Industrial Hygiene

On June 2, 2011 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a new directive establishing a National Emphasis Program for the Primary Metal Industries. The purpose of the NEP is to identify and reduce or eliminate worker exposures to harmful chemical and physical hazards in establishments producing metal products.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) on April 14 introduced once again a bill intended to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. Lautenberg, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics, and Environmental Health, introduced a similar bill (S.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Personal Protective Technology (PPT) Program and National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (NPPTL) will hold a stakeholder meeting on March 29, 2011, at the Hyatt Regency Pittsburgh Airport.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has requested public comment on its draft Current Intelligence Bulletin, Occupational Exposure to Carbon Nano tubes and Nano fibers, by February 18, 2011. In addition, the Agency has scheduled a public meeting for February 3, 2011 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to discuss and obtain comments on the draft document.  

The United Auto Workers Union (UAW) revived a petition first made to the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration in October of 1993, calling last week for a immediate action to promulgate a comprehensive standard for occupational exposure to metal-working fluids (MWF).  The new effort is based on what the UAW says is new scientific evidence for respiratory disease and cancer allegedly caused by exposure to metalworking fluids under prevailing conditions, as well as new knowledge regarding microbial growth and exposure control measures.

The American Industrial Hygiene Association’s new Strategy to Demonstrate the Value of Industrial Hygiene (aka, the Value Strategy), developed by ORC Worldwide, uses an eight-step process to identify and quantify the financial and non-financial links between industrial hygiene investment and business value.

A presentation on the Value Strategy was the highlight of the Tuesday plenary session at this year’s American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition. More than 400 people at the June conference attended two follow-up presentations

ORC Worldwide Senior Consultant Ann Brockhaus is quoted on the topic of OSHA’s GHS proposal in the Sept. 28 issue of Inside OSHA in “Stakeholders Raise Challenges With Transition to GHS.”  

In a decision issued February 23, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) permissible exposure limit for hexavalent chromium of 5 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3) of air as an 8-hour time-weighted average. Public Citizen Health Research Group had brought the suit against OSHA, arguing that the standard was not sufficiently protective of people exposed to hexavalent chromium in the workplace and was not substantiated by the health effects data.