Page 13 - Occupational Health & Safety, May 2018

precautions, initial response procedures, types of rail equipment, and whom to contact in an emergency. After they complete the course, qualified emergency responders can download AskRailTM, a free mobile app that provides immediate information about rail cars carrying hazardous materials if a rail incident does occur.
“Our safety train is helping Norfolk Southern build and strengthen relationships with first responders across our network,” said David Schoendorfer, system manager hazardous materials. “We want them to be equipped with the tools and resources they need to safely do their jobs when responding to potential rail inci- dents. It’s all about helping our communities be prepared and safe.”
MSHA Has Reopened Diesel
Exhaust RFI for Comments
The Mine Safety and Health Administration recently reopened the public comment period on its Request for Information on Expo- sure of Underground Miners to Diesel Exhaust, which was pub- lished in June 2016. Comments now must be received by midnight EST on March 26, 2019.
MSHA’s RFI sought information and data on the effective- ness of its current standards and policy guidance on controlling miners’ exposure to diesel exhaust—standards that date to 2001, when an MSHA final rule established new health standards for underground metal and nonmetal mines that use equipment powered by diesel engines (30 CFR part 57). This rule established a concentration limit for diesel particulate matter (DPM) and required mine operators to use engineering and work practice controls to reduce DPM to that limit. MSHA published another final rule four years later that replaced the concentration limit for DPM exposures of metal and nonmetal miners from a total car- bon (TC) permissible exposure limit to a comparable elemental carbon (EC) PEL, which the agency considered a more accurate measure of DPM exposure. But after publishing that rule, MSHA decided the engineering applications and technological imple- mentation issues were more complex and extensive than previ- ously thought, and on May 18, 2006, it published a final rule that reverted back to using TC to measure DPM exposure. This rule phased in over a two-year period a final DPM PEL of 160 micro- grams of TC per cubic meter of air.
The RFI’s original comment period closed Nov. 30, 2016. Ac- cording to MSHA’s reopening announcement, as a result of collab- oration at a partnership meeting in December 2016, the comment period was reopened until Jan. 9, 2018, and, since then, MSHA has received more stakeholder requests to provide additional time for all stakeholders to share input and data.
NASA Awards Big Contract
for Quieter Supersonic Aircraft
NASA has awarded a contract for the design, building, and testing of a quieter supersonic aircraft, described by the agency’s April an- nouncement as one “that reduces a sonic boom to a gentle thump.” Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company of Palmdale, Calif., won the Low-Boom Flight Demonstration contract, a cost-plus-incen- tive-fee contract valued at $247.5 million.
Work under the contract began April 2 and runs through Dec. 31, 2021, NASA reported.
Under the contract, Lockheed Martin will complete the design
and fabrication of an experimental aircraft known as an X-plane that can cruise at 55,000 feet at a speed of about 940 mph and create a sound about as loud as a car door closing, 75 Perceived Level decibel (PLdB), instead of a sonic boom, according to the an- nouncement, which says after NASA accepts the aircraft from the contractor in late 2021, the agency will perform additional flight tests to prove the quiet supersonic technology works as designed, aircraft performance is robust, and it is safe to operate in the Na- tional Airspace System.
Beginning in mid-2022, NASA will fly the X-plane over se- lect U.S. cities and collect data about community responses to the flights. The resulting data will be provided to U.S. and interna- tional regulators for their use in considering new sound-based rules regarding supersonic flight over land, which could enable new commercial cargo and passenger markets in faster-than- sound air travel.
European Commission Proposes Five New PELs
The European Commission proposed new exposure limits on April 5 for five cancer-causing chemicals, in addition to 21 substances that have already been limited or proposed to be limited, in the Carcinogens and Mutagens Directive. These limit values set a max- imum concentration for the presence of a cancer-causing chemical in workplace air.
According to the commission, the new limits would improve working conditions for more than 1 million EU workers and pre-
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