Page 106 - Occupational Health & Safety, July 2017

INDUSTRY UPDATE
public. Its aftermath brought about sweep- ing changes involving emergency response planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation protection, and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations,” according to the agency, and “also caused the NRC to tighten and heighten its regulatory oversight. All of these changes significantly enhanced U.S. reactor safety.”
Exelon Corporation’s announcement said it is taking these “first steps” to shut down the plant:
■ Informing key stakeholders, which will include sending PJM a deactivation notice and making permanent shutdown notifications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within 30 days
■ Immediately taking one-time charg- es of $65-110 million for 2017 and accel- erating approximately $1.0-1.1 billion in depreciation and amortization through the announced shutdown date
■ Terminating capital investment projects required for long-term operation of TMI
■ Canceling 2019 fuel purchases and
outage planning, impacting about 1,500 outage workers
CDC Investigations Find Common Sources of Health Care Infections Preventing serious health care-acquired in- fections (HAIs) may come down in many cases to relatively simple control mea- sures, including rigorously practiced hand hygiene, better cleaning and disinfection practices, and ultimately improved facility design, a CDC investigator explained June 7 in a presentation given at the AIHce EXP conference in Seattle.
Bryan E. Christensen, Ph.D., an in- dustrial hygienist and epidemiologist with CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, discussed four recent HAI investigations, including one involving nontuberculous mycobac- teria (NM) infections of patients who had undergone cardiopulmonary bypass sur- gery. The investigation centered on heating/ cooling units used in the surgery, equip- ment that contained three water tanks, high-pressure pumps, and multiple fans, he said. “We’re still investigating where it’s
actually coming from in the unit,” he said, explaining they confirmed that NM in the airflow entered the patients’ chest cavi- ties, but in these cases the resulting illness would manifest two or three years later and be fatal for some of them. NM is an oppor- tunistic and emerging HAI, he said.
Other cases he described included bloodstream infections among dialysis pa- tients—58 cases were identified from July 2015 to November 2016, far more than the expected one case per year, and the main culprit there was a wall box containing both the drain for removing waste from patients’ blood and a supposedly sterile re- verse osmosis water line—and pseudomo- nas infections in a neonatal intensive care unit, where better hand hygiene, filters, and chlorination were among the recom- mended infection controls stemming from the investigation.
“Everything here is water-related, which tends to be the case with health care,” he said. “There really needs to be an increased role for the industrial hygiene field at health care facilities. It’s something that needs more emphasis going forward.”
Webinar
July 12, 2017
2 p.m. Eastern • 1 p.m. Central • 11 a.m. Pacific
FREE!
Construction Safety Update: 2017 Data and Interventions from CPWR
Six of OSHA’s 10 most-cited construction violations last year involved falls. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its most recent CFOI data that construction fatalities rose by 4 percent in 2015 to 937, the highest number since 2008, and that several construction occupations recorded their highest fatality total in years, including construction laborers, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers. This webinar will review recent fatal and nonfatal injury and illness information and resources for prevention, with an emphasis on falls, silica and noise.
About the speaker:
Rosemary K. Sokas, MD, MOH, is professor of Human Science at Georgetown University’s School of Nursing and Health Studies and interim deputy director for CPWR.
Her research interests include participatory action research among high risk, low-wage workers and in small enterprises; intervention effectiveness evaluation; and occupational health disparities.
Register today at ohsonline.com to view live or on demand
Sponsors include:
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