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About the Project
This
project applies the primary prevention principle of public health to both the
occupational health and environmental health fields. It seeks to integrate the clean production perspective and skills
of environmental health practitioners with the special skills of work
environment practitioners and their techniques to redesign production.
Intervention Research
The Lowell Center has developed a research agenda to
demonstrate that simultaneous integration of interventions in cleaner
production and occupational health is the most efficient way for
industry to protect public health. The Lowell Center has also sponsored
research projects that have examined and measured the impact of cleaner
production intervention in workers health. Current Lowell Center
activities involve making the process of integration more concrete by
developing a sector focus (construction), and developing tools for
environmental health professionals to simultaneously apply cleaner
production and industrial hygiene methodologies and vice versa. For the
last three years, the Lowell Center has organized roundtables on
integration at the American Public Health Association annual meeting
where research and methods of integration have been presented and
discussed. The research has also produced materials for three doctoral
dissertations in cleaner production/policy.
This
project applies the primary prevention principle of public health to both the
occupational health and environmental health fields. It seeks to integrate the clean production perspective and skills
of environmental health practitioners with the special skills of work
environment practitioners and their techniques to redesign production.
Research on Regulatory Integration
The project has
examined the divergent and sometimes contradictory regulatory systems
that apply to occupational health and to environmental health. The
Center fostered a national meeting including representatives from
national agencies including NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health), OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health
Administration) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) with
representatives from industry and universities. The goals of this
meeting were to address the regulatory confusion created by the
sometimes contradictory EPA and OSHA regulations and to develop an
agenda for future research.
Integration to Avoid Risk Shifting
Occupational and environmental interventions to reduce exposures in the
work environment and in the general environment may cause two types of
risk shifting. One type is shifting risks between the work environment
and the general environment. For example, a shoe factory uses methylene
chloride solvent that exposes workers to toxic fumes. To protect
workers, a ventilation system is installed that vents the solvent to
the outside, thus exposing the larger community to toxic vapors.
Another type of potential risk shifting is among media in the general
environment (transferring contamination among air, water, and soil). An
integrated approach that systematically and simultaneously addresses
environmental and workplace contamination will avoid this unacceptable
risk shifting.
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