Grant Totals $9.99M for Hazardous Waste Worker Training Consortium

The Midwest Consortium for Hazardous Waste Worker Training, based in the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine’s Department of Environmental Health, has received a five-year award notice totaling $9.99 million from the National Institute of Environmental Health Services (NIEHS).

Funded since 1987 by the NIEHS, an institute of the National Institutes of Health, the Consortium develops, presents and evaluates worker training programs to help employers comply with Occupational Health and Safety Administration regulations. The principal investigator is Carol Rice, PhD, professor emerita in the Department of Environmental Health.

The Consortium teaches emergency responders, waste site workers and medical response professionals proper handling and cleanup procedures for hazardous materials. Training sessions address the needs of a specific audience and, where appropriate, include critical topics such as site decontamination, spill containment, on-site record keeping and emergency notification protocols.

"The Midwest Consortium serves a region with high manufacturing employment, ever-increasing hazardous materials transported by road, rail, and water and a legacy of waste storage or disposal in secured and unsecured locations,” says Rice. "Our goal is to provide site workers and emergency responders with the knowledge and skills to minimize their risk for exposure to hazardous compounds and thereby improve their health.

"The Consortium also provides training at the community level, building capacity to identify neighborhood hazards originating from industrial processes or transportation.”

New work planned for the next five years, Rice says, includes an investigation of approaches to improve learning during the required refresher training, compared with the traditional one-day, on-site session. Flipped learning, periodic drills throughout the year and more frequent but shorter-duration training will be offered, and the results will provide insights useful in other settings.

"We will also provide and evaluate programming to build resiliency at the plant and community level, including among communities potentially impacted by Bakken oil,” Rice says. (The Bakken formation in the Upper Midwest has emerged in recent years as an important source of new oil production.)

Through 2013, the Midwest Consortium has provided 10,470 programs to 183,913 participants who have completed more than 1.7 million hours of training. During the first year of the new award, 1,213 programs will be provided to 18,396 participants during 135,473 contract hours.

Members of the Midwest Consortium are the Greater Cincinnati Occupational Health Center, members of the Midwest Consortium are: University of Illinois, University of Minnesota, YouthBuild Louisville, Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee), Environmental Management Institute (Indianapolis), ESI International (Plymouth, Michigan), Ohio Environmental Council, Lakeshore Technical College (Cleveland, Wisconsin), Three Affiliated Tribes (North Dakota), Citizens’ Environment Alliance (Detroit) and the Green Door Initiative (Detroit).