Page 55 - Occupational Health & Safety, May 2019

AIHCE EXP2019
Underestimated No More
The conference’s opening session will feature keynote speaker Carey Lohrenz, the first female F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy, speaking on “Lessons in Leadership.”
BY JESSICA DAVIS
www.ohsonline.com
MAY 2019 | Occupational Health & Safety 51
The leading industrial hygiene conference in the United States, the annual American In- dustrial Hygiene Conference & Exposition, takes place this month in Minneapolis—or, as Meet Minneapolis describes the city, “the biggest underestimated place in the north.” Sports fans cer- tainly know about Minnesota’s largest city, with the NCAA men’s Final Four basketball games having tak- en place at U.S. Bank Stadium, home of the Minnesota Vikings, just last month. The stadium is located in what’s called Downtown East and is a short walk from the city’s Riverfront District and the Mississippi River.
AIHce EXP2019, co-sponsored by the American Industrial Hygiene Association and the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists and celebrating its 80th year, will take place at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The Professional Development Courses (PDCs) are scheduled for May 18, 19, and 23, with a new PDC session on May 18 called the Women in IH Leadership Summit taking place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
More on Minneapolis
Minneapolis is the larger of the Twin Cities, with an estimated population of 422,331. May is one of the wetter months for city residents and visitors, with an average of 3.36 inches of precipitation; the month’s average temperatures are a high of 69 degrees Fahren- heit and a low of 49 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Minneapolis Convention Center is connected to the Minneapolis Skyway System, claimed to be the largest contiguous system of enclosed, second-level bridges in the world. The Skyway System connects 80 city blocks of downtown, making it easy to get out for a bite to eat or to explore the city, rain or shine.
Near the convention center are the Walker Art Center’s Sculpture Garden, which includes about 40 works of contemporary sculpture art, and the Loring Greenway, which leads to Loring Park. Other sight- seeing opportunities include the Science Museum of Minnesota and the Mill City Museum, which offers a look into the impact the flour milling industry had on the city. The museum was built within the ruins of the Washburn A Mill, the flagship mill of the Washburn- Crosby Co. (later General Mills). It was the world’s largest flour mill when finished in 1880.
The Minneapolis public transportation system was named the 2016 Transit System of the Year by
the American Public Transportation Association. The system includes the METRO Blue Line (serv- ing downtown and Minneapolis-St. Paul Interna- tional Airport) and Green Line, as well as Metro Transit buses.
Conference Educational Highlights
The main conference’s educational program is sched- uled for May 20-22. There also are two May 20 “BYO Dinner Learning” sessions (6-7 p.m. and 7-8 p.m.) on managing IH data and one-hour “Rise & Shine Break- fast” sessions starting at 6:45 a.m. May 21. The PDCs are half-day, full-day, and two-day courses covering topics such as safe electrical work practices, chemi- cal exposure monitoring, selection and use of PAPRs, noise control, assessing nanomaterial risks, and more.
AIHce EXP2019’s educational program offers sessions organized into 26 tracks that include safety management, communication & training, aerosols, indoor environmental quality/indoor air quality, sampling and analysis, and sensor technologies. The sessions last 60 minutes and make up the majority of conference programming. The schedule provides 15-minute breaks between sessions to allow attendees to travel from one presentation to the next.
Highlights of the educational program include the “Hearing Loss Prevention—Barriers and Solutions to Success” presentation as part of the Derek E. Dunn Lecture Series (Monday, 3:15 p.m.) and multiple ses- sions related to the opioid crisis, such as “Fentanyl and Analogues—Occupational Exposure Hazards and Protection” (Tuesday, 10-11 a.m.) and “Case Studies in Opioid Decontamination and Cleanup” (Tuesday, 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.). Tuesday also features a two- part “mock trial” on “Marijuana Employer Liability in Wrongful Death Case,” with part one beginning at 3:15 p.m. and part two starting at 4:30 p.m.
The conference’s opening session at 8 a.m. Mon- day will feature keynote speaker Carey Lohrenz, the first female F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy. Lohrenz, an author and expert in teambuilding and strategy, will speak on “Lessons in Leadership.”
The closing general session, “Reinventing Health Care and the Importance of Story,” will be presented by Dr. Leslie Saxon, executive director and founder of the USC Center for Body Computing, from 3:30-4:30 p.m. Wednesday. Her presentation will focus on the role of physicians in supporting the new health care