V OL.13, NO.3 FALL 2002 The New England Consortium’s TNEC TNEC 2002 Open Enrollment Training Calendar TNEC University of Massachusetts Lowell, One University Avenue, Falmouth 202, Lowell, MA 01854 The New England Consortium’s uarterly Phone: 978.934.3197, Fax: 978.934.2012 or 978.452.5711 A Newsletter aboutQ Working with Toxic Materials, Health and Safety Training, Law and Public Policy www.uml.edu/tnec e-mail: [email protected] Health and Safety Training All TNEC trainings are held at the TNEC Training Center, Wannalancit Mills, 600 Suffolk Street, 5th Floor, Lowell, MA, unless otherwise stated.

November December January February March Health and Safety Training Providence’s Brownfields Job Training Program Graduates First Class 40-Hour M-F M-F M-F Hazardous 2-6 13-17 24-28 he inaugural class of Providence Waste Site Worker A Newsletter about Working with Toxic Materials, Health and Safety Training, Law and Public Policy Brownfields Employment and Quarterly TTraining Program graduated 8-Hour Tue. 19 Wed. 18 Thur. 9 Tue. 11 Thur 13 in August. Hazardous CONTENTS A “Brownfield” is a site, or portion Waste Site Worker Going Down the Road thereof, that has actual or perceived Page 1 Refresher contamination and an active potential by JIM HIGHTOWER Tony Mazzocchi, ‘Labor Guy’ enlist in World War II, fighting three Refresher for Hazardous Waste Site for redevelopment or reuse. This Special Going Down program, funded by the U.S. Feature Awareness Awareness Site Worker the Road ut in the countryside is where combat campaigns and ending up at workers. This Simulation is a two- Environmental Protection Agency 8-Hour Course Sat. 9 Sat. 14 Supervisor you’ll find America’s true lead- Buchenwald just as it was getting hour module that is designed to be Page 1 liberated, giving his young mind a delivered as a review activity on the (EPA), is the first in the state of Awareness Wed. 19 Oers—the gutsy, scrappy, some- horrifying lesson in the human final day of the 40-hour course just Rhode Island. Sat. 30 times scruffy and always ingenious The New England capacity for inhumanity. prior to the hands-on incident. In In the spring of this year, grassroots agitators and organizers Consortium the activity, our students have to Groundwork Providence, a private non- Launches who go right into the face of the pow- Continued on Page 2 24-Hour T-TH T-TH organize and execute, to demon- profit organization, received a $200,000 Computer Based erful elite, not merely speaking truth Emergency 12-14 4-6 strate the skills that they have grant from the EPA to develop and Simulation to power but kicking Old Mr. Power Responder The New England learned. The goal of the Simulation implement a Brownfields job training right in the butt. It’s from such people is to strengthen students’ problem- and employment program. The program 8-Hour Tue. 7 Tue. 11 Page 3 that the progressive movement gets Consortium Launches Senator Lincoln Chaffee joins the first graduating class of the Groundwork Providence the innovative strategies that allow solving skills relative to hazardous will train and place (in jobs) 90 Emergency New Site Worker Computer Based Rhode Island Brownfields Job Training Program. waste site work. The setting is an individuals. Responder and Emergency We the People to advance our demo- Simulation Refresher cratic ideals of fairness, justice and abandoned plating facility, a not- Groundwork Providence, Inc. is a Response Refresher The 17 graduates have worked Groundwork Providence is currently for 2002-2003 equal opportunity for all. n an effort to incorporate some uncommon problem that, unfortu- 5 community-based organization whose diligently to acquire certifications in running its second cycle of training. nately, is still encountered in the real 1 Tony Mazzocchi was one of these of the advantages of electronic mission is to bring about sustained Lead Supervisor/Contractor, Asbestos For more information about the Page 4 world. By participating in the leaders. He never sought the spot- Itechnologies into our training regeneration, improvement and man- Supervisor/Contractor, HAZWOPER Groundwork Providence Program, Simulation, students are able to The New England Consortium light, always deferring to someone program, TNEC is now finalizing the agement of the physical environment with OSHA 10-hour safety, and please contact Sally Turner at Non-Profit Org. Environmental explore different strategies for UMass Lowell else to get credit and media atten- development of a PC-based by developing community based part- Alternative Remediation. The New 401-351-6440. U.S. Postage Literacy Workshops addressing problems with which they One University Avenue tion—”I’m just a labor guy,” he’d tell Hazardous Waste Site Worker nerships that empower people, busi- England Consortium provided the Underway are confronted, all in a safe and Falmouth 202 PAID you in his blunt Brooklyn accent. But Simulation. In September we started nesses and organizations to promote 40-hour HAZWOPER training for Lowell, MA 01853 interactive computer based haz- Lowell, MA 01854 Honor and using portions of it in our environmental, economic and social the group. Permit No. 69 what a labor guy! Tony’s the epitome Farewell to 40-hour Health and Safety Training ardous waste site environment. well-being. of what labor can be, the kind of Paul Smith labor guy you wish was in charge of Course and in our eight-hour Continued on Page 2 every labor union, from the locals to Page 5 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED the internationals. Now Tony is Providence’s gone-On October 5 he died of cancer President Bush Vetoes Spending $90 Million for WTC Medical Monitoring Brownfields at 76. This column, however, is no Job Training obituary; it’s a rallying cry. To para- n a move that took many occupa- $29 billion supplemental appropriation needs and priorities,” so he was opting Program Graduates phrase the last words supposedly tional health activists by surprise, that included funds for the program. to “enforce spending restraint.” First Class uttered by Joe Hill: Don’t Mourn, on August 13 President Bush killed Those reports failed to note that a por- Emulate! And, yes, organize. I — From the August 22, 2002 Page 6 a $5.1 billion congressional appropria- tion of the funds would not be spent NYCOSH Update on Safety and Health Organize is what Tony did. Wiry tion that included $90 million ear- without a presidential declaration of an http://www.nycosh.org TNEC 2002 and fiery, he was of, by and for the marked to greatly expand the effort “emergency.” Bush said he declined to Open Enrollment working class—a lifelong dedication to track and provide medical care to declare the necessary emergency Training Calendar that came to him not through intel- people with lingering health effects because the spending was unnecessary. lectual study but experience. Son of resulting from the attack on the To dramatize the need to pay for immigrants from Naples, he grew up World Trade Center. the medical care of Ground Zero work- poor. “I didn’t discover until after I The President’s decision to elimi- ers, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D- TNEC went to the Army that people don’t nate the program, which was to have N.Y.) had offered to visit Bush at his normally sleep three to a bed,” he been administered by the Mt. Sinai- ranch and bring along New York fire- said. He learned the union gospel Selikoff Center for Occupational and fighters who have respiratory diseases from his father, a garment worker Environmental Medicine, came as as a result of the rescue work. Instead who became shop steward and was a surprise because it had been report- of accepting her offer, Bush said that Health and Safety in several tumultuous strikes. Training ed earlier that Bush has signed a the funding was not “for truly pressing At 16 Tony dropped out of school and lied about his age to Images by Dan Reade uarterlyThe New England Consortium’s TNEC A Newsletter aboutQ Working with Toxic Materials, Health and Safety Training, Law and Public Policy Health and Safety Training

Continued from Page 1 teeth. The study became the definitive In July, at the Labor Party’s conven- TNEC STAFF proof that strontium 90 was being taken tion, Tony said in his opening speech, “I New Site Worker and Emergency Response Refresher for 2002-2003 Going Down the Road Environmental Literacy Workshops Underway Dianna McAllister up by humans.” am both afflicted with an incurable dis- Project Administrator eptember marked the launch of development, students are then To view the agenda for one of these Back home Mazzocchi went to tech- Mazzocchi’s greatest contribution to ease and blessed with an incurable opti- he New England Consortium is actively over the region came together through a TNEC’s new eight-hour refresher required to respond to an incident in courses (or any of our courses), or to Jenn Dobransky nical school on the GI Bill, after which the movement was his understanding mism.” That was him to the core—a involved in efforts to bring together partnership of Western MassCOSH and the curricula for the Site Worker and “TNECsville,” a scale-model town with register, please visit our Web site at Outreach Coordinator he worked several jobs before landing that none of our groups can win alone— labor guy who could see the rapacious S Tcommunity and worker health and safe- Western Massachusetts Public Health Emergency Response training courses. its own industry. Also included in this www.uml.edu/tnec at a Helena Rubenstein plant on Long we have to forge coalitions. In the mid- greed of our society’s elites so clearly, ty interests in the area of environmental liter- Association for a workshop on emergency Thomas Estabrook , Ph.D. year’s course are a review of chemical Island, making cosmetics. Most of the 1960s, then serving as OCAW’s legisla- which causes many to despair, yet what Highlights of the 2002-03 eight-hour acy, through funding under its NIEHS federal response to biological and chemical emergen- Special Projects Manager / Worker protective clothing and respirators. workers there were women, who got tive director in Washington, he reached he saw was the uplifting opportunity to Hazardous Waste Site Worker Refresher grant. Five COSH groups—coalitions on occu- cies, including bioterrorism. Health Educator less pay than the men and were the reach more people and build a move- include multiple hands-on activities. pational safety and health—are actively pur- out to environmentalists and public In Manchester, N.H., all 22 of the New Charles Levenstein, Ph.D. ment to defeat the greed. Don’t send Topics covered this year are: a review of first to go in layoffs, regardless of sen- interest groups, which labor mostly had suing this issue through awareness workshops Hampshire community health officers gath- Co-Principal Investigator flowers...become flowers, nourished by iority. So in 1953 he ran for president of been treating hostilely. He helped pull Health and Safety Plan (HASP) basics, held in each part of the New England region ered for an emergency response awareness Professor of Work Environment Tony Mazzocchi’s example. the local union on a pledge of equal pay them together behind a bill that he and combined with a hazardous waste site (Massachusetts, Western Massachusetts, New training. They teamed up with Louise Judy Martineau and equal treatment. Elected at 26, he Ralph Nader were cobbling together— [Reprinted with permission from the computer simulation activity. During Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut). Merchant Hannan, Public Health Liaison Staff Assistant not only delivered on that pledge but the bill that ultimately created the October 28, 2002 issue of The Nation] the simulation, students must collect MassCOSH is working to increase the Officer of the state Department of Health and information and then develop required he built union loyalty by negotiating a Occupational Safety and Health This article can be found on the web awareness and tools of community residents Human Services. Together they developed a Paul Morse components of a HASP. Other new health plan, including the first-ever Administration, in 1970. As part of that at http://www.thenation.com/doc. in Fitchburg. The MassCOSH workshop focus- curriculum for an eight-hour awareness train- Project Manager dental insurance coverage in private effort, Tony backed Earth Day, serving topics include a Decontamination es on community involvement and identifying ing addressing issues from an international mhtml?i=20021028&s=hightower Bernard Mizula industry. as chair of the April 1970 rally in New (Decon) review and activity. During and solving work environmental problems by and a local perspective—threats from bioter- the Decon activity, fluorescent powder Worker Health Educator / Staff While unions at the time focused York City. With millions of Americans building partnerships with environmental rorism and the legal and illegal chemicals used Industrial Hygienist and black lights are used to determine almost strictly on wages, hours and job responding to Earth Day’s call for action Continued from Page 1 studies students at a magnet middle school. in nail salons. With assistance from Paul Richard Sadkowski security, Tony began to talk about the against toxics, the OSHA bill quickly if the Decon process was successful. Smith, of the Manchester HazMat Fire At the Department of Public Health office Training Resources Coordinator workers’ health and safety. He realized began to move, even getting sudden Other recurring favorites include a Department (and former COSH and TNEC The New England Consortium HAZWOPER review game and tabletop in Northampton, 41 health officers from all shortly after coming to Helena support from none other than trainer) and Bernie Mizula, of the University Wayne Sanborn Launches Computer Based activity on past health and safety 2 Rubenstein that it wasn’t a cosmetics Richard Nixon, who wanted to 3 of Massachusetts Lowell, the training was a Training Manager 4 plant, it was a toxic chemical factory. Simulation incidents. huge success. appeal to blue-collar workers for his Craig Slatin, Sc.D., MPH Day in and day out, workers were han- This year’s eight-hour Emergency re-election bid. “[It] shows that when In the Simulation, TNEC has incor- In Providence, RICOSH conducted an Project Director and Response Refresher course focuses on dling lead to put in lipstick, breathing you build a big movement from down porated some of the advantages of PC environmental literacy seminar to learn about Principal Investigator/ the Incident Command System and Assistant Professor, Dept. of Health asbestos that went into talc and so below,” Tony said, “regardless of who’s based training. We also have maintained biological and chemical hazards with assis- scene management. There is a and Clinical Sciences forth—all without any protections or in the White House, you can bring our core value of the small group activi- tance from Dr. Thomas Hicks with the comprehensive incident, which requires monitoring of their health. By the mid- about change.” ty. Students work in teams of three to Occupational and Environmental Health ConnectiCOSH 860.953.2674 participants to organize an emergency RICOSH 401.751.2015 1950s, this still-young agitator had There’s so much more: In 1974 he five people while seated at a hybrid PC Center of Rhode Island, and Barbara Morin in response team and then develop a plan MassCOSH 617.825.7233 helped amalgamate the Oil, Chemical was the one who worked with Karen station, where they can collaborate and the Air Toxics division of the Rhode Island based on working at a specific facility. The tabletop activity, developed for this year’s ER refresher, requires students to act out the NHCOSH 603.226.0516 and Atomic Workers union, and he led Silkwood to expose safety violations and interpret information and situations pre- Department of Environmental Management. the first-ever strike in the United States Following Emergency Response plan process of mitigating a chemical emergency. WesternMassCOSH 413.731.0760 a corporate cover-up at Kerr-McGee’s sented to them. They make choices and In Hartford, ConnectiCOSH presented a over issues of health and safety. nuclear plant; then, after Silkwood was explore the consequences of those workshop focusing on diesel exhaust emis- In the late 1950s he learned that killed (apparently forced off the road to choices. They then are able to make dif- Sandy Chabot of the New Hampshire Coalition for The New England Consortium’s Quarterly sions to bus drivers from the community. is a publication of The New England some OCAW members and their families keep her from providing evidence of the ferent choices and explore the conse- Occupational Safety and Health and John Thoma For more information on this program, please Consortium, based at the University Environmental Science High School Students Complete 40-hour Course of the Western Massachusetts Coalition for were being exposed cover-up), Tony kept pushing to bring quences of those alternatives. email us at [email protected] of Massachusetts Lowell. Occupational Safety and Health met recently to to strontium 90 the truth of her story to the general Additionally, students have the opportu- To receive The Quarterly at no charge, tudents of the College Preparatory from nuclear tests. public. In 1991 he established Alice nity to experience the roles of three dif- talk about the progress of their Environmental contact TNEC. Send letters to TNEC The industry Hamilton College, specifically designed ferent kinds of site personnel, a Site Environmental Science Program at Essex Literacy Projects. Quarterly at University of Massachusetts egardless of “R claimed that no one for union members. Last year, he initiat- Supervisor, a Decon Team Leader and an SAgricultural and Technical High School in Lowell, One University Avenue Falmouth who’s in the was getting enough ed the wildly successful Labor Film Entry Team, and the decisions that peo- Hathorne, Massachusetts on their last day of 202 Lowell, MA 01854. TNEC is a White House, you exposure to be Festival at the Kennedy Center. He also ple in those kinds of roles might have to TNEC’s 40-hour Hazardous Waste Site Worker Honor and Farewell to Paul Smith and Environmental Justice award for making partnership between the University of can bring about hurt, but Tony met created an innovative medical-student make. Basic Health and Safety Training Course (left to workplaces safer and healthier. Paul will contin- Massachusetts Lowell and the Coalitions for Occupational Safety and Health in CT, with scientists who internship so budding healthcare profes- right), Back row: Charles Saulnier (Professor), Paul Smith, who has been a trainer for the ue to work as a firefighter in Manchester, N.H., change.” In the future, TNEC plans to develop MA, NH and RI. TNEC provides health said the deadly iso- sionals could work on job sites and learn Stephanie McIntosh, Andrew Johnson, Anna Ahl, New Hampshire Coalition for Occupational Safety a similar computer based Simulation for and is now a safety officer with the Ben and and safety training for hazardous waste — Tony Mazzocchi Amelia Usselman, Amy Holt Cline (Professor), and Health (NHCOSH) and tope accumulates in up close and personally about workplace use in our 24-hour Emergency Response Jerry’s Company in Waterbury, Vt. Paul made site workers and emergency response Bernie Mizula (TNEC Trainer), Tom Estabrook TNEC for more than 12 bone tissue. So he health problems. And he devoted his last Health and Safety Training Course. especially important contributions to and provid- personnel under a grant from the (TNEC Trainer), front row: Joe Karr, Jane asked members in decade to founding and building an years, recently resigned his ed valuable insight for TNEC’s emergency National Institute of Environmental For more information about this Johnson, Nicole McDonough, Tara LaScola, various plants to collect the baby teeth independent political voice for workers, position. In partial recogni- response courses using his extensive background Health Sciences. project, please contact us at 978-934- of their kids and grandkids. “My union, the Labor Party, created to advance a Nicole Markland tion of his many years of in emergency response. His presence and good 3257 or [email protected]. 85 percent of which was women, really working-class agenda of universal service, NHCOSH recently work will be missed by his many friends and The New England Consortium got into it,” he said. “Every day they healthcare and higher education for all honored him at its annual colleagues at NHCOSH and TNEC. We wish him University of Massachusetts Lowell One University Avenue Falmouth 202 would bring into the shop steward baby (www.thelaborparty.org). meeting by presenting him the very best. with the Ed Eagan Safety Lowell, MA 01854 Phone 978.934.3257, Fax: 978.934.2012 Web site: www.uml.edu/TNEC e-mail: [email protected]