Occupational Health and Safety Issues for Emergency Responders

Details

• Personal Author:
  Bernard, Bruce P. ; Seitz, Teresa A.
• Description:
  This presentation includes a discussion of occupational health and safety (OH&S) issues in emergency response. It is based on experience gained from responses at the World Trade Center and anthrax-contaminated sites, and includes considerations for future response and preparedness efforts. Occupational health and safety specialists play an important role on emergency response teams. Responsibilities may include providing guidance to other response team members as well as the first responder community and downstream health care workers caring for sick or injured persons. OH&S specialists will be required to fit. into an Incident Command Structure and deal with multiple bureaucracies, contentious situations, and constantly evolving work environment issues. Medical concerns facing OH&S specialists may include vaccination considerations, prophylactic antibiotic use and side effects, fatigue, stress, and physical and mental fitness for duty. Responders may be asked to facilitate worker notification regarding exposure and risk of disease, as well as overall worker surveillance. Worker health and safety issues must be approached with prevention in mind using the traditional hierarchy of controls. Administrative controls include such things as pre-event training, on-site training, adequate staffing, and preventing persons that are not adequately trained and protected from entering contaminated areas or situations of unknown risk. Conducting exposure assessments and ensuring the adequacy of engineering controls and personal protective equipment are also important considerations. Using smallpox as an example, potential roles and responsibilities of OH&S responders will be discussed. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Biological Warfare Agents Chemical Warfare Agents Emergencies Emergency Responders Fatigue Hazardous Substances Health Personnel Occupational Health Safety Safety Management Workplace

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• Keywords:
  Biohazards Biological-warfare-agents Biological-weapons Chemical-warfare-agents Emergency-responders Emergency-response Health-care Health-care-personnel Occupational-health Physical-fitness Safety-measures Stress Work-environment Worker-health Workers

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• Publisher:
  American Industrial Hygiene Association
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Abstract or Summary
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSHEFS - Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations, and Field Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  56
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20022834
• Citation:
  American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition, May 10-15, 2003, Dallas, Texas. Fairfax, VA: American Industrial Hygiene Association, 2003 May; :56
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2003
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition, May 10-15, 2003, Dallas, Texas
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:fc9c9aa24925f5acea1f0ae4801a29faf37071214ba3b9f30b89db9702246c7c6b46d2d0af381e43adf0f2bdcafa071390183946caf28c49b58ba34d405b83be
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/199471/cdc_199471_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 599.42 KB ]