The proposed series of workshops will introduce the concept of Control Banding (CB) to twenty joint labor/management health and safety committees from Connecticut's small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). ? ? Year 1: The Principal Investigator (PI), Ms. Bracker and her co-investigator, Dr. Morse, will develop hands-on, interactive CB curriculum materials with input from a workshop planning taskforce involving stakeholders from industry, labor, academia, state and Federal government. Forty representatives from twenty health and safety committees will be invited to attend one of two CB workshops in November 2006. After the workshops, the committees will be expected to apply the model to at least one task at their respective worksites. Two months later (January, 2007) the committees will reconvene to discuss their experiences with the model, clarify and troubleshoot any problems with using the model, and receive additional targeted training on the model. The committees will be encouraged to apply control banding to additional tasks. After completion of the workshop series participants will be able to: identify several factors that contribute to occupational chemical exposure risk; identify the hazardous properties of a chemical by using """"""""R-phrases"""""""" and the globally harmonized system (GHS) for the classification and labeling of chemicals; recognize several control approaches that can be used to reduce chemical exposure; complete a workplace risk assessment using COSHH Essentials, a control banding model; list ways in which the control banding model can be enhanced.? ? Year 2: The PI will administer a peer-reviewed questionnaire six months after the first two workshops (July, 2007) to all conference attendees by telephone. In addition, the effectiveness of the CB training will be evaluated with a minimum of ten on-site assessments to evaluate the level of agreement between the control bands recommended by the teams with those identified by the PI. In November 2007 the committees will reconvene for a third workshop to discuss their experiences with control banding. Results of the evaluation will be discussed with targeted additional training based on the evaluation results. In the spring of 2008 the PI will submit a final report to NIOSH summarizing the lessons learned from the participants' experiences. ? ? ?
| Bracker, Anne L; Morse, Timothy F; Simcox, Nancy J (2009) Training health and safety committees to use control banding: lessons learned and opportunities for the United States. J Occup Environ Hyg 6:307-14 |
