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Georgia Local Section |
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As I sit here writing this note to our members, it is an absolutely miserable afternoon. It is raining hard and getting foggy out there - making driving a more dangerous thing to do - but I do have to get home tonight. It makes me realize how we often take chances everyday of our lives without thinking about the risks involved. I doubt many of us would like to give up our cars even though thousands get killed behind the wheel every year, and some people are developing breathing problems because of the growing ozone problem in metropolitan areas throughout the country.
Some of the presentations we have at our Fall meeting discuss some of these very issues. The quality of the air we breath - both inside and outside the buildings we work in everyday. How do we educate and handle these risks? I believe you will find the agenda that Michelle Pickard has put together will be quite enlightening. Hope to see you there.
The enclosures in this issue of our newsletter are address correction labels for your Georgia Local Section membership directory. Michelle has made separate labels for each of the members that need revising. Just peel them off and place them over the address listed in your directory. Please note that some members may have their names in more than one section, like Michelle's, she is listed on the Board member page as well.
The Board has also been working on an Operations Manual for the local section. We hope to have it drafted by the Fall meeting and finalized for the Winter meeting. This manual will have information on the duties of all the offices, the basic information related to meetings and committees, and reports that are generated and sent to National each year. We feel this will be helpful to those considering running for office for 2001-2002.
We're also working this year to increase membership. Those of you on our e-mail distribution list are now receiving e-mails from the ASSE Georgia Chapter and we are sending information to their members as well. By sharing information, we hope to broaden what we can offer our members as well as theirs.
Feel free to bring along a guest to the next meeting. You'll find a half-price coupon for your guest on page 5.
See you on October 23rd.
Brenda.
A new regular feature beginning with this issue will feature different GLS members. The idea is to profile our long-time and our newer members each quarter. However, to get us started, we begin by profiling our current President and President Elect
Brenda
Southerland, President of our Local AIHA Section, has been involved
with the AIHA since 1981. She joined the AIHA as a MPH student at the University
of Tennessee. After graduation she began her career at Oak Ridge National Labs
working with their Hazardous Material Coordinator involved with setting up a
cradle to grave chemical tracking system. After several years work
with a consulting firm in Oak Ridge supporting the weapons plant, gas diffusion
plant, and the national lab, She moved to Atlanta. There she worked for several
years with engineering consulting firms Impell Corporation (i.e.,Combustion
Engineering), an engineering consulting firm performing safety analysis and
emergency planning work primarily with nuclear plants throughout the southeast.
She later joined Georgia Power as an Industrial Hygienist and has supported
various departments through out the last 13 years. Most recently, Brenda was
supervisor for the chemistry lab with Georgia Power at the Environmental Laboratory
in Smyrna. This summer Brenda transferred to Plant Branch in Milledgeville and
is now responsible for all the compliance and support issues at the facility.
Brenda is married to Scott, an architect, who still travels to Atlanta for his job. They have two girls, Aja and Taylor, both who attend middle school this year. They have adapted to small town life in Madison for the most part; but have to do a bit more planning for shopping activities.
Dave
Beem began his industrial hygiene career with the St. Louis Area OSHA
office in 1975. After 3 ½ years as a compliance officer, he took a job
in the Kansas City Regional Office of Technical Support. He left OSHA in 1982
but stayed in KC as an IH for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers,
a Lab Manager for an environmental / IH lab and a manager of an industrial hygiene
section of an environmental consulting firm. He was president of the Mid-America
Section of the AIHA in 1982. He came to Atlanta in 1992 where he began his career
with Norfolk Southern. Dave is married with 4 children, the youngest being Libby
who was adopted from China in 1998.
The members of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) recently voted to retain the original name of the association's annual conference and exposition. The name, American Industrial Hygiene Conference & Exposition (AIHCE), has been used since the 1990s, and has been cosponsored by AIHA and ACGIH since the 1980s. Last year, the AIHA Board of Directors voted to modify the name of the annual conference to the Environmental Health and Safety Conference & Exposition (EHSCE). The name was chosen to better reflect both the conference content and the changes taking place within the traditional industrial hygiene profession.
In May 2000, a group of members petitioned AIHA for a full member vote on the issue under the AIHA Bylaws, Article XV, Section 3. The ballot was mailed on July 6, 2000, and the results were tallied on August 7, 2000. Approximately 10,000 eligible voting members received ballots. Of that 10,000, nearly 4,000 returned the decisive results, with nearly 60% voting to retain the original name.
"The members have spoken and clearly state that they wish the name of
the annual conference to be AIHCE," said Steven P. Levine, Ph.D., CIH,
president, AIHA. "We hear them and the name of the conference will remain
AIHCE for the foreseeable future."
NIOSH Director, Linda Rosenstock, M.D., M.P.H. has accepted the position of Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Rosenstock will begin her duties at UCLA on November 1.
The GLS and the ASSE Ga Chapter have exchanged membership e-mail lists to facilitate announcements of joint interest. We are now exchanging announcements for upcoming meetings for our respective organizations. If you are not receiving these emails, please update you membership directory listing and include your e-mail address.
Phil Williams, Ph.D., CIH and former President of the Georgia Local Section (GLS) has recently announced the 2nd Edition of his Principles of Toxicology book. Two chapters were co-authored by GLS member Paul Middendorf, Ph.D., CIH. If you want to check out the details and give yourself the opportunity for a signed copy from one or both of our local authors, see amazon.com at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471293210/qid%3D966518408/sr%3D1-39/103-2260648-0790232
Congratulation to Christopher DePasquale, IHIT, for his successful completion of the Spring ABIH Core Exam. Chris is one of a diminishing number of IHs to carry this designation. This year's Fall exam will be the last time the Core is offered. Chris is an environmental scientist with Compass Environmental Inc.
Complimentary copies of the NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards and Other Databases CD-ROM (July 2000, Publication No. 2000-130) can be obtained by contacting the NIOSH Publications Office [pubstaft@cdc.gov, (800) 35-NIOSH, or fax (513) 533-8573]. The CD-ROM is an update of a previous NIOSH publication of the same title (April 1999, Publication No. 99-115) and contains the following:
The Georgia local section Executive Committee met on September 15. Attending members included Brenda Southerland, Dave Beem, Harold Hobbs, Michelle Pickard, Mark Demyanek, and Peter Kowalski. Discussion items included a financial update, plans for local section donations, final agenda items for the fall meeting, directory corrections, and the Georgia Local Section Operations Manual which is currently being drafted. It was noted that 77 members who paid dues in 1999 have not yet paid dues in 2000. E-mail reminders to pay dues will soon be issued. The committee voted in favor of a $500 donation to both the American Industrial Hygiene Foundation and the Foundation for Occupational Health and Safety in support of their educational roles in industrial hygiene. The committee is also researching options for student scholarship donations. Guest coupons are again available in the newsletter and door prizes will be awarded. Membership directory correction labels are also being provided with the newsletter. The next board meeting is scheduled for December 8.
The American Board of Industrial hygiene has awarded certification maintenance (CM) points for the following Georgia AIHA Local Section meetings:
Activity: Winter Meeting
Date: 1/24/2000
CM Points Awarded: 1 CM point
CM # 1458
Activity: Spring Meeting
Date: 4/10/2000
CM Points Awarded: 1 CM point
CM # 12923
Activity: Summer Meeting
Date: 7/24/2000
CM Points applied for
The results from the most recent membership survey (last one was conducted in 1997) has been released with some interesting results. 1500 surveys were mailed last winter with a return of 745. This near 50 % return rate is an excellent response rate for an association such as ours. Of the 745 surveys the following results were obtained:
36% - age under 40
38% - age 40-49
26% - age 50 +
73% - male
27% - female
(this is an increase of 4% over the 1997 survey)
33% - AIHA members less than 7 years
14% - AIHA members 7-9 years
53% - AIHA members 10 years or more
62% - have MS, MA or MPH
28% - have bachelor degrees
6% - have doctorates
30% - Management/Administration
24% - Consulting
13% - Occupational Health
10% - Other
9% - Field Work
9% - Safety
5% - Research/Education
47% - Private Industry
16% - Consulting Firm
14% - Government
7% - Self Employed
6% - Other
3% - Insurance
3% - Research
3% - Academic
1% - Labor
54% - Industrial Hygiene
23% - Safety
12% - Environment
11% - Other
96% - have a computer in their home, office or both
78% - use email from both home and office and have Internet access in both places
86% - visit the AIHA website
Risk Assessment
Indoor Air Quality
OSHA Reinvention
OHS Management Program
Professional Recognition
To read the complete survey visit the AIHA website at www.aiha.org and select member information.
Home builders, insurance companies, and others have been receiving calls for several years about the accumulation of a black material in carpeting, on walls, and on plastic outlets, switches, kitchen appliances, etc. In many cases, the discoloring agent has been identified as soot, and in some cases has been shown to come from candles or oil lamps burned by home occupants. In other cases, no source has been identified. Some homeowners have raised health concerns about exposure to particulate matter in the indoor environment.
Under sponsorship of the Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Technology Institute (ARTI), ENERGEN Consulting of Germantown, MD is conducting a project aimed at identifying the true causes of this condition. This project will include interviews with a number of homeowners by phone, and site visits to about 10 homes.
If you know of cases of discoloration and/or soot accumulation, and especially if you can provide the name and phone number of homeowners who have experienced the condition, the Black Soot Deposition Research Project would like to hear from you. The information will be used for research data collection only, and will be kept absolutely confidential.
To contribute contacts, or for more information, contact Dan Cautley, P.E., in Washington, DC at 202-244-2488. His fax number is 202-244-2314 and e-mail address dwcautley@mindspring.com
For those of you who didn't bookmark the GLS web site or can't remember its URL, I'm proud to report that our site now appears on the first screen of Yahoo.com when searching on the term "industrial hygiene." I have recently learned that many sites never make it to Yahoo's very selective search directory. Of course, having such a specialized search topic helps, but considering the popularity of Yahoo and the world wide demand for a Yahoo listing, I think this is a noteworthy achievement. The only other Local Section to make the list is Southern California.
We frequently receive requests from our members about Certification of Maintenance (CM) points for past meetings. Please note that we normally post CM approval numbers for recent meetings in the newsletter. You will also find these displayed at the bottom of the meeting agendas posted on the web site. Meeting agendas are posted on the Calendar page. Past newsletter issues are posted on the News page. When available, a link to the agenda for an upcoming meeting will appear in the pop-up window found on the site's Home page
On Wednesday, November 1, 2000, The Trophy Club of Atlanta (formerly The Champions Club of Atlanta) will again be the site of the 2000 Fall Golf Classic. The 2000 Fall Classic will be a special event for members of the Georgia Chapters of the Environmental Information Association, American Society of Safety Engineers, American Industrial Hygiene Association and their guests. The Fall Golf Classic, in the past and most assuredly again, will provide an opportunity for the various organizations' members to gather in a casual atmosphere to network, promote each chapter, and develop business relationships.
For details, directions and the registration form see:
http://www.uga.edu/ehs/aiha/golf.html
The deadline for registration is October 20.
