Pop-Up 2

The anticipated implementation of United States Pharmacopeia (USP) 800 in healthcare created a new resolve to conduct thorough risk assessments of healthcare formularies. The role of this assessment was to identify the hazards posed by these drugs, to evaluate the exposure risks associated with these hazards, and to determine the potential health consequences of both acute and chronic exposure. Most healthcare facilities that conducted these risk assessments utilized a risk matrix that incorporated criteria commonly used in toxicology to evaluate the exposure to chemicals.

As the pharmaceutical industry is quickly turning to novel biologics to treat and/or correct disease, a risk assessment of the biological hazards associated with these novel biologics is warranted. This presentation will provide information on these biologics; will explore the known and anticipated biological properties of each; will discuss the potential for these biologics to cause infections, to be shed, to contaminate the environment, and to be transmitted to others; will outline a novel risk assessment tool to evaluate and characterize these biologics; and will cover the pertinent risk management strategies needed to contain these biologics, to prevent inadvertent exposure to these material, to remove them from the environment, and to ensure staff and patients are appropriately educated.

Impact Statement:
Healthcare providers, safety professionals, and industrial hygienists, need to be prepared for the shift in therapeutics and medicine towards biologics, human gene transfer, and designer therapies to treat cancer, rare disease, and chronic conditions. 

Hazardous Building Materials (HBMs) are becoming a huge problem with workers being exposed after natural disasters and other similar catastrophic events. There are multiple concerning and emerging issues with regards to the risk identification, assessment, rectification and ongoing management of these situations. These disaster events linked to climate change are increasing in severity, length and number. These are events such as floods, severe storms, fires, tornados or other significant building impact and property damage events. HBMs need to be identified before remediation workers are being exposed and they then should be remediated safely. These may include Asbestos, Lead, PCBs, Mercury, Sewage, Silica, Mould, just to name a few. Case Studies and real-life examples will be discussed during this presentation to illustrate the ongoing, new and emerging issues relating to natural disaster remediation. Risk communication is key when you are determining appropriate, targeted remediation and ongoing building and site management strategies.
This presentation will describe the anticipation, recognition and the evaluation of HMBs in Disaster Zones. It will outline the meaning of embedded toxicity which relates to HBMs and the specific ramifications of these for worker exposures. Discussions on the downstream life cycles and end of life treatment of HBMs will be introduced as well as several specific emerging HBMs causing significant concern within the disaster remediation industry. Product stewardship will be discussed, as well as asset protection and management which relates to worker exposures to HBMs. This presentation is information for persons of varied backgrounds, but some basic previous experience with hazardous building materials is required. Context into these types of scenarios will be provided.