Industrial Hygiene Case Study

911 Recovery

Health and Safety Plan for 911 Recovery Operations:

Lessons Learned

Recommendations on Industrial Hygiene

According to the Office of Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), industrial hygiene (IH) is of utmost importance to any work site. By definition, IH encompasses the science and art "devoted to the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of those environmental factors or stresses arising in or from the workplace, which may cause sickness, impaired health and well-being, or significant discomfort among workers or among the citizens of the community."

From this definition one can thus agree with the first sentence, namely that the fact that IH must be present at a work site and the fact that this is of utmost importance, and should never be ignored, especially in light of the fact of the consequences of such an action, which can have a negative impact on workers.

OSHA further states, in relation to recommendations on IH, that there is a long history of this concept being present in the workplace, and many instances can be seen. For instance, recommendations are plenty in three landmark cases passed by Congress that focus on safeguarding worker health:

1. The Metal and Nonmetallic Mines Safety Act of 1966,

2. The Federal Coal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1969, and

3. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act).

It must further be noted here that, because of such cases, every employer is required to implement industrial hygiene elements in his workplace in order to ensure safety, occupational health, and hazard communications.

With regards to specific recommendations, industrial hygienists must undertake various evaluations of working conditions periodically. According to OSHA, this is done through processes such as developing or setting mandatory occupational and health safety standards, for example, which in turn, "involves determining the extent of employee exposure to hazards and deciding what is needed to control these hazards to protect workers."

Due to the fact that industrial hygienists' work is so valuable and necessary to today's work environments, especially in such sites as the site of the 9/11 attacks, these hygienists must do various things in order to ensure that their work is carried out properly.These checkpoints include anticipating, recognizing, evaluating, and recommending controls for environmental or physical hazards, according to OSHA. Furthermore, the organization states that 40% of its officers are qualified and hard-working hygienists, who are trained both to offer help and to develop policies that can ensure safety.

Health Hazards at the 9/11 Site

No workers should ignore the recommendations presented above on industrial hygiene, as safety in hazardous areas is the only way to protect oneself from disease and eventual death. Yet at the 9/11 site safety was not a top priority, and neither was industrial hygiene, as described and defined above. The destruction of the towers in the morning of September 11 brought a cloud of dangerous chemicals over the lower part of the island of Manhattan, and nobody suspected that what was in those dangerous clouds of smoke and debris would take a toll on many more individuals who both lived and worked in the area and at the site.

According to one website, the cloud rose over 1000 feet, and plunged the streets with darkness that lasted entire minutes. The cloud also deposited fallout over parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, areas that are close to the lower part of the island. Yet the biggest threat was to those firemen and early response teams, as well to the workers who would dig up the site in the months following, all of whom would be, according to the same site to "an unknown cocktail of gases and airborne particulates."

Furthermore, research states that,

"In the days after September 11 the EPA and OSHA took air samples and reported that they found no excessive levels of asbestos, lead, or volatile organic compounds in the air, except in or around Ground Zero. Contrary to these reports, dust samples taken from surfaces near Ground Zero did….....