeling, restoration, or renovation work).  In our classes, we discuss the USA Today Special Report in 2000 "Workers unwittingly take home toxins".  This report discusses how workers through the years have been exposed to toxins and brought them home to contaminate their families.  Contaminates included asbestos, lead, mercury, radiation, animal growth hormones, dry cleaning chemicals, explosive toxins and carcinogens.  It has been our opinion for years, that the standard safety equipment for construction workers should also include disposable clothing or uniforms, that are left at the jobsite, and respirators.  This would be in addition to the typical hard hat, reflective vests, and safety shoes.  The new silica standard, if it goes through, will be interesting since it will probably require respirators for workers performing dusty tasks.

We have also discussed, in our classes, the emergency workers who worked at the Ground Zero site and all the different toxins they were exposed to like: asbestos, lead, dioxin, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), mercury, silica, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).  Some of these workers are so sick that we had to provide special medical coverage through the Zadroga Bill, costing the US billions of dollars.

Old House (Photo credit: WaywardShinobi)

To further prove our point, a recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) News Synopsis for January 2, 2014 discussed a Histoplasmosis Outbreak Associated with the Renovation of an Old House in Quebec Canada.  Histoplasmosis is a respiratory disease caused by the inhalation of fungus spores excreted by bats and birds, that can persist in the environment for several years.  Outbreaks can occur during demolition/renovation activities that create dust containing bird or bat droppings.  The MMWR outbreak happened during the renovation of an old house, 30 workers and residents were exposed to dust containing bird or bat droppings previously hidden in the brick walls.  14 of the workers/residents developed symptoms of histoplasmosis.  Of the four who were laboratory-confirmed, two were hospitalized.  Unfortunately, stories like this keep happening over and over, again.

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NY Times Article Criticizing OSHA, Doesn't Criticize It Enough!

On March 30, 2013, the New York Times wrote the article "As OSHA Emphasizes Safety, Long Term Health Risks Fester."  You can click on the title of the article to read the article if by chance you have not read it or saw it.  As many of you know I am a sharp critic of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and their inability to protect worker health at Ground Zero, at the BP Oil Spill, Katrina, etc, etc, etc!  Here is another sad case of OSHA failing to do their job and claiming there is nothing they can do!  Are they kidding us!  Lets see the facts in this case:

• The culprit in this chemical exposure story is a chemical known as n-propyl bromide, or nPB.  “Medical researchers, government officials and even chemical companies that once manufactured nPB have warned for over a decade that it causes neurological damage and infertility when inhaled at low levels over long periods…”  So we know that exposure to this chemical is hazardous (fact!).
• 
  



3D diagram of n-propyl bromide molecule. Prepared with Discovery Studio Visualizer 1.7 and GIMP 2.2 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


• Did we have an exposure?  “For about five years, Ms. Sheri Farley, 45, stood alongside about a dozen other workers, spray gun in hand, gluing together foam cushions for chairs and couches sold under brand names like Broyhill, Ralph Lauren, and Thomasville.  Fumes from the glue formed a yellowish fog inside the plant, and Ms. Farley’s doctors say that breathing them in eventually ate away at her nerve endings, resulting in what she and her co-workers call “dead foot”."  That sounds like an exposure to us (fact!).
• What did the employer do to protect the workers?  “Even as worker after worker fell ill, records from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration show that managers at Royale Comfort Seating, where Ms. Farley was employed, repeatedly exposed gluers to nPB levels that exceeded levels federal officials considered safe, failed to provide respirators and turned off fans meant to vent fumes."  So the employer knew the dangers and didn't protect the workers (fact!).
• What's a willfull violation?  According to OSHA, a willfull violation is a violation that the employer intentionally and knowingly commits or a violation that the employer commits with plain indifference to the law.  OSHA may propose penalties of a maximum of $70,000 for each willfull violation (fact!).

So if you buy into this argument that OSHA is powerless to act.  Then why did violations only total, as per the article, "less than $20,000 in OSHA fines related to glue fumes."  That is a travesty!  OSHA needs to wake up and do its job.  

What does the Director of OSHA have to say about this?  “I’m the first to admit this is broken,” said David Michaels, the OSHA director, referring to the agency’s record on dealing with workplace health threats.  “Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people end up on the gurney.”  You're the director and that's your answer.  Get your act together and fix the problem.  You know there's a problem and you're not fixing it.  You should be fired!  You've been the OSHA Director for what four years and we must admit you've done a lot of good.  However, at the same time this issue of protecting worker health has continued to fester and you know its broken and you haven't fixed it.  If you were on Donald Trump's Apprentice program, you would've been fired.


Let's look at the issue that the business claims they can't afford to protect workers.  Based on the article it says Royale "which employs about 100 workers and had around $7.5 million in sales in 2011",  in addition, Royale has also "paid nearly a half-million dollars - in court settlements, required upgrades....".  Where did these business owners get their education on running a business?  Here are some statistics from the article that makes you wonder about business owners and support a need for OSHA to do a better job of protecting worker's health:

• "Chronic ailments caused by toxic workplace air - black lung, stonecutter's disease, asbestosis, grinder's rot, pneumoconiosis, - incapacitate more than 200,000 workers in the United States annually.  More than 40,000 Americans die prematurely each year from exposure to toxic substances at work - 10 times as many as those who die from refinery explosions, mine collapses and other accidents that grab most of the news media attention."
• Occupational illnesses and injuries like Ms. Farley's cost the American economy roughly $250 billion per year because of medical expenses and lost productivity, according to government data analyzed by J. Paul Leigh, an economist at the University of California, Davis, more than the cost of diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.  Roughly 40 percent of medical expenses from workplace hazards, or about $27 billion a year, is paid by public programs like Medicare and Medicaid."

In our opinion, it would be more effective to have a respiratory protection program using respirators and proper filters.  The probable cost of a respiratory protection program for 100 workers would be around $40,000.  It seems to us it would be cheaper to provide the workers with respirators than to pay for court settlements, worker's compensation insurance costs, disability insurance costs, etc.  It is way past time we started recognizing the need to push respirator use to handle situations that either the political will, financial will, or just plain indifference is not protecting workers.

Related articles

• Robin Wilson: Cheap Furniture Should Not Kill or Maim U.S. Workers
• Filtering Facepiece Respirator or Dust Mask. Which is it?
• OSHA has dismal record preventing long-term workplace hazards
• When nerve-damaging glue is disabling workers, what can OSHA do? [The Pump Handle]
• A Bill Currently In The House Attempts To Give More Power To OSHA For Workplace Safety
• Worker Protection Too Costly!
• OSHA last inspected Texas fertilizer plant in 1985

Filtering Facepiece Respirator or Dust Mask. Which is it?

Well the answer to the question in the title is similar to you saying tomatoe or tomato.  They are two ways of saying the same thing.  According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) a dust mask is a filtering facepiece respirator.  For those involved in the safety and health field that is not news.  However, for everyone else it is.  In fact, we would argue that the average worker doesn't even consider the dust mask a respirator.  We recently ran into this miscommunication between an employer who was providing filtering facepiece respirators on a voluntary basis and assumed when the OSHA compliance safety and health officer was asking about respirators they were talking about the ones used in the paint booth.  Paint booth respirators were required, but the filtering facepiece respirators were not.  You could imagine the conversation.

Muster einer Atemluft-Einwegmaske (Photo credit: Wikipedia)



What is the consequence of such a miscommunication?  Well once you require the wearing of filtering facepiece respirators in the workplace, these respirators must follow all the requirements of 1910.134 the OSHA respiratory protection standard.  Which means the workers must be medically cleared to wear the respirator, fit tested with the respirator to ensure it fits, and trained on the use of the respirator.  However, if the filtering facepiece respirator is being used voluntarily, all you must provide is Appendix D of standard "Information for Employees Wearing Respirators When Not Required Under The Standard."  A big difference in requirements.  So be very careful when answering this question during an OSHA workplace inspection.

Another problem with dust masks is illustrated by the photo above in an article about Suffolk County's plan to spray pesticides.  What is wrong with the picture?  Well if this worker is spraying pesticides he is wearing the wrong respirator.  Filtering facepiece respirators (dust masks) only protect from dust or particulates.  They do not protect against chemicals that are in the form of mists, vapors, or gases (which is the form that the worker in the picture is spraying).  These forms of chemicals would penetrate through the mask or worse will be absorbed into the filter and potentially concentrate the chemical or allow the chewmical to sit on worker's face.

 

The only reason for wearing a filtering facepiece respirator (dust mask) is for nuisance dusts (i.e., wood dust, pollen, grass clippings, etc.).  Though this respirator is very comfortable, and lighweight, in our view, it is very dangerous because it is readily available, many people are using it improperly, and many people believe it can do more than it was designed to do.  Use this resapirator very carefully and again only for nuisance dusts, nothing more.  Be safe out there!

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Toxic Dusts - Demolition Implications

We have posted our Winter-Spring 2012 Newsletter on our website.  The main article discusses the implications of toxic dusts on demolition, disaster relief, and emergency response workers.  This is an issue I feel really strongly about and if my recommendations are taken seriously, maybe there will be no need for any Zadroga Bills to deal with 9/11 type illnesses in the future.

Demolition, Emergency Response, and Disaster Relief Workers should wear respirators when they respond.

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Asbestos Dangers Crop Up In Japan's Disaster

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeOur prayers go out to Japan in the aftermath of Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami, including the swamped nuclear reactor that has leaked radiation.  However, like most disasters the tragedy doesn't end after the disaster.  The next phase of the disaster is handling the devastion that has occurred and try to handle this in the most productive and safe manner possible.   As the MSNBC report, "Japan Disaster's Other Hidden Danger: Asbestos," indicates activitists have found asbestos, the cancer-causing fibrous mineral, in the air and debris collected from the devastated northeastern coast of Japan.  As we clean-up from these disasters it has become more important to ensure the safety of the clean-up workers and those near the area of the disaster from being exposed to the various environmental hazards that occur after a disaster.  Asbestos, lead, mercury, silica, volatile organic compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls, and dioxin are just a few of the various chemicals that these workers could be exposed to.  Though Japan is overwhelmed with enormity of the task ahead of them and needless to say the nuclear reactor leak is extremely serious.  We hope they learn the lessons we seem unable to learn (mistakes made during the World Trade Center, Katrina, and Gulf-oil spill clean-ups) regarding the importance of ensuring the occupational health (illness prevention) of the clean-up workers.  The proper use of respirators (including fit testing and training), proper decontamination of workers before they go home to their families, and the proper use of dust control practices during demolition and construction work to reduce dust emissions all should be standard practice for clean-up activities after a disaster.

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OSHA Respirator Safety Video

This Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Respirator Safety Video is a very good introductory video on respirator donning and doffing.  Probably will add this to our training classes since it is a very good entry level and refresher video.  The video is available in spanish, too.

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OSHA Orders John Galt Corp. to Compensate Worker Fired After Raising Health and Safety Issues at the Deutsche Bank Building in NYC

Respirators Should Be Fit Tested Before Use

On Thursday, October 14, 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor obtained a consent judgment ordering The John Galt Corp. and two of its former managers, Mitchel Alvo and Dorota Lebkowska, to compensate a worker who was fired for raising a health and safety issue during an asbestos removal project the defendants oversaw at the former Deutsche Bank Building at 130 Liberty St. in Manhattan, New York.
According to the press release the worker filed a complaint with the department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration in August 2006, alleging that he had been fired after requesting additional respirator filter cartridges for himself and for fellow workers performing asbestos removal at the site.  OSHA's investigation found merit to the complaint.  The department's Regional Office of the Solicitor in New York filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York after the defendants refused to reinstate and compensate the worker.
As a result of that legal action, the defendants have signed a consent judgment that orders them to pay the worker $55,000 in back wages and expunge all references to suspension or dismissal from his personnel file.  The judgment also prohibits the defendants from discriminating against employees who file a complaint with OSHA, participate in an OSHA inspection or otherwise exercise their rights under Section 11(c) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
"Terminating workers who raise legitimate safety and health issues is unacceptable," said Robert Kulick, OSHA's regional administrator in New York.  "Intimidating workers into a dangerous silence can mask hazardous and potentially deadly conditions.  Employers should be aware that we will pursue appropriate legal remedies in such cases."
Section 11(c) of the OSH Act protects employees' rights to file a complaint with OSHA or to bring safety and health issues to the attention of their employers without fear of termination or other reprisal.  OSHA also enforces statutes protecting employees who report violations of various railway, securities, trucking, airline, nuclear power, pipeline, environmental, public transportation and consumer product safety laws.  Detailed information is available online at: http://www.whistleblowers.gov/.
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, employers are responsible for providing safe and healthful workplaces for their employees.  OSHA's role is to assure these conditions for America's working men and women by setting and enforcing standards, and providing training, education and assistance.  For more information, visit http://www.osha.gov/.

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