It’s a New Year (thank heavens!), and OSHA finally has a new leader, who said one of his first priorities is to make sure that green jobs are safe jobs.

In a speech to NIOSH on December 16th, David Michaels, Ph.D., MPH, said it was “very fitting and proper” that his first speech as assistant secretary for occupational safety and health address the issue of green jobs — what green jobs mean for the earth, for our economy and for American workers. He said they can not be good jobs unless they’re also safe jobs.

Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis has provided the Department of Labor with a vision that seeks “Good jobs for everyone.” This is a noble sentiment, but with unemployment well above 10 percent, we remain a long way from that vision.

For Michaels, though, the challenge is to begin the process of integrating safety and health into green jobs by defining, categorizing and tracking green jobs; evaluating green jobs, processes, and products; planning for early prevention; and adding safety and health to green benchmarks.

Michaels, who formerly was Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, said, “tackling green jobs, which are a priority for this administration, provides us an opportunity to transform — not just change — all workplaces. I believe we must take this bold approach.”

I’m not so sure of the use of the word “transform” here, as opposed to “change.” According to my dictionary, they are interchangeable. But for the Obama administration and others the word “transform” has come to mean more than just “change we can believe in.” This may be all well and good, but we’d like to see Dr. Michaels concentrate on ensuring the safety of all workers, not just those in green industries.

Many at the conference in which Dr. Michaels spoke said, “workers should play a central role in safety and health.” This does not strike us as transformative, but we can agree with Michaels when he says, occupational safety and health professionals are mandated “to ensure that worker health and safety is not left out of this historic change.”

Employers who race into this green economy without paying attention to worker safety will blunder into many preventable injuries and deaths. We must use our knowledge and skills to identify potential hazards as they emerge. We can’t wait years for hazards to be completely characterized, to let industries shift their responsibility or defer workplace protections by producing “doubt” instead of actively practicing prevention, said Michaels.

It is vital, now, worker safety and health concerns be integrated into green manufacturing, green construction and green energy. Most importantly: we must push worker health and safety as a critical, necessary, and recognized element of green design, green lifecycle analysis and green contracts. It’s not a matter of choosing either a green future or safe jobs. It’s both.

It’s all or nothing, said Michaels, and NIOSH, OSHA and everyone else needs to play a role in building this sustainable economy — an economy that will provide sufficient jobs, green jobs, and jobs that are safe for all workers.

We can’t argue with that, and hopefully, we’ll see more of those jobs in the New Year.