October 2014 Newsletter

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Greetings to all of our NJAIHA members. First I hope to see as many of you that can attend our October 16th meeting at Snuffy’s. Also I am very excited that OSHA is making a significantly more active effort to commit to PEL updating (See Aaron Trippler’s update in this newsletter). For many of us who have practiced IH most of our lives we have dealt with the frustration of having situations where OSHA PELS (many are 40+ years old) that are miles apart (or PPM and mg/m3 apart) from their more recent/relevant/researched ACGIH TLVs and NIOSH RELs. OSHA took the first step in recognizing this and in creating their annotated PEL tables in the past year. Now at the fall AIHA conference this will be a topic of discussion between AIHA members and OSHA representatives at a scheduled session. OSHA is expected to publish a Request for Information (RFI) to stakeholders and others requesting recommendations on how the agency might update the PELs. This RFI is the first time in over ten years an administration has taken a step towards bringing these PELs up-to-date. The impact of this for industrial hygienists would be immeasurable and benefit so many workers and industries.

November NJAIHA Meeting Update
We are very excited for the November 13th daytime NJAIHA IH Equipment Seminar/Workshop. Rutgers EHS has been gracious enough to let us hold this at their Cook Student Center in New Brunswick. We will have multiple vendors conducting hands-on demonstrations with their testing equipment as well as providing short presentations on their equipment. We have EMSL Analytical for TO-15 Sampling Cans and IAQ meters, SKC for their particle selective samples and related sampling equipment, Pine Environmental for onsite PIDs/FIDs, and B&K for their noise and sound monitoring devices. A special thanks to Mark Ostapczuk for his efforts to date in setting this up. This will be in conjunction with New Jersey College Health and Environmental Safety Society (CHESS) and is expected to bring in many new faces as well as students for the event. It is expected to be a half day meeting at no-cost to attendees and include lunch when completed. Look for a flyer in your email in the next two weeks.

Fall PDCs and NEIHC Update (December 4th and 5th, 2014)
Marianne Santarelli (President of Metro NY Section AIHA) has been working diligently since the summer in setting up the NEIHC trisectional meeting. We expect a flyer in the next month but we do a have a draft listing of topics which cover a great range of relevant areas. They include: State of AIHA/IH profession domestically and globally (Barbara Dawson AIHA Past President) , TLV’s the future, Legionella and PCBs health affects panels, Soil Vapor Intrusion ASTM E 1527-13, Lead Update, Sandy Update, PCR for Sewage Contamination, and a Governmental and regulatory update from Aaron Tripler. This sounds like a great series of topics and excellent speakers for this year’s NEIHC. We will have a list of PDC speakers and topics by our next newsletter.

I look forward to seeing all of you at our October 16th meeting at Snuffy’s!

Sincerely,

Stephen Siegel
President NJAIHA