Industrial Hygienist during a Disaster
Introduction
The role of the industrial hygienists has continuously evolved, and Baldigowski (2010) believes that the occupation is at a decisive juncture. The professional has contributed to health promoting activities, corporate social responsibility, and product stewardship. By definition, industrial hygiene is the science of controlling, evaluating, recognizing, and anticipating workplace conditions, which may cause natural disasters or else illness and injury. The industrial hygienists study the exposures related to air contaminants such as vapors, gases, mists, and chemical hazards such as harmful chemicals in form of dusts, fumes, liquids, solids, or mists. These experts study physical hazards and ergonomics. Some of the common disasters that affect the modern society are fire, plane crash, tornado, and flood among others. In today’s society, a disaster is a common occurrence that causes widespread distress and destruction. This has created a need to embrace every strategy to combat or reduce its occurrence. The changes in technology, management practices, health effects, and science have impacted the profession especially on various applications such as hierarchy of controls, exposure assessment, and sampling strategies. In the 21st century, the innovation of technology has laid a strong ground for industrial hygienists to protect the safety and health of people in the work environment and the community. The innovation in science, technology, and engineering has helped industrial hygienists to address health related issues that may affect the well-being of people and further provide emergency response strategies. Overall, industrial hygienists play a significant role of protecting most nations from disaster. This research seeks to analyze the role of an industrial hygienist during a disaster.
The Role of Industrial Hygienists during a Disaster
As Devany (2007) puts it, a disaster is a severe aspect that can ruin the health of people if not fully assessed and handled. Basically, there are two types of disasters; natural disaster and man-made. Natural disasters include floods, landslides, and earthquakes while man-made include bomb blasts, chemical leaks, and war. Any nation, government, community, or company that incorporates industrial hygiene programs is guaranteed to be successful in controlling or managing both natural and man-made disasters. In essence, when an organization integrates industrial hygiene programs, then it has an added advantage to prevent, control, or manage any disaster that occurs. Industrial hygienists are important resources for providing a wide range of environmental, safety, and health facilities in the community.
To Brown (2007), Industrial hygienists are helpful in a nation because they assist community leaders, incident commanders, and planners with the best methods to manage identify, and control disasters or risk associated with terrorism events, accidents, and natural disasters. It is fundamental to predict the unpredictable disaster because, natural disasters can wreck communities, destroy lives and resources. The impact of natural disaster cannot be ignored as it destroys resources and lives. With this knowledge in mind, industrial hygienists play a crucial role of identifying the best ways to manage or control the disaster. These individuals work hard to reduce the disasters that may harm people or destroy resources. Having in mind disaster is a prime concern in today’s society, which continues to increase at a high rate; most governments have spent a lot of resources to equip industrial hygienists with facilities that would help them manage current and future disasters (Brown, 2007).
Disaster occurrence is a substantial threat and concern to a nation. Therefore, industrial hygienists play a crucial role of assessing ways to fight the disaster. Although governments have the primary role to augment national response to disaster, industrial hygienists are adequately trained to minimize or control frequent disaster cases affecting nations. Though not all disasters can be avoided, industrial hygienists work hard to detect few disasters that can be minimized. With this, industrial hygienists reduce anxiety that occur from such situations. They create insights to nations on the best strategies they can implement to fight a certain disaster. They also equip the community with adequate knowledge about types of disasters and how to respond to such emergency cases (Markiewicz, 2007).
Industrial hygienists enhance health and safety competencies, skills, and abilities to respond to the disaster successfully. It is crucial to note that, these professionals provide a wide range of services that play a vital role in protecting the community from harm. Regardless of how severe a disaster is, these individuals have expertise and skills that help them to identify, control, and manage risks associated with hazardous materials and natural disasters. For instance, in 2010, most industrial hygienists helped the community and the nation at large to respond to the harmful effects of smoke, burn offs, chemicals, and oil during the Gulf of Mexico Oil spill (Markiewicz, 2007). On most incident responses, these experts provide technical support in areas like risk assessment, hazards material analysis, respiratory protection, risk assessment, and air monitoring.
Industrial hygienists play a crucial role of protecting most lives during a disaster. It is undeniable that, their expertise in environment health, safety, and health issues help them to protect the communities during various disasters such as terrorists’ attacks, natural disasters, hazardous chemicals, and radiological or biological releases. These individuals are qualified to perform various incident command functions such as pre-planning for the major incident, implementing, developing exposure assessment, and prioritizing hazards during management phases of the incident response. They also help in interpreting data from a number of sampling activities and implementing the best control methods for elimination of biological, chemical, or physical hazards. Their expertise in the disaster management is recommendable since they advise nations on the appropriate methods and protective equipments to minimize exposures. Their disaster preparedness plan focuses on ways that address and deal with a particular hazard. It not alarmed with the recent disasters but, its main focus is to respond to the early warnings of the disaster. As a result, the plan deal with prevalent problems such as predicted droughts, floods, and fire in vulnerable areas (O’Brien, 2006).
The profession is dedicated to the recognition, anticipation, control, and evaluation of environmental factors arising in the workplace, which may result in impairment, injury, or illness. The industrial hygienists prepare for the worse when evaluating for the factors that may cause the disaster. Planning for the worse ensure that one has open lines of solutions and communication in place that may reduce or prevent the disaster occurrence. It also assists in aligning duties and responsibilities in various tasks and ensures that everyone is responsive to the ultimate needs of assessing the disaster. Planning determines what kind of disaster a given area might encounter, which might be floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes and eventually assess principal areas that need assessment and improvement. In doing, it minimizes the effects of the disaster or its occurrence by effectively planning for it. One potential benefit that emerges when these experts prepare adequately for the disaster is that it equips the people or community affected with the required knowledge to minimize the disaster occurrence. Focusing on the potential threats diminishes the likelihood of disasters occurrence, which if not prevented may have destroyed a lot of resources and many lives.
To O’Brien (2006), industrial hygienists control biological, chemical, and physical hazards. These professionals conduct air monitoring services for toxic gases. There are various methods of detection that assist these professionals to conduct air monitoring. Photo ionization detector (PID) is mostly used to detect organic vapours through, which condensation process takes place and ease collection of the unwanted particles. The process identifies harmful particles and separates them from those important. Flame Ionization detector (FID) is widely used in organic compounds whereby it mixes gases to form ions. Nevertheless, the device cannot monitor carbon monoxide and water vapour because of the molecule structure. Combustible Gas detector aids in separating mixture’s components by detecting the combustible gases, and as a consequence eliminates severe cases of gas exposure. Anderson Sampler is a device used to collect dusts components from the air through filtering the remains to obtain the toxic materials. The device is essential in air monitoring as it assembles the available toxic materials. Particle/Dust sample monitors outdoor and indoor air with an ultimate goal of eradicating environmental pollution. This instrument is mostly used for heavy metals such as lead. In summary, industrial hygienists conduct air monitoring services for biological hazards, dust, asbestos, and toxic chemicals. They also provide techniques to minimize the exposures through administrative controls and ventilation design. Such control measures reduces the chemical and biological hazards, which if not properly detected can harm people’s well-being and resources.
Lead has been a leading health risk at workplace as most organizations use the metal in various setting such as building construction. Its exposure is harmful to both animals and human beings as it fracture nervous system, thus affecting the brain. With this in mind, industrial hygienists stress the need of protecting employees from lead exposure. A review of the public health regulations concerning lead exposure is a core concern in the modern society. Although Lead has been used in the fabrication of products, the clinical pattern of its exposure and poisoning has raised concern in the medical literature. With this in mind, most governments have enacted laws that reduce human exposure to lead. For instance, the British government developed comprehensive laws from 1890 to 1920 concerning occupational lead exposures. The US government has also enacted laws to prevent fuel addictives used in the motor vehicles. With this, industrial hygienists have been working with most governments to ensure that laws are followed in the workplace to reduce lead exposure (O’Brien, 2006).
Medical monitoring is paramount for those exposed to the metal as it detects early diagnosis and evaluate possible ways to eradicate long-term effects (O’Brien, 2006). Further, these experts train employees on the health risks associated with the metal and precautions required to avoid the exposure. The most biomarkers used by industrial hygienists to measure the amount of lead in the body is blood lead (Pb-B) and Plasma Lead (Pb-P) that assists in metabolism by decreasing the amount of lead toxicity in the body. There are various read instruments used to monitor the amount of exposure such as photo ionization that detect the organic compounds comprising of high level of contamination.
There are various phases that occur during incident management. First, industrial hygienists work hard to prevent the disaster from occurring (Industry Briefs, 2008). In this phase, industrial hygienists anticipate the potential hazards and evaluate how the risk could harm the community. This process creates a strong ground for the team to evaluate best ways to prevent the disaster from occurring. In the second phases, industrial hygienists develop preparedness plan. At this point, this team develops plans for actions when the disaster occurs. The common preparedness plans or measures include communication plans, which help the victims affected by the disaster to understand what is going on during the disaster. Proper training of emergency services helps people to embrace strategies that would minimize the potential effects of the disaster. For instance, the team train people on how to use a fire extinguisher when fire disasters occur. Industrial hygienists equip people with knowledge about emergency evacuations plans and emergency shelters. According to O’Brien (2006), industrial hygienists help the community to recover from the major disaster incidents. During a disaster, these professionals identify the main hazards that demand immediate intervention and further make recommendations on how to limit the exposure through application of administrative actions, protective equipments, or technology. After the disaster occurrence, the team work hard to ensure that the risk has not occurred. Industrial hygienists embrace mitigation activities to eliminate or reduce disasters occurrences.
According to Selwyn (2009), Industrial hygienists protect the community against the danger of many disasters such as earthquake. Typically, these professionals evaluate the main triggers of the accident and further evaluate ways to eradicate them. Although it is not possible to prevent the likelihood of earthquakes occurring, industrial hygienists help the community to understand what causes earthquakes and how they can be prepared. The team educates the community of the dangers or effects associated with earthquakes. Industrial hygienists evaluate best ways to save humankind from natural disasters that cannot be prevented. For instance, the professionals advise the community to always remain calm when an earthquake occurs. People are always advised to take proper precautions to protect their well-being. For examples, human beings should always choose shelter that provides airspace in-case a building collapses. The professionals advise people on why it is important to stay away from mirrors, glass doors, and windows. The basic knowledge on how to respond to natural disasters such as earthquake helps people to be properly prepared to face the disaster.
Industrial hygienists play a crucial role of exposure assessment. At this point, these professionals conduct sampling strategies to evaluate, which individual or community has the highest level of exposure. The two types of sampling strategies considered when assessing the exposure are random sampling and worst-case sampling (Johnson, 2007). In the former, these professionals select a certain population randomly and thus, decisions on the exposure profile can be achieved accurately. In the latter, industrial hygienists non-randomly select the population, individuals, workers, or community subjected to the highest exposure of disaster. The two methods of sampling are crucial in the industrial hygiene since they create a strong ground to approximate or evaluate the population or individuals with highest level of exposure or disaster.
To Selwyn (2009), Industrial hygienists help employees to compile with theOccupation Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which documents fundamental standards that are vital in optimizing health safety. They ensure that there are precautions that prevent employees from the health risks of harmful chemicals such as benzene. As per OSHA, Employees should undergo clinical manifestation to provide details of early diagnosis of the exposure, medical history details, and effective treatment for the exposure. The document briefs these requirements into two aspects, which are medical screening and surveillance. Medical screening is paramount as it assesses early signs and symptoms for employees exposed and surveillance for those exposed for a longer period of time. With this information in mind, these professionals train employees on the health risks associated with harmful chemicals such as benzene. Biomarkers are essential tools used by these experts to assess the exposure and the risk effect of benzene exposure. The common biomarker used is Urinary biomarker that accesses the level of exposure for those affected. The assessment is done through direct reading instruments that support in sampling analysis. Among the instruments widely used is combustible gas detector that aid to detect combustible and toxic gases. Overall, industrial hygienists maintain and provide a safe working environment, provide adequate facilities to access the disaster occurrence, monitor health and welfare of workers, provide effective training to employee that performs perilous tasks, provide policies that relate to OHS.
After identifying hazards in the workplace, industrial hygienists control and implement the best mechanism that reduces the disaster occurrence (Brown, 2007). For instance, if the team predicts that lack of proper handling of gases would eventually cause fire disasters then, they work hard to prevent such disasters. Industrial hygienists understand that a hazard at the workplace can harm people, environment or property if not properly detected and assessed. To detect and assess the hazard successfully, the team advises most companies to keep injury and illness records, which alert any hazard in the organization. Also, these professional encourage organizations to stay informed on trends and developments of workplace health for instance, via internet. When assessing the hazards in the workplace, industrial hygienists accumulate the information about the hazard identified, evaluate the number of individuals exposed for each hazard and thereafter, outlining the duration of exposure, access the probability of each hazard occurring in future, and use the risk assessment table to highlight the risk associated with the hazard or disaster. From the ongoing discussion, it is evident a nation cannot operates successfully without industrial hygienists. These individual play a significant role of promoting a safe and healthy environment. With this, governments should embrace, encourage, and equip industrial hygienists with adequate resources to fight disasters or terrorism events.
Conclusion
To sum up, this paper has discussed the important roles of industrial hygienists during a disaster. The main goal of these professionals is to keep people, workers, families, and the community from harm. Industrial hygienists play a vital a role of controlling the disasters that may cause harm to the community. Overall, they play a significant role of ensuring that local, state, and federal laws and regulations are followed. The typical roles of these experts during a disaster include investigating and examining the potential disasters that may affect the community, making recommendations on improving the safety of people, and conducting a scientific research on the possible harmful conditions that may occur in the workplace (Brown, 2007). Industrial hygienists develop techniques to control and anticipate disasters in the community and the workplace. They also play a crucial role of educating and training the community and organizations about some of the risks that may emerge. For the past decades, industrial hygienists have had a superb reputation of advising the community and government officials on how to enhance health and safety of workers, communities, and families. They also ensure that workers are working in safe environment free from disasters. Thus far, this research has provided a comprehensive analysis of industrial hygienists.
References
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