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Previous by Date: Subject: Re: Kids demos Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 20:00:17 -0500 Author: CIHSHOO**At_Symbol_Here**AOL.COM |
Next by Date: Subject: Div CHAS Call for Papers- Washington DC meeting- August 2005 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 14:28:38 -0500 Author: Ralph Stuart |
Vernon Hoo CIH, In a school, you can't take the "average person" approach. It's much more complex than that. As you know, when we protect industrial workers, we apply the ACGIH TLVs to air quality. These are designed to protect most (not all) healthy adult workers . The industry will only have to accommodate workers that it has made ill on the job. It doesn't even have to hire workers who are known to be at special risk from the type of air contaminants created on the job. But the minute you are in a public building such as a school or an office building, etc., the TLVs cannot be applied. Now you need to look to the ASHRAE standards that specify the ventilation and air quality for such venues. For chemicals for which there are no indoor standard (and that's most chemicals) ASHRAE suggests 1/10th of the TLV. So now we are getting into some pretty low numbers. Some even lower numbers that might be useful to look at are the EPA Air Quality Indices and other EPA air pollution standards. While these figures are for outdoor air, it is clear that if a certain level is "unhealthy" outdoors, one can draw the conclusion that inhaling the same level indoors would be equally unhealthy. The EPA standards really do address everyone because they factor in all groups, people--those with respiratory problems, heart problems, children, pregnant women, and more. This is important because the school must accommodate many types of handicapped students under the ADA regulations. You cannot keep these people out of the school as a whole, and once there, you cannot put them at risk. But you can keep them out of individual classes which they obviously cannot take safely. For example, in my field, many art schools write their course descriptions to include the fact that there will be exposure to toxic solvents in printmaking and painting classes and a recommendation that pregnant women or people with respiratory problems not attend. So if you like to do experiments that put contaminants in the air, you could keep people with severe respiratory problems or allergies out of your class by making this clear in the course description. Its too late once they've enrolled. In addition, as an expert witness in this field, I suggest you do some air sampling or calculations estimating exposure to various emissions before you do demonstrations in front of a class. You need some evidence of prior "due care" before creating air pollutants. I wrote all of this because you said my approach would "bring manufacturing to a halt." As you can see, what I am saying applies to schools. The standards for manufacturing are a separate issue. It was also poor reasoning for you to say: "How about peanut oil, should we ban peanut oil from products because some people go into anaphylactic shock ?" No one has ever asked for this to be done. All they want is labeling so they can avoid such products. And that's what you need to do in University classes--warn students in advance. Monona Rossol, M.S., M.F.A., industrial hygienist Arts, Crafts & Theater Safety, Inc. and Safety Officer, United Scenic Artist's, Local 829 International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (IATSE) 181 Thompson St., #23 New York NY 10012-2586 212/777-0062 artscraftstheatersafety.org In a message dated 2/1/05 7:57:48 PM Eastern Standard Time, CIHSHOO**At_Symbol_Here**aol.com writes: > Understand your concern however we need to take into account, dose and > duration. Hypersensitivity reactions by rare indviduals will always be present > in our society, do we stop the wearing of perfume because some people react > vigorously to the perfume ? How about peanut oil, should we ban peanut oil > from products because some people go into anaphylactic shock ? > > As safety and health professional, we need to weigh the effect on most and > the exception the effect on the hypersensitive. Most of our safety standards > are based on an "average person" approach, if we should start to develop > standards based on the exception we would bring manufacturing to a halt. > > Vernon Hoo CIH >
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