Industrial hygiene and health protection in 9/11 recovery operations

Health & Safety Plan for 911 Recovery Operations-Lessons Learned

The published report on the 9/11 recovery operation has highlighted a number of recommendations and as it was documented, thousands of people suffered adverse and mental health effects in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack. While many have since recovered, others continue to suffer from a range of conditions that are or may be associated with WTC exposure, including upper and lower respiratory infirmity and rational health state such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Annual report on 9/11 health, September, 2009).

Recommended industrial hygiene role as member of a Recovery Response Team.

The word Hygiene being an old notion related to medicine, as well as to own and proficient care practices associated to most aspects of living, although it is most often mistakenly allied with cleanliness. In medicine hygiene practices are employed as precautionary measures to diminish the occurrence and dispersal of diseases. The definition of industrial hygiene is the knowledge that deals with the expectation and control of detrimental conditions in workplaces in order to foil poor health among employees. Or you can put it as recognition, evaluation and control of workplace hazards whose origins are based on limiting personal exposure to chemicals and have evolved to address the control of most other workplace hazards including over-exposure to noise, heat, vibration and repetitive motion.

While the full range of 9/11 linked problems is indefinite, an emergent body of indication suggests that considerable health situation have emerged that are associated with the disaster, in particular for those who were exposed during the collapse of the towers and those who participated to a large extent in rescue, recovery and clean-up operations. There was a need for the industrial hygienists to evaluate the risk of exposure to chemicals and physical hazards around the area, a method for eliminating and controlling those hazards was also to be developed. The result of all air monitoring should be recorded on the project Field Health and Safety Report and is to be used for specifying personal protective equipment and determine the need to upgrade/downgrade protective measures (Annual report on 9/11 health, September, 2009).

As the Health Impact Report on 9/11 recommended its of importance to ensure that the treatment is available to whomever needs it, hence the city should dynamically advocate for federal resources sufficient to fully fund 9/11-related physical and mental health needs for all affected and potentially affected populations, including first responders, laborers and other contractors, residents, office workers, and students. The federal commitment should be long-term and sufficient to maintain the three existing 9/11-related centers of excellence, as well as any need-based expansion of services. In addition, the federal government should fully fund the WTC (Annual report on 9/11 health, September, 2009).

Health Registry and additional NYPD-led monitoring and research.

The WTC Environmental Health Center at Bellevue should be expanded and actively promoted to all those who are potentially eligible, including residents, commercial workers, and laborers with a reasonable history of dust exposure and symptoms that may be 9/11-related. The City should establish an Internet site that will be a comprehensive "one-stop" resource for information about 9/11-related physical and mental health issues. The Mayor should direct all relevant agencies to appoint a WTC Health Liaison to track relevant agency-specific information about WTC-related health issues and distribute WTC-related information to agency employees and retirees who participated in WTC operations. Another important recommendation is the review of environmental hazard Emergency plan which should be done by relevant city agencies (including NYPD, FDNY, DEP, DOHMH, DOB, DDC, and citywide Office of occupational Safety and Health) through the convenience of OEM to asses and supplement as necessary the environmental and health-safety aspect of the city's tragedy response plans to prepare for upcoming emergencies.

Major potential health hazards present at the 9/11 site

The major potential health hazards present at the 9/11 site is that lots of unknown complications that may be feared to be air borne might be transmitted without the knowledge of the New York residence this due to the faulted reports by the environmental protection agency conveyed to the New York dwellers that the air around the Ground Zero is safe. "EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley issued a report on August 21, 2003 admitting that the reassurances were unfounded." If precautions will not be taken this may end up causing more harm than good to the society around Ground Zero. And lots of the families will continue nursing wounds that the cures may not be found due to the fear releasing founded information to the public on the contaminated air and communicable disease by the Environmental Protection Agency (Martha & Dennis, 2001). This kind of hazards should be well understood mostly by the workers and managers and also to know how to minimize them and to be aware of possible development of new hazards. Major hazard being toxic dust and chemicals that can cause death and serious illness preventive measures should be observed. Other possible hazards are toxic gases such as carbon monoxide and flammable gases this may come from ruptured gas lines or stored chemicals.

Occupational Medical Surveillance of Recovery Workers

Occupational medical surveillance was intended to identify exposures and clinical effects of exposures in populations and individuals with regular and repeated probabilities of exposure over time. Surveillance was thus intended as means of secondary prevention; that is, rather than preventing exposures from taking place, the goal was to survey the population to identify individuals or groups who demonstrated some genetic evidence of exposure or a clinical outcome. Surveillance should be distinguished here from screening. Typically, the purpose of screening is to identify specific individuals who possess some desirable or undesirable attribute: they have a specific condition that can be treated, or they are able to do a certain task (qualification). By contrast, surveillance is observational, focusing on determining whether there are changes in individuals or populations that are amenable to intervention. Goals for medical surveillance include all of the following: exposure identification and quantification; dose determination; detection of early biological effects; detection of early symptoms in affected individuals; and detection of disease progression.

Occupational medical surveillance of all the recovery workers should be considered so as to give them assurance and the security on what they are doing .This motivates workers to perform there work as required and also reduces fear of being infected by unknown condition caused by the risk exposed to the workers and also help curb problems that require targeted preventions (Harris, 1997). There should also be technical resources readily available for the workers that may give family doctor directions in the role of medical program coordinator. And with lots of considerations the family doctor must maintain continuous vigilance for the signs of preventions failure. The primary workplace prevention in the area of operations is basically prevention of known risk that are commonly known such as well established and functioning ventilation and fume capture hoods. For secondary prevention medical screening is of great importance this is because it helps early detection of infection before medical care is sought.

Work practice and administrative controls

Administrative controls or work practice controls are changes in work procedures such as written safety policies, rules, supervision, schedules, and training with the aim of reducing the interval, frequency, and sternness of exposure to hazardous chemicals or situations. Workers who handle hazardous chemicals in the workplace should be familiar with the administrative controls required fewer than 29 CFR 1910.1200, and the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard. This controls are perhaps most important, because they impact your people directly. On the one hand, they are the simplest, since all it takes is education. On the other hand, education about the hazards of smoking or the chance that having sex causes pregnancy hasn't done much to change behaviors in those realms which make this controls hard to implement as people need to understand them again and again.

As these controls consist of various policies and requirements that are established at an administrative level (e.g., by the principal investigator, site supervisor, department chair, or department safety committee) to promote safety in the site or work place (Wesdock, et al., 2000). There should be a proper system to ensure that all workers or personnel have been provided with adequate training to enable them understand all the policies including the reviewed ones to enable them conduct their duties safely policies should also be reviewed depending on short comings from the previous tragedies to bridge the gaps that may have occurred and also requiring prior approval and additional control measures for certain particularly hazardous operations or activities.

Conclusion

Report control is better served by distribution and sharing facts as they become accessible rather than allowing wrong and misleading reports to fill an information vacuum.