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Training for a Non-toxic Workplace

RS2006-IG18

Final Report Date: March 2008

Principal Applicant:	Mae Burrows (Labour Environmental Alliance Society)
Co-applicant:	K. Sean Griffin (Labour Environmental Alliance Society)

For more information about this project, please contact Ms. Mae Burrows.

Disclaimer

Issue

The hotel industry and school districts are heavy users of commercial-institutional cleaning products, which often contain toxic ingredients. This can include carcinogens, reproductive toxicants, asthmagens (which are chemicals that can cause asthma) and endocrine-disrupting chemicals (which interfere with hormones). These toxins pose a health risk to workers who use cleaning products on a regular basis. However workers often have limited knowledge of chemicals and their potential health effects due to a lack of relevant training, as well as barriers to accessing Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) and MSDS information on toxicological effects. This project provided training at five work sites aimed to determine if greater knowledge of toxic cleaning products and chemical exposure regulation and product substitution can lead to institutional change on product purchasing and use.

Key findings

The training and increased awareness of the toxicity and potential health effects of product ingredients motivated project participants to seek safer products through product substitution.
All sites made changes in their product purchasing and use by the end of the project. Products that were identified as containing carcinogens and reproductive toxicants were replaced with safer substitutes in four of the five participating project sites and were proposed for substitution in the fifth site.
Two Lower Mainland school districts made a further decision to replace their conventional cleaning products with a line of environmentally-certified products, and to follow that certification standard in future product purchasing.
A Cleaners and Toxins Guide was produced for workers in the commercial cleaning industry, and is available on the LEAS website.

Objectives

To determine if greater knowledge of toxic cleaning products, and training on chemical exposure regulation and product substitution — provided by an outside organization in a worker-friendly environment — could lead to institutional change on product purchasing and use

Method

Joint occupational health and safety committees and staff at three B.C. school districts and two B.C. hotels participated in the project.

MSDS for all cleaning products used in the schools and hotels were gathered and products were reviewed for potentially toxic ingredients using criteria developed by LEAS that included screening for carcinogens, reproductive toxicants, sensitizers, and asthmagens. Based on that review a priority list of candidate chemicals for substitution was developed for the OH&S committee at each site.

Eight-hour training workshops were developed and held with committees in each school district and hotel. Workshops topics included: reading MSDS, determining the potential health effects of cleaning product chemicals, using Internet research to obtain more information, and developing strategies to replace products that contain toxic ingredients with safer substitutes.

The research coordinator made it clear that committees retained complete autonomy in deciding how to deal with any toxic product ingredients identified and were under no obligation to make changes simply because they were participants in the project.

Following the workshops, the research coordinator consulted with committees to provide assistance and to review what changes were made in product use.

Results

Management and worker representatives on occupational health and safety (OH&S) committees in hotels and schools have limited knowledge about the toxicity of cleaning product chemicals, MSDS information requirements, and the regulations governing chemical exposure in the workplace.

Electronic retrieval systems are frequently a barrier to full workplace MSDS access, contributing to a lack of information on chemicals used in the workplace.

The training and increased awareness of the toxicity and potential health effects of product ingredients motivated project participants to seek safer products through product substitution.

Product substitution to replace products containing toxic ingredients with safer products was achieved in all project sites. That substitution resulted in the elimination, or proposed elimination of all products containing known, probable, and possible human carcinogens and known reproductive toxicants from participating project sites. At two project sites, both large school districts, project participation led to the decision to replace all conventional cleaning products with environmentally certified green cleaning products.

Project researchers produced a 28-page publication called Cleaners and Toxins Guide, which includes two priority lists of product ingredients for substitution. Provided as a handbook for ongoing product review at project sites, it can also be used for workers throughout the commercial cleaning industry.

Conclusions

The project results suggest that directed training for OH&S committee and cleaning staff can result in the motivation to make a change to safer, greener products. The results achieved in the school and hotel sectors suggest that the methodology could also be applied in other sectors where cleaning products are used and could produce similar results.

For future work in this area, the authors also make the following recommendations:

To work effectively within the culture of workplace health and safety committees, it is important that outside organizations establish a high level of credibility and trust, based on past work and the quality of the information and research they provide.
An active functioning OH&S committee is also essential, both for initiating projects like this in the workplace and to ensure that they achieve some success even when there are personnel changes.
Effective exposure control of chemicals used in the workplace is only possible if there is ready access to MSDS.
More detailed training for OH&S committees on chemical use in the workplace and regulations governing chemical exposure could help create a safer workplace and promote the use of healthier, greener chemicals.

Future directions

A primary means of transferring knowledge about this project is the Cleaners and Toxins Guide, produced as an educational component of this project, with the assistance and advice of project participants. It is available on the LEAS website, along with an outline of this project and the results it achieved.