Safety and Health Help In Your Pocket and On-Line

When BAC needed to warn its members about the hazards of power saws and silica exposures from dry cutting of masonry materials, it turned to the Center to Protect Workers’ Rights (CPWR). Partnering with CPWR, the IU was able to quickly produce a pocket size hazard alert about power saw safety and distribute it to all members – in English or Spanish. Today, this alert is available on-line so that all construction workers can readily learn about the dangers and protect themselves.

But producing hazard alert pocket cards for workers is just one of the services provided by CPWR.

What is CPWR?

CPWR is the arm of the Building Trades that provides safety and health information – through research, the Internet, training, and medical checkups. Its goal is to alert workers, address hazards, and find solutions.

To do this, CPWR staff work at construction sites with unions, contractors, and more than 30 other organizations, including leading universities. With the University of Massachusetts Lowell on Boston’s Big Dig project, for example, the focus is on preventing silica exposures and muscle injuries. In conjunction with BAC’s Labor-Management Craft Committees, CPWR is working to address the silica hazard, as well as exposure to epoxies, ergonomic issues, and serious skin problems that contact with cement can cause.

The CPWR web site (www.cpwr.com) describes CPWR activities and publications. You can sign up for CPWR’s newsletter, On Center. Or, you can print out the hazard alert about power saws or more than 20 other topics in English or Spanish. Topics include back injuries, eye injuries, hand tools, scaffold safety, silica, skin problems, and welding fumes and gases.

If you want to learn more about a particular job-related health hazard, another CPWR website, known as eLCOSH (www.eLCOSH.org), has even more information. You can click on a trade (such as bricklayer or mason) or hazard (such as cement or silica) and find information to read and print out. Some information is in Spanish and other languages.

CPWR Training Programs

In addition to research activities, CPWR provides a variety of safety-and-health training programs. Many, such as the OSHA 10-hour card that can be earned through the Smart Mark program, were developed by CPWR with help from BAC and other unions. The Smart Mark program, available in Spanish and English, is a first class hazard awareness course for construction, covering electrical safety, ergonomics, materials handling, scaffolding, and other subjects, including a module on silica currently being developed.

CPWR in conjunction with BAC and other building trades unions also provides hands-on training for work at Department of Energy nuclear weapons sites, Superfund sites, and EPA Brownfield’s sites. The training includes the 40-hour hazardous waste worker course, asbestos abatement, lead abatement, refresher courses, and confined-space entry. As part of the training, workers practice using personal protective equipment (PPE), going through decontamination lines, and other tasks. And through the National Resource Center for OSHA Training, CPWR and BAC/IMI train union trainers in the OSHA 500 and other OSHA courses.

Medical Examinations

Last, since 1998 CPWR has been providing medical examinations for former construction and maintenance workers at some U.S. government nuclear sites. The exams cover building trades members who worked at Hanford, Washington; Savannah River, South Carolina; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. (Programs are scheduled to begin in Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky in early 2004.) This service, provided with the help of local building trades councils, is confidential and free of charge. The goal is to identify lung problems and some cancers that might be the result of exposures to toxic substances while working at these sites. The exams also identify other work-related problems, such as hearing loss. If you worked at any of these sites, call 1-800-866-9663. Tell your co-workers too.

To learn more, go to www.cpwr.com. If don’t have access to a computer, you can still receive the information by contacting IU Executive Vice President Henry Kramer at (202) 383-3159 or CPWR directly at 301-578-8500. The hazard alerts and other CPWR publications are free of charge to BAC members.