Going Green: Safe and Healthy Jobs
Green jobs—good for the environment, good for the economy. But are green jobs good for workers? The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and its partners recently launched the Going Green: Safe and Healthy Jobs initiative to make sure that green jobs are good for workers by integrating worker safety and health into "green jobs" and environmental sustainability.
Green jobs, which have been defined broadly as jobs that help improve the environment and enhance sustainability, offer opportunities as well as challenges for workers. Examples of green jobs include installation and maintenance of solar panels and generators; construction and maintenance of wind energy turbines; jobs related to recycling; jobs related to the manufacture of green products; and jobs where green products are used in traditional fields such as agriculture, healthcare, and the service sector. In some instances, the hazards to workers may be similar to those in established industries. For example, the safety and health issues involved in building wind turbines may be similar to those for constructing a multi-story building. However, some green and sustainable practices may pose new health concerns for workers, such as the introduction of “green” substitutes for cleaning solvents (see NIOSH blog Multifaceted Approach to Assess Indoor Environmental Quality).
In developing a green economy in the United States, including through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), new jobs are being created in industries such as energy, utilities, construction, and manufacturing. The new focus, coupled with the move in the U.S. towards energy efficiency and more environmentally-friendly practices known as environmental sustainability, is resulting in changes to traditional jobs and the creation of new kinds of occupations. As we make technological advances in industry, we need to remain vigilant in protecting workers against emerging hazards. These changes may also present us with the opportunity to eliminate hazards through planning, organization, and engineering – a concept known at NIOSH as Prevention through Design (PtD). For additional perspectives on making green jobs safer, please read our forthcoming issue of PtD In Motion, the newsletter of the Prevention through Design initiative, which will be posted soon on the Going Green webpage.
As the Nation acts quickly to train workers for new occupations and new ways of working, we have unprecedented opportunities:
- to enhance the safety and health protection of the American workforce
- to expand and apply our knowledge in occupational safety and health to new workplaces, processes, and products being formed each day
- to ensure the training and re-training of the workforce that will fill these new jobs includes relevant safety and health information.
An upcoming event in NIOSH’s new initiative is the Making Green Jobs Safer workshop, which will be held from December 14 to 16, 2009, in Washington, DC. The workshop will bring together invited participants and a limited number of members of the public to help frame the issues around incorporating occupational safety and health into green and sustainability efforts.
As we mature the initiative and prepare for the workshop, NIOSH is drafting a working definition of green jobs and we are interested in your ideas and suggestions. NIOSH is interested also in determining how illnesses, injuries or deaths associated with the emerging green economy would be quantified. For this, again, we should define our terms, and we will incorporate definitions determined by our colleagues at the U.S. Department of Labor, who are working too to define terms. We offer the following definitions for your consideration and comment. We will track the comments and offer modifications in the definition as we move forward.
- Van Jones, founder of Green for All, defines green jobs as a blue-collar job upgraded to better respect the environment
- The Pew Charitable Trust, in the publication The Clean Energy Economy: Repowering Jobs, Businesses and Investments Across America
, described five industry categories comprising the clean energy economy. These include: clean energy, energy efficiency, environmentally friendly production, conservation and pollution mitigation, and training and support.
- JA Gambatese, S Rajendran and M Behm in their paper, “Green Design & Construction” note that “green” and “sustainable” are terms that have been used synonymously in scientific literature. These authors, however, make efforts to distinguish green from sustainable jobs with the following for the construction industry:
“Green is a term used to refer to primarily the design and construction practices that impact the environment (e.g., the soil, water, air, plants and animals). Sustainability is a broader concept that, in addition to the environmental aspect, addresses the continuity of economic, resource and social aspects of human society. For a green building to be sustainable, consideration must be given to more than just protecting the environment…a building can be called sustainable only if sustainability principles are applied throughout its life cycle…. (p. 29)”
Are any of these definitions sufficient for our needs in fostering worker safety and health practices in this emerging field of study? Are there better ways of defining our terms that you would like to offer?
As we define our terms, we must also consider the following types of work:
- Traditional jobs that use green products (e.g., a plumber installing a low flow toilet)
- Green jobs that encompass tasks from traditional jobs (e.g., solar panel installers)
- Jobs that are relatively new stemming from an increasing focus on energy efficiency (e.g., wind turbine installer).
The matrix presented here is a framework to help us think through these issues. It illustrates how our knowledge about old and new hazards intersects with challenges created by new technologies and adaptations of work activities to perform green jobs. We hope that you find it helpful.
We look forward to your comments and suggestions to help inform the upcoming conference and NIOSH’s Going Green initiative.
—Christine Branche, Ph.D.
Dr. Branche is the Acting Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
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I am all in favor of doing what we can do to research, develop and promote the use of renewable energy. I am concerned however that the focus and support will be on new companies emerging into this sector. I hope the administration does not forget the existing companies that can also play a dey role in this development.
Posted 7/1/09 at 4:03 pm
The green economy provides opportunities for new and existing companies. Representatives from industry, labor, academia, government, and NGOs will be invited to the NIOSH "Making Green Jobs Safe" workshop in December 2009. NIOSH recognizes the unique experience and important perspective established companies bring to the challenge we face of making green jobs safe jobs.
Posted 7/2/09 at 3:30 pm
Green During Construction
Expanding the reach of green building to include air toxics.
The fundamental goal of this project is to encourage institutions, developers, designers, and professional organizations to adopt a Green during construction pledge to the benefit of the surrounding community and workers and visitors on the site by reducing both particulate matter, dust and silicates, and toxic gases, like CO.
Construction can be dirty work but we have an opportunity to make it cleaner. The green building movement focuses on constructing energy efficient buildings and using less toxic building materials.
Organizations such as LEED and NEEP have developed certifications that are gaining adherents and advocates among building investors, designers, developers, and architects. Investors are increasingly requiring designers and builders to meet these certifications. And many firms, banks, design firms, stipulate that they will only rent space in a "green certified" building.
While there are obvious benefits to this green building movement what is left out of this approach is air quality while structures are being built.
Air Quality Concerns.
Carbon monoxide, fine and ultrafine particles, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), sulfur and nitrogen oxides, benzene are emitted in significant amounts by diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles and equipment on construction sites. Gasoline powered vehicles and equipment produce prodigious amounts of carbon monoxide (CO), a lethal gas. Two thousand seven hundred CO emergency poisonings from worksites occur each year.
Gasoline emissions have been shown to exceed one in one hundred thousand cancer risk thresholds in northeast urban areas. Prolonged exposure to diesel exhaust can exacerbate asthma and other lung and cardiovascular diseases, and probably increases the risk of lung cancer.
During construction soil, granite, and concrete will be dug, drilled crushed, impacted, abraded. Soil, granite, and concrete contain crystalline silica (sand). Occupational exposure to silica produces silicosis, a chronic, disabling lung disease characterized by nodules of scar tissue in the lungs. Each year nearly 300 workers die from silicosis in the US, hundreds more are disabled. Between 3000-7000 new cases occur each year. In addition, crystalline silica is carcinogenic. Construction, more than any other industry, leads in premature mortality (years of potential life lost) from silicosis.
Why not Green During the Construction Phase?
This is an opportunity to directly address the health and environmental impact of stationary equipment and motor vehicles, of dust and silicate exposures, and to integrate worker and community health into a seamless package.
RICOSH in coordination with the American Lung Association of RI, and with the official support of the Air Resources Unit of RI DEM have begun to develop protocols that integrate air pollution issues into the Green Building approach. The fundamental goal of this project is to encourage institutions, developers, designers, and professional organizations to adopt a Green during construction pledge and include key parameters of all three metrics in bid and contract specs for construction projects.
Restrict idling of gasoline and diesel vehicles.
Apply dust suppression controls.
Reduce diesel and gasoline exhaust emissions.
This would benefit the surrounding community and workers and visitors on the site by reducing particulate matter, dust and silicates, and toxic gases, like CO. In addition this approach will achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Posted 7/1/09 at 4:12 pm
Green jobs is the message for every healthworker to do in this time ...it will be excelant task to him .
Posted 7/1/09 at 4:20 pm
We need better quality control of construction materials that contain recycled ingredients Im not sure that any agency oversees this. It sounds like a great idea to recycle materials into new construction, but we can end up with worker and public exposure to chemicals that we never would have guessed were in the products we use.
For example, the New York State Dept of health found lead in brand new steel, only by coincidence (see Case Study An Assessment of Metal Recycling Worker Lead Exposure Associated with Cutting Uncoated New Steel Scrap. Authors: Julia Zhu et al, May 2009, JOEH).
Another example: crumb rubber used for playing fields contains not just recycled tires, but also many other products- who knows what products and what the ingredients are from one day to the next. One company says they take recycled sneakers, but they dont accept the ones with mercury in them (the ones that light up). Who is checking?
Using recycled material is a great way for manufacturers of construction materials to save money, but what will be the hazards of so many unknown products down the road?
Posted 7/2/09 at 3:18 pm