Health Care, Infection Control, & Emergency Planning PDC

When: October 6th, 8:00am - 5:00pm
Where: Routt County Public Health and Human Services Building - Community Room - 135 6th Street Steamboat Springs, CO 80487
What: Join us for a full day professional development conference (PDC) covering health and safety topics in residential and long-term care facilities. This event is the perfect blend of information for IHs, Safety Professionals, and Long-Term Care Facility staff alike. You will hear from OSHA, CDPHE, local health department and industry representatives who will share their perspective of the importance of OEHS in this industry. Light breakfast and lunch provided. If you are staying in Steamboat, please also join us for an evening bike/hike Thursday afternoon followed by beverages at Mythology Distillery. See final agenda and register for the event through the link below https://www.aiha-rms.org/event-5385784  

Some COOL pictures from RMS Ski day back in March!
We had 5 hardy RMS members that skied at Copper Mountain; Roberta Smith (purple), Tim Lockhart (brown), Sarah Kaiman (red), Don Archibald (blue) & Jim Hayden (not pictured).

RMS Member Interview- Barbara O'Kane

This quarter we are profiling member Barb O’Kane. Barbara is the Executive Director for Environmental Health and Safety at Colorado School of Mines in Golden. She has a Master’s Degree in IH from Colorado State University and a Bachelors in Botany also from CSU. She has been a continuous member of AIHA-RMS since the 1990’s. She’s served on the education and Fall Tech committees as well as the executive board. When not doing geeky safety stuff, she volunteers as a park patroller and frog watcher for Jefferson County Open Space, competes in jigsaw puzzle competitions, bakes with gluten, plays pinball and is an avid cyclist.

How were you introduced to the field of Industrial Hygiene?
I need to give credit to my sister who, when she wasn’t flying into hurricanes, was doing asbestos containment clearance sampling. At the time, I was working as a timber cruiser for the US Forest Service. Some of our work involved spraying trees with lead based paints (we couldn’t just get rid of the paint, we had to use up what was in the supply shed), applying pesticides on four wheelers while wearing shorts, running chainsaws, and fighting wildland fires. Wildland fire fighting places huge physical demands on a person - off the chart respiration rates, breathing carcinogenic smoke and often times suffering heat stress. At some point it dawned on me that people do really hazardous things in the workplace and most of them don’t question how these exposures impact to their health. After my sister mentioned industrial hygiene I found the Master IH program at Colorado State University (go Rams!).

 What are your main areas of expertise and what do you spend most of your time doing?
Most of my days are filled with leading the EHS team, looking for ways to strengthen safety culture, overseeing our emergency management program, reviewing building drawings and monitoring subcontractor construction safety. I would consider myself a subject matter expert on incident investigating, human factors, machine safeguarding and laser safety. I’ve done a great deal of hearing conservation, respiratory protection and ergonomics over the years.

 Tell us about a time you made a significant impact to improve workplace health and safety conditions? What was the most gratifying moment/ time in your career so far?
A memory popped into my head when I read this question. Years ago I did an ergonomic assessment for our company’s receptionist. And like many workstation improvements, it was an iterative process. We started by getting her a better chair, and a few weeks later I came by and recommended we install a keyboard tray. On the third visit she had me sit down next to her and she said with tears welling in her eyes “Barb, I can tell that you really want to help me. I want to share with you what this means to me. This morning my husband had to curl my hair for me because my hands are so weak, I can’t hold a brush. I love my husband, but I don’t want him doing my hair. You’ve listened to me, you’ve made my desk better and you’ve helped me connect with HR”. Even to this day this experience touches my heart. Not so much that it was gratifying but it humanized our profession. .

 What is one piece of advice you would give to young/ fresh IH professionals?
Collect samples only as a last resort. You can fix things without hard data. Once you have data, you have data and you will have to explain it.


Thanks Barbara!