Health and Safety

Nurses' Miscarriages Linked to Chemicals at Work
January 13, 2012
By Kerry Grens, excerpted from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, online December 30, 2011

Nurses who worked with chemotherapy drugs or sterilizing chemicals were twice as likely to have a miscarriage as their colleagues who didn't handle these materials, according to a new study.

Lead author Christina Lawson, a researcher at the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), said she was not too surprised that exposure to certain chemicals would be tied to lost pregnancies.

"What surprised me the most was that (chemotherapy) drugs are something we've been trying to educate nurses on, about the hazards, and we're still finding exposures during the first trimester," Lawson told Reuters Health.

Because chemotherapy drugs typically target rapidly dividing cells, such as those in a tumor -- or a fetus, they have been a concern for pregnant women who come into contact with them, Lawson said.
Not all previous research has agreed on whether nurses' exposures at work are tied to more miscarriages, though.

To help resolve the issue, Lawson and her colleagues set out to do a larger study than the earlier ones.

They surveyed nearly 7,500 nurses who had had a pregnancy between 1993 and 2002.

One out of every 10 nurses ended up losing her pregnancy before the half-way point, 20 weeks.

Lawson said that number seems similar to the rate of miscarriages in the general population.

However, among nurses who handled chemotherapy drugs for more than an hour a day, that rate was double - about two out of every 10 nurses lost her pregnancy.

And nurses who handled sterilizing agents, such as ethylene oxide or formaldehyde, more than an hour a day also had a doubled risk of miscarriage, but only during the second trimester.

Lawson added that it's difficult to determine the cause of the miscarriages seen in the study because the researchers don't know which chemicals each woman had contact with, and for how long.
Additionally, the current study only drew a link between the chemicals and the miscarriages, but did not prove that the materials caused the women to lose their pregnancies.

There are two million female nurses in the United States, making up four percent of the female workforce, the researchers write in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Nurses aren't the only ones exposed to chemotherapy drugs and sterilizing chemicals, they note. Pharmacists, drug manufacturers and veterinarians, to name a few, also handle these materials.


Increase in Injuries for Healthcare Workers
November 11, 2011

While workplace injuries declined overall, the rate of nonfatal occupational injuries among health care workers actually increased in 2010, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Read the OSHA Statement


Department of Labor Reports Decline in Workplace Injuries and Illnesses
October 18, 2011

The U.S. Department of Labor reported that workplace injuries and illnesses declined in 2010 from the previous year.
Read the Press Release


NJ Dept. of Health Issues Regs on Safe Patient Handling and Workplace Violence Prevention Programs
September 9, 2011

After a very long delay, the Department of Health and Senior Services issued final regulations concerning safe patient handling and workplace violence prevention programs at New Jersey hospitals. The regulations reflect many of the concerns that HPAE has communicated to the department.
Read the Workplace Violence Regulations
Read the Safe Patient Handling Regulations


OSHA Issues Compliance Directive Regarding Workplce Violence
September 8, 2011

The effort to limit workplace violence took a step forward on the federal level, as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued guidelines on preventing workplace violence in healthcare and social service settings.

Read the OSHA Guidelines


NLRB: Hospital Required to Bargain Over Flu Vaccination and Masking Policy
September 6, 2011

In 2004, Virginia Mason announced that it would become the first hospital to adopt a mandatory flu vaccine policy. However in 2005 an arbitrator ruled that the hospital could not legally require the nurses to get vaccinated without first providing sound information and bargaining with the union. Rather than provide this information or bargain with the union, the hospital dropped the requirement that nurses be vaccinated. Instead the hospital required their nurses to wear surgical masks.

Now there is a new National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision that the unilateral decision to force the wearing of surgical masks is also illegal. This case upholds the rights of unionized workers to bargain over the implementation of any mandatory flu vaccination programs. The outcome of this case is consistent with a number of other legal decisions, most notably among public sector nurses at the University of Iowa's Hospital. This decision highlights the significant legal hurdles that employers who are contemplating implementing unilateral mandatory flu vaccination programs could face in unionized facilities in addition to potential EEOC, HIPPA and workers comp issues.
Read the NLRB Decision


WEC Training - May 31
April 28, 2011
Wall Street and corporate CEOs made record profits while destroying millions of American jobs and making us less secure — all because
public safeguards were too weak. Yet to push government even further out of their way, they lobby to weaken both worker and environmental
protections—including OSHA and EPA.
Come to a training provided by the Work Environment Council(WEC)for an interactive workshop about defending and strengthening
our worker and environmental safeguards:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011, 9 AM to 3:30 PM Rutgers Labor Education
Sign Up For the Training


OSHA Press Release on Work Precautions for Handling Hazardous Drugs
April 7, 2011

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a press release regarding the need for hospitals and other healthcare employers to be aware of serious job-related health risks to workers handling antineoplastic (anti-cancer) drugs.
Read More

The release includes links to the following fact sheets:



Report Released on the Worst Industrial Disasters
March 29, 2011
The 100th anniversary of the tragic Triangle Waist Company fire has passed, but workplace hazards still result in death, injury, and disease. The National Committee on Occupational Safety and Health released a report detailing the worst industrial disasters since Triangle and an agenda for much-needed reforms today.
Read the Report

President Twomey's Comments on Proposed Health and Safety Regulations
February 25, 2011

President Ann Twomey sent a letter to the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services explaining HPAE's position on the proposed regulations.
Read More

Health and Safety Rules Finally Published
February 18, 2011

Three years after HPAE won passage of New Jersey’s Safe Patient Handling and Violence Prevention in Healthcare Facilities Acts, two landmark pieces of legislation protecting health care workers and their patients, regulations implementing these laws stand poised to go into effect. On January 3rd, the Department of Health and Senior Services published draft regulations in the NJ Register, with a 60-day comment period ending on March 4th. The regulations, like the laws themselves, are the result of months of “stakeholder” negotiations that included HPAE, the NJ Work Environment Council (WEC), and industry representatives.

The laws and their implementing regulations include those elements that health and safety experts have identified as being essential for the success of ergonomic and violence prevention programs, notably:

  • Frontline worker participation in a joint worker-management committee that oversees all aspects of the program;
  • Policies and procedures to minimize risk;
  • Periodic risk assessments;
  • Worker education and training;
  • Reporting and recordkeeping provision;
  • Protection from retaliation for workers exercising their rights under the law.

Chrystal Disant, Health and Safety chair of HPAE Local 5004 at Englewood Hospital and a member of the WEC board of directors, explained: “These regulations are long overdue. Both worker advocates and industry leaders made compromises along the way. The joint worker-management committees at the heart of both laws give frontline caregivers a voice in identifying hazards and designing programs to prevent the injuries resulting from workplace violence and from unassisted patient lifts and transfers. It is imperative that we support these regulations.” More information on the draft regulations can be found at http://www.state.nj.us/health/legal/open.shtml.

Violence is symptom of health care dysfunction
February 2, 2011
USA Today
By Kevin Pho

Last fall, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital was shot by the distraught son of a patient for whom he was caring. The man later killed his mother, then himself. A week earlier, a patient in a Long Island, N.Y., hospital beat his nurse with a leg from a broken chair, causing serious injuries. The following month, a psychiatric technician at a Napa, Calif., state hospital was fatally attacked on the job.

This snapshot of violence against health care workers reflects a disturbing trend. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis published last year, almost 60% of assaults in the workplace occurred in a health care setting. Nearly three-quarters of these assaults were by patients or residents of a health facility.

Read More

Health and Safety News & Notes

HPAE State Executive Council Issues Comprehensive Flu Prevention Policy for Healthcare Facilities
December 2010
Influenza is a highly transmissible illness that can have severe consequences for healthcare workers, their patients and families, and the institutions in which they work. Preventing infection is the first priority and includes a range of complementary strategies which should be pursued simultaneously. The Health Professionals and Allied Employees, AFT, AFL-CIO (HPAE) supports the following comprehensive approach to the prevention of influenza transmission in healthcare settings.
Click here for the full text of HPAE's Comprehensive Flu Prevention Policy for Healthcare Facilities..

WEC's Safe Work, Safe Care Training Project
WEC will be holding a series of workshops to help achieve safe and healthy work environments for healthcare workers in hospitals and other healthcare settings. Click here for more information and to register.

The NJ Work Environment Council's Latest Newsletter

Click here to read what WEC has to say about Health & Safety .

CDC Issues Revised Guidelines on Protecting Healthcare Workers from Flu
September 23, 2010
In September 2010 the CDC issued guidelines on protecting healthcare workers from both seasonal and H1N1 flu.

Highlights of the guidelines include:

  • Vaccination: The guidelines emphasize vaccinating healthcare workers to prevent transmission between healthcare workers and their patients. The guidelines stop short of recommending mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers and suggest strategies that facilities can use to increase vaccination rates among staff.
  • Sick leave policies: The guidelines encourage healthcare facilities to develop sick leave policies for their staff that are “non-punitive, flexible and consistent with public health guidance to allow and encourage staff with suspected or confirmed influenza to stay home”.
  • Surgical masks: Despite opposition from healthcare unions, the guidelines recommend healthcare workers use surgical masks when treating patients infected with seasonal or H1N1 flu; the use of N95 respirators is still recommended for aerosol-generating procedures.

Click here for the full CDC recommendations.

Take a look at WEC - an alliance dedicated to keeping you safe on the job
The New Jersey Work Environment Council (WEC) is a membership alliance of labor, environmental, and community organizations working for safe, secure jobs and a healthy, sustainable environment. WEC links workers, communities, and environmentalists through training, technical assistance, grassroots organizing and public policy campaigns to promote dialogue, collaboration, and joint action. Formed in 1986, WEC is the nation's oldest state labor/environmental (or "blue/green") coalition. Click here to go to their website

HPAE Invited to Participate in NIOSH Study
HPAE has been invited by the National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to participate in a collaborative pilot study looking at NJ hospitals’ compliance with the Workplace Violence Prevention Act and the barriers and facilitators to implementation of violence prevention programs. A secondary goal is to confirm availability of assault-related injury data from health care facilities and examine patterns of violence before and after the Act.

The other study partners are the NJ Department of Health and Senior Services, the NJ Hospital Association and two academic health centers with a strong track record in workplace violence research. NIOSH has assured HPAE that we will be “at the table” as full participants in the study. There is a possibility that HPAE members will have an opportunity to participate in focus groups related to workplace violence prevention.

“Frozen” health and safety regulations ready to move forward
Within weeks of receiving a letter from HPAE and other affiliates of the NJ Work Environment Council, the Governor’s Office has lifted the “freeze” he imposed, immediately upon taking office, on the long-overdue draft regulations implementing NJ’s Safe Patient Handling and Workplace Violence Prevention laws. The draft regulations were developed during months of negotiations between HPAE and other worker representatives and industry stakeholders. The regulations must now be reviewed by the NJ Dept of Health and Senior Services legal office and the Governor’s Office and will then be published in the NJ Register for public comment. We’ll keep you posted on when and how comments can be submitted. Click here to read the Safe Patient Handling Regulations and click here to read the Violence Prevention in Healthcare Facilities Regulations.

"Healthcare workers encouraged to demand 'less self-sacrifice rhetoric and more straight talk about hazards.'"

Read the editorial by Dr. John Howard, head of the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

HPAE’s Health and Safety Program

Every day, nurses and healthcare workers are witnesses to dramatic changes in healthcare that have a direct and negative impact on the safety of healthcare workplaces.

Understaffing, increased violence, sicker patients needing more assistance with moving and lifting, infectious agents such as influenza, TB and MRSA, and the introduction of new technologies all contribute to making healthcare workplaces more stressful and more hazardous to our health.

Nurses and healthcare workers suffer work-related injuries and lost work time at much higher rates than other workers, and have come to believe that work-related injuries and illnesses 'come with the job'. But caring for patients shouldn't mean endangering oneself.

HPAE fights for safer workplaces through a program of legislative and regulatory advocacy; member education and training, and contract language. HPAE members have fought for and won state legislation requiring health care facilities to use safer needle devices, and implement workplace violence prevention and safe patient handling programs. A requirement that frontline caregivers have a meaningful voice in the development and implementation of these programs through mandated joint labor management committees is a hallmark of all three pieces of legislation.

HPAE members benefit from the small group, participatory education and training programs offered by the NJ Work Environment Council.

Contract language covers a range of health and safety concerns including chemical exposures, latex use, workers' compensation and walkthrough inspection rights for the union.

HPAE also has a state-wide Health and Safety Committee which works to enforce standards in our workplaces, and develop and monitor laws and regulations that make our workplaces safer for patients and workers. Contact Harriet Rubenstein at hrubenstein@hpae.org for more information.

A. Safe Lift

B. Workplace Violence Prevention

C. OSHA/PEOSH recordkeeping requirements

D. Safe Needles

E. Seasonal & H1N1 Flu

F. Toxics in Healthcare