The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #74446

Michael Wilson, MPH, School of Public Health, Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, 140 Warren Hall #7360, Berkeley, CA 94720, (510) 622-4304, mpwilson@uclink4.berkeley.edu

Over the past 30 years, public policies pertaining to protecting the environment, community and workers from hazardous chemical exposures have largely followed separate academic, scientific, and institutional paths. While these boundaries can be justified for pragmatic reasons, they are in effect artificial. Regulation of industrial emissions, for example, can dramatically affect occupational exposure conditions, while local exhaust ventilation approaches to reducing occupational exposures simply relocates the vapors to the surrounding community, albeit in a lesser concentration. The separation of public health along these disciplinary lines continues even in contemporary approaches to environmental policy, such as that embodied in the concept of industrial ecology. We studied the effect of environmental regulations pertaining to organic solvents in the vehicle repair industry to characterize the extent to which the regulations engendered the introduction of new, unintended hazards among vehicle repair technicians. The findings suggest that environmental regulations would be more effective, and would avoid introducing new hazards in the workplace, if they developed long-term strategies based on principles of toxics use reduction, rather than targeting single chemical agents.

Learning Objectives:

• At the end of the session, participants will better understand how environmental rules can affect the nature of occupational hazards.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.