HIGHLIGHTS 2011 STORIES OF IMPACT Contents 1 FOREWORD Mark H. Ayers 2 MESSAGE Pete Stafford 4 RESEARCH 6 A Mobile Interface to Answer Safety and Health Questions 7 Breakthrough Research Leads to OSHA/NIOSH Guidance Document 7 Confronting Construction Safety’s Greatest Foe 8 Construction Workers Take the Initiative for Safe Conditions 8 Creating Products that Communicate Research Findings 9 Danger to Workers More Pronounced than Often Understood 10 Helping Workers Live Longer and Work Smarter with Local Exhaust Ventilation 12 Immigrant Day Laborers and Peer-to-Peer Safety Training 13 Investigating Spray-foam Insulation and Occupational Asthma 13 Making Concrete Drilling Easier 14 Rewarding Safety without Discouraging Incident Reporting 14 Saving Ironworkers’ Backs and Lungs 15 Seeking a Better Way to Measure Health and Safety Performance 16 Translating Research into Action 18 Working with Business and Labor for Better Respiratory and Hearing Protection 18 Work Shouldn’t Be a Chronic Pain 19 Big Findings in CPWR Small Studies 20 TRAINING 22 Building a Reserve Army of Disaster Responders 23 The 10 Hours That Can Save a Life: OSHA Training 24 This Training Curriculum Hits the Mark … 25 CPWR Hazardous Waste Worker Training – Cleans Up America 25 Minority Worker Training Program 28 SERVICE 30 Building Trades National Medical Screening Program (BTMed) 32 Recent Publications in Peer-reviewed Journals and Trade/Union Magazines 35 CPWR CONSORTIUM PARTNERS 36 OVERSIGHT AND ADVISORY BOARDS 37 CPWR STAFF Foreword to Highlights 2011 T hose of us in the building phone (see page 6). Think stud welding can only be trades are a lucky bunch, done one way? Think again (after reading page 14). and we know it. We come out Can incentives to reward safety not discourage incident of the best training facilities reporting (also on page 14). The Stories of Impact open in the world, drawing on the a window into how some of CPWR’s research gets used experience of generations and, every day in America. thanks to CPWR, knowledge The Training section is impressive. We now have of the latest innovations in more than 5,000 construction workers fully trained to Mark H. Ayers safety and health. We hone step into a disaster situation and not risk their life or our skills in the craft we’ve chosen because it fits us – the lives of others while performing critical tasks. In pouring foundations, erecting steel columns and beams, the last grant year, CPWR administered 274 courses – linking people and systems with electrical current. We nearly 80,000 hours – in various environmental hazard walk onto a job site fully prepared to do what is asked training specialties. I am extremely proud to announce of us. We know what it’s like to do a hard day’s work. that our Smart Mark OSHA 10-hour program has trained When our work is done, our contribution is obvious. an average of 10,000 workers a month. You can drive by a building and say, “I did that.” The program we christened the Building Trades But what if your contributions weren’t set in stone. Medical Screening Program (BTMed) continues to do an Or brick. Or concrete. For those workers not fortunate outstanding job serving construction workers employed enough to be blessed with a desire to build and skill on sites where nuclear weapons were produced. Today, set to match, how can they see their work has impact? more than 24,000 of these workers unwittingly exposed I know CPWR, and CPWR makes impact. Whether to hazards have been screened. it’s through the data analysis that has brought such All this work produces impact. You’ll hear it in the notoriety to CPWR, hours of training delivered or voices of the men who’ve been through the BTMed visits made to CPWR’s growing electronic offerings, screening program. You’ll catch the excitement of CPWR can cite ways it has an impact on our industry. workers leaving a CPWR training class – or the trainer Still, isn’t it better to hear a story of just how some- when he sees “a light bulb go on” with his students. thing like a ladder safety DVD or a training program And you’ll get first-person accounts of how CPWR’s has made a difference in someone’s professional (or research is put into practice with positive results. personal) life? I think you’ll find something in this report that will This year, CPWR is going to give you the best of connect with you and your work. Put it to use. Then tell both worlds: quantifiable results of the year’s work plus CPWR the results, or as a stakeholder in our industry tell “Stories of Impact.” You’ll meet people applying CPWR’s CPWR what else it can do to improve safety and health information and programs to improve worker safety conditions for all construction workers. and health. In the Research section, you get a glimpse of the progress on projects to make your work easier and Mark H. Ayers safer. If you are a foreman needing a quick solution for a President, CPWR President, Building and Construction just-detected hazard, the answer is as close as your smart Trades Department, AFL-CIO 1 CPWR IMPACT Research Training Service e are an institution information, eLCOSH. We For our Highlights 2011, W that has been confirm the tens of thousands we took a step beyond brief quantifying results since we of workers we’ve helped statements of what we began our research initiative train. We point with pride accomplished in the year. in 1990 with the first grant to partnerships that bring We reached out to people in awarded by the National together industry, labor the trades, in government and Institute for Occupational and government to share industry and asked them how Safety and Health (NIOSH). knowledge and collaborate CPWR’s work has made a And we know CPWR’s work on projects to benefit all who difference in their life, their of applied research and work in construction. And we work, their productivity, training in safety and health know that 98% of our BTMed their health. The results practices has had an impact. medical screening participants appear on almost every page We can count the millions are satisfied with the program. of the 2011 report – even this of visitors to our online But sometimes quantifying one. Pictured above are three repository of construction impact is best demonstrated young workers excelling in life safety and health with examples of impact. through the Minority Worker 2 What is Your Story of Impact? Training program, a trainer professional career? Did you who’s found our ladder safety find that important nugget of DVD is so essential that he information you couldn’t find “How has CPWR’s always has a copy handy, and anywhere else? Let us hear work made a a worker who found our from you. Email your “story difference in your medical screening program to of impact” to news@cpwr. professional or be so critical that he promotes com. We’ll collect and publish personal life? it to his colleagues. some highlights. For now, Email your story to Now let me turn this turn your attention to this [email protected].” question to you: How has annual report and see if CPWR’s work made a CPWR will have an impact difference in your professional on you. or personal life? Does your training have richer content? Pete Stafford Have you applied what you’ve Executive Director learned in your academic or 3 Research Research If you’re looking for impressive welding, tuck-pointing, drilling into results, rigorous academic publica- concrete, and demolition. They tions are a good place to start. From examined work-related asthma and engineering and management to exposure to isocyanates in spray- medical toxicology to leadership foam insulation. They measured and organizational development, the stress on workers’ bodies when performing taxing physical labor How do you put a – and they even measured workers’ price tag on a person’s and managers’ perceptions about hearing? Ability to walk this work. They collected stories or live without chronic of critical incidents on job sites to pain or disease? Or identify the barriers workers face in simply, to be alive? speaking up for safe work practices. And then they published. CPWR-funded research appeared in But our researchers also know 14 different peer-reviewed journals that their efforts do not end with during the last two years. a journal article. CPWR’s vibrant Yet as you see from the photos research to practice (“r2p”) effort at right, CPWR researchers did is already helping them to build much more than sit in university stronger connections with industry offices writing up results of a lab professionals to aid in disseminat- study. Our staff and consortium ing valuable research findings. partners were in the field where The true impact may never be the all-too-real hazards of the con- adequately measured. How do struction industry present them- you put a price tag on a person’s selves. They monitored welding hearing? Ability to walk or live fumes and silica dust in separate without chronic pain or disease? and distinct activities, such as stud Or simply, to be alive? 4 “Every ‘Bestconstruction thing our workercompany needs ever to takedid’ thisfor acourse. safer Itwork could site. save lives.” CPWR’s 17 on-going researchIMPACT projects have published in 14 different peer-reviewed journals. Research A STORY OF IMPACT A Mobile Interface to Answer Safety and Safety Liaisons and Worker Training Health Questions When New Labor safety liaisons in May saw men at work on this dodgy Construction Solutions Database scaffold in Newark, N.J., they approached the supervisors to fix the Lead Researchers: Jim Platner, PhD, problem – but they were brushed aside.