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Congress Hears Strategies to Improve Workplace Safety
To stem the $156 billion cost of workplace deaths and injuries, Charles Atkin, Ph.D., a member of the National Communication Association, and other experts in health and safety communication campaigns presented research before Congress last month.

With expertise spanning 35 years, Atkin has found that conventional safety campaigns only attain a modest degree of impact. He presented and critiqued current and promising approaches to increase the exposure and impacts of health and safety messages including use of fear campaigns, use of “entertainment-educa-tion,” and targeting messages to friends and family that influence individual behavior.

Atkin is a professor and chair of the Dept. of Communication at Michigan State University. He discussed “Strategic Communication Campaigns to Improve Health and Safety;” David A. Hofmann, Ph.D, professor, Kenan-Fla-gler Business School, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill talked about “Organizational Factors that Influence Workplace Safety;” and Michael J. Burke, Ph.D, professor, Freeman School of Business, Tulane University, New Orleans offered “Interventions to Improve Health and Safety.”

In 2003 the National Safety Council estimated 4,500 workplace deaths and 3.4 million disabling injuries occurred on the job and cost Americans $156 billion.

The congressional brieﬁng was a way to inform public policy makers of new methods of reaching audiences to improve work conditions and the health of Americans. Turning research into action requires bringing researchers and policy makers together.

The congressional briefing was made possible by the support of a Decade of Behavior grant, an American Psychology Association-led initiative that bridges social science research and policy makers to solve societal problems, including safety and health issues.

ISSA Allies With, But Opposes, EPA Training Requirement
The ISSA, an association that represents the cleaning industry, is opposing an EPA requirement for training employees who apply antimicrobial pesticides, such as sanitizers, in institutional settings, though it has joined an alliance with the EPA’s Design for the Environment (DfE) program.
The formal alliance with DfE is designed to provide ISSA formulator and other association members with information, guidance, and other resources that will facilitate the development of environmentally preferable cleaning products.

While ISSA places a high value on employee training for all members of the cleaning industry, the association has ﬁled comments opposing the EPA’s contemplated training for employees who apply antimicrobial pesticides as being redundant and duplicative of existing training regulations established by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other agencies.

The DfE program is one of the EPA’s premier partnership programs working with individual industry sectors, such as the cleaning industry, to compare and improve the performance and human health and environmental risks and costs of existing and alternative products, processes and practices. DfE partnership projects promote integrating cleaner, cheaper, and smarter solutions into everyday business practices.

“The formalization of our alliance with DfE is a natural progression of our existing relationship with the agency,” said ISSA Director of Legislative Affairs Bill Balek. According to Balek, ISSA has been a longtime supporter of the DfE Formulator Initiative and other DfE-sponsored programs.

“The ISSA/DfE Alliance is an excellent opportunity to work more closely with DfE and better assist, facilitate, and otherwise encourage industry to move along a spectrum of continued improvement of the environmental and safety and health proﬁles of cleaning-product formulations.”

As part of the alliance agreement, ISSA and DfE will work together to promote the following programs to ISSA members:
1. 1. DfE Formulator Program: The DfEFormulator Program encourages and assists formulators in designing products with more positive environmental and health proﬁles than conventional products. DfE provides formulators with information on chemical characteristics and toxicities of raw materials and additives. DfE formulator partners enjoy agency recognition, including use of the DfE logo on products with improved formulations.

2. 2. Green Formulation Initiative: One ofthe objectives of the DfE Green Formulation Initiative for Industrial and Institutional (I/I) Cleaning Products is to develop a one-stop database, CleanGredients™, that features ingredients with a preferred environmental and safety and health proﬁle to assist formulators in developing “greener” cleaning-product formulations.

3. 3. Safer Detergents Stewardship Initia-tive: The Safer Detergents Stewardship Initiative (SDSI) will recognize companies, facilities, and others who voluntarily phase out or commit to phase out the manufacture or use of nonylphenol ethoxylate surfactants, commonly referred to as NPEs.

The EPA recently formed a work group for the purpose of ramping up the agency’s current training regulations. As part of this process, the EPA has made it clear that it is considering the imposition of new training regulations for those employees (such as janitors, building service contractors, custodians, etc.) who, as part of their job, apply disinfectants, sanitizers and other antimicrobial pesticides.

ISSA agrees that such employees require training; however, ISSA Director of Legislative Affairs Bill Balek pointed out that comprehensive federal requirements for employee training in such situations already exist and provide ample protection for the safety and health of workers who apply disinfectants, sanitizers, and other antimicrobials in institutional and industrial facilities.

Specifically, ISSA alluded to protections provided by the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard that establishes an extensive regulatory scheme designed to protect employees who use chemical products (including disinfectants and sanitizers) and that relies on labeling, material safety data sheets (MSDS), and written hazard communication programs as well as employee education
and training.

“Any additional training,” said Balek, “such as that contemplated by EPA, would be duplicative of existing law and therefore provide no significant benefit to employees, but would only serve to place another unreasonable burden on employers.” In its comments, ISSA also noted that industry outreach efforts are on the rise, such as the ISSA/OSHA Alliance, the principal purpose of which is to provide employers with information, guidance, and access to training resources that will help protect employees’ health and safety.

For example, ISSA and OSHA are working to develop education and training programs for cleaning and maintenance industry employers and employees in the area of hazard communication, including the safe use of chemical cleaning products. ISSA further pointed out that the EPA has failed to establish a rational basis that would justify the additional, redundant training contemplated by the agency, especially in light of the extensive existing federal training regulations and industry outreach efforts. In fact, statistics compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the number of occupational injuries and illnesses due to disinfectant exposure has declined significantly in recent years.

LAFD Trains Managers in High-Rise Fire Safety

In September, Universal Protection Service, a security, fire/life safety, and electronic security company based in Santa Ana, CA, began a ground-breaking, joint training program with the Los Angeles Fire Dept., resulting in the certification of 30 of Universal Protection Services’ top managers in the city of Los Angeles as High Rise Fire Safety Instructors.

The three-day training program, conducted by Inspector Darryl Bolden of the LAFD, prepared all the managers to test for their Certificates of Fitness with the Los Angeles Fire Department. Inspector Bolden described the training as “ground breaking,” and further added that he had never witnessed that level of commitment to training from any other contract security firm.

Regional Vice President for Universal Protection Service, Louis Boulgarides, reinforced the firm’s dedication by stating, “Universal Protection Service is committed to providing the best trained leaders in the contract security industry.” Steve Jones, COO of the company, added that the partnership “is just a small part of the overall training program we have committed to; over the next several months we
will be rolling out new programs never seen before in the security guard industry.”

The Director of Security for the Wells Fargo Center and training participant, Martin Fellbaum, summed up the experience by saying that he had “never been with a security company that invests as heavily in training as Universal Protection Service.”