My year as president is nearing the end. I hope I have served the local section as good as past presidents have. I truly thank the Board members who have made my job much easier. Kevin Gara, President-Elect; Leah Ogelsby, Secretary; Ed Grunwald, Treasurer; Peter Kowolski, 2nd Year Director; Grover Higgins, 1st year Director; and Stan Salisbury, Newsletter Editor; work hard to bring you quality programs and provide you with important information that you can use to accomplish your industrial hygiene goals. Peter, Ed and Stan are stepping down and their leadership skills will be missed but we have very capable members stepping into their shoes. Kevin Gara, President-Elect, who would normally be moving into the President's position as directed by our by-laws, is moving to Indianapolis, Indiana this summer and thus will step down as President. Kevin is not changing jobs, just location. He is taking his family back to Indianapolis to be closer to family. I want to thank Kevin for his great ideas and ability to put them into practice. We wish Kevin the best and I am sure we will see him again at a National Conference or during his travels back to ATC in Atlanta. Because Kevin is leaving we are having to elect a President along with a President-Elect. The Board is please to announce that Leah Ogelsby, our current Secretary, has agreed to run for that office.
Included in this newsletter is the ballot for next year's Executive Committee. Please take the time to vote. Your choices are important. Once you have completed your ballot, please return it to President-Elect, Kevin Gara by May 3rd. Counting the votes will be his last official act for this local section.
If you missed it, we had another great conference with the ASSE in Augusta, Georgia. But, next spring the professional development conference will be in Atlanta and the local section has the lead in developing it. A joint committee from the Georgia ASSE chapters and the GLS will begin meeting in late August or early September to put together a meeting that will have an integration of excellent industrial hygiene and safety topics. If you have ideas or would like to serve on this committee please contact a local section board member.
The Executive Committee sees working with the ASSE as a natural partner. So many of us wear two hats and sometimes three (don't forget environmental). It is advantageous for us to combine education opportunities when it can save us time and money. Joint meetings of this caliber give us the opportunity to increase our working knowledge for minimal cost. Even the AIHCE does not provide the many safety topics that you can find at the Georgia ASSE/AIHA PDC. I hope that all of you will take advantage of this opportunity when it presents itself in the Spring of 2003.
The AIHCE this year is in San Diego, CA on June 3-7. For those of you going, you may notice a display of local section information. This is something new the AIHA is presenting and the GLS is taking advantage of it by supplying a brochure on our benefits.
One last item before I depart from this column. The local section is in good financial shape. For this the board thanks you as members and our vendor sponsors. We are grateful for their participation in our Vendor Day meetings and their advertisements in our newsletter. Please continue to support them. Their financial support enables us to bring to you quality programs at a reasonable cost.
The American Board of Industrial hygiene has awarded certification maintenance (CM) points for the following Georgia AIHA Local Section (GLS) meetings:
Activity: ASSE/AIHA PDC
Date: 3/18-19/2002
CM Points Awarded: 2 Safety CM points
CM # 02-1113
Activity: Winter Meeting 2002
Date: 1/2/2002
CM Points Awarded: 1 Safety CM point
CM # 02-1498
Activity: Fall Meeting
Date: 10/22/2001
CM Points Awarded: 1 CM point
CM # 01-420
Activity: Summer Seminar
Date: 7/20/2001
CM Points Awarded: 0.5 CM point
CM # 16045
To find approval numbers for other past meetings or to link to pdf copies of ABIH approval letters, please visit the GLS Web site's Calendar page at:
http://www.georgiaaiha.org/calendar.html
The Georgia Local Section Executive Committee met on February 22, 2002 at Georgia Power. Attending members included Stan Salisbury, Ed Grunwald, Kevin Gara, Grover Higgins, Leah Oglesby and Brenda Southerland. The board meeting started off with a treasurer's report from Ed Grunwald. Ed discussed the potential tax implications of depositing some of our funds into an interest bearing account, and the board agreed to research the idea. Ed received a lot of positive feedback from our vendors that participated in the Winter Meeting. The vendors were happy with the attendance and interest from our members.
The board also shared the positive comments we each received from both member participants and vendors. We had great speakers at the meeting, and the topics proved to be extremely interesting and informative. Thanks again to all members that participated and the hard work that Kevin and Ed put into organizing the meeting. It was a real success.
Kevin Gara gave us an update from the AIHA Leadership Workshop he attended in Washington, DC. Kevin had a lot of good information to share that he picked up from the meeting and other local section leaders.
Grover and Ed set up plans to travel to UGA on April 3, 2002 to select our candidate for the local section scholarship. The announcement on their selection will be shared with the membership when it is finalized. We also discussed the ballots going out soon for election of next year's board. Kevin announced at the board meeting that he will be moving to Indianapolis, IN this year and will not be able to fulfill his obligation as President. With his announcement, we will be adding a candidate to the ballot for President. Kevin has done a great job as President-Elect, and we will certainly miss him when he's gone.
As always, please don't hesitate to contact a board member if you have meeting topic ideas or would like to host a meeting at your facility. See you at the summer meeting!
The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists have settled three lawsuits regarding the setting of TLVs. Although these three cases were each resolved in a manner acceptable to ACGIH®, the litigation did point out the need to further explain the proper use of TLVs® and BEIs®. Therefore, the ACGIH® Board of Directors adopted a Statement of Position Regarding the TLVs® and BEIs®. This position statement can be found on the ACGIH website at www.acgih.org.
The following is a summary of the statement as obtained from the ACGIH website:
I feel I've neglected the Web site since the first of the year, but I do want to welcome our new sponsors and vendors and announce that links have now been added to the GLS site's Other Links page. Please take the time to visit their Web sites to learn more about their services and to acknowledge our appreciation for their support to our Georgia Local Section.
It had been over a year since I had last checked for broken links on the Other Links page. With the ever-changing landscape of the Web, I was not surprised to find several broken links that needed updating. There were also some links to sites that no longer exist on the Web.
One update you may want to download is on the News page. It's the 2002 edition of OSHA's employer notification list. Each year OSHA sends letters to workplaces with the highest occupational injury and illness rates. This year over 13,000 employers were notified to take corrective action to remove hazards causing the high rates. These Establishments were identified through employer-reported data to OSHA from a 2001 survey of 80,000 worksites and is based on data from the year 2000.
The workplaces identified had eight or more injuries or illnesses resulting in lost work days or restricted activity for every 100 full-time workers; the national average is three instances for the same number of workers.
The list does not designate those earmarked for any future inspections. An announcement of targeted inspections will be made later this year. Also, the 13,000 sites are establishments in states covered by federal OSHA. The list does not include employers in the 24 states and two territories that operate their own federally-approved state OSHA programs.
GLS members can download this list directly from the GLS News page (www.georgiaaiha.org/news.html). The list is formatted as a Microsoft Access 97 MDB file and is sorted by State and by Company name.
Finally I want to let everyone know that although I'm stepping down as the Local Section Newsletter Editor, I will continue to support and maintain our GLS Web site. I have enjoyed to opportunity to serve on the GLS Executive Committee these past several years and I look forward to working with our new board members to ensure our Web site continues to serve their needs and the needs of our GLS members.
According to a message recently received via the Internet from the Occupational Environmental Medicine (OEM) e-mailing list, the short list of candidates for NIOSH director are:
Rumor has it that Martin Reape will be the number one choice because several groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers, proposed his name to the White House. The Director of NIOSH does not need Senate approval and is officially designated by the Secretary of HHS. The position carries a six-year term.