Worker Trainers as Workplace Experts: How Worker Trainers Enhance Safety and Health at Department of Energy Facilities.

Worker trainers not only teach health and safety in the classroom setting but also serve informally as important peer resources on the shop floor. They are often the "go to" people, for both hourly workers and managers, when there is a health or safety question-be it about tank vapors or personal protective equipment, confined space, or specific chemicals. These worker trainers actively use health and safety resource materials, both hard copy and online. Documented here, through two surveys of worker trainers-at U.S. Department of Energy facilities, trained through the International Chemical Workers Union Council Consortium of the Worker Training Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences-is documentation of this additional contribution that worker trainers make toward safer and more healthful work places.

Tales of acute risk assessment: health effects made out of whole cloth.

BACKGROUND: Risk assessment utilizes human and animal studies and mathematical models to arrive at threshold exposures for toxic effects of various chemicals. In 1995 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) formed an acute risk assessment committee to assist in the planning for worst case chemical releases. The National Advisory Committee for Acute Exposure Guideline Levels (AEGL) examines the toxicological properties and studies of each chemical and then recommends appropriate levels. For the majority of chemicals, the committee relies on animal data (where the most data exists) supplemented with a limited number of human studies. In some cases, human studies are relied on to derive AEGL values. METHODS: In the published levels for hydrogen cyanide (HCN), the AEGL committee used five human studies and a "weight-of-the-evidence" approach. A number of these studies did not investigate adverse health effects, however, the AEGL committee used these studies as evidence that no health effect occurred. In addition, a number of other errors in conflict with well accepted principles of industrial hygiene were made. CONCLUSION: In order to adequately evaluate human studies, risk assessment committees must be composed of a balance of professionals with a wide variety of expertise, including epidemiology and industrial hygiene.