	U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

	OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY ADMINISTRATION

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	NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON 

	OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY & HEALTH

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	TUESDAY
	JUNE 22, 2021

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              The National Advisory Committee on Occupational Health Safety & Health met via video-teleconference, at 1:00 p.m. EDT, Anne Soiza, Chair, presiding.


MEMBERS PRESENT
ANNE SOIZA, Chair
MICHAEL BELCHER
LEANNE COBB
KATHLEEN DOBSON
AMY HARPER
DAVID HELLER
CYNTHIA LEWIS
ANDREW PERKINS
REBECCA REINDEL
STEVE SALLMAN
WILLIAM WALKOWIAK



STAFF PRESENT
ANDY LEVINSON, Designated Federal Official
JAMES S. FREDERICK, Principal Deputy Assistant 
  Secretary of Labor for OSHA
JOHN HOWARD, Director, NIOSH
VANESSA MYERS, Office of the Solicitor
PAMELA BARCLAY
ASHLEY BIENIEK-TOBASCO
LISA LONG
JESSICA SCHIFANO
AUGUSTA WILLIAMS

	CONTENTS

Opening Remarks, Roll-call,
Introductions	4

Agenda	19

Discussion of December 12, 2019
Meeting Minutes	22

Federal Advisory Committee Act
(FACA) Ethics	24

NIOSH Update	36

OSHA Update	59

Break 

Heat Stress	83

Break

OSHA Safety and Health Programs	140

Open Discussion, Closing Remarks	196

Adjourn	202


	P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
	(1:12 p.m.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Good afternoon to most of you.  Good morning to any of you who are out here on the west, just like me.  This is the NACOSH meeting for June 22, 2021, starting at 1:00 p.m. approximately, Eastern Time.  And it's scheduled until 5:00, but I anticipate that we will probably end a little early.
              So first on our agenda is to welcome all the new members of NACOSH and the participants in a NACOSH meeting.  It has been quite a while since we have met and so there are a lot of new faces.  And so first of all, today I would like to go through and have the members introduce themselves after I call your name.  And this will also serve as the roll call.
              Andy, is that satisfactory for you?
              MR. LEVINSON:  Anne, that sounds great.  And as long as --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- I'm talking, let me just identify myself.  My name's Andrew Levinson and I am the acting director of the Directorate of Standards and Guidance, and the designated federal official for this federal advisory committee.  Thanks, Anne.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  You bet.  Thank you.
              Okay.  So this will be double-duty: introductions, real quick ones, members, and then also this serves as the roll call.  So first of all, I'd like -- Leanne Cobb, if you could unmute and say hello to everyone.  And give us a brief background of -- let's say one to two minutes max for each of us -- what position you hold on the committee, and a little bit about where you're at, and your background.  Thank you.  
              
              MEMBER COBB:  Hi.  My name is Leanne Cobb.  I am the risk manager now at Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach County, Florida.  And I am the public representative on the committee, and my background is environmental health and safety, industrial hygiene, pretty much in education, manufacturing.  And I'm glad to be here.  I look forward to talking with you-all and working with you-all.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you very much, Leanne.
              Next we have Cynthia Lewis.
              MEMBER LEWIS:  Hello.  Cindy Lewis.  I'm currently the director of the Gulf Coast Safety Institute at the College of the Mainland in Texas City, Texas.  My background is in safety and industrial hygiene.  I run a continuing-education training organization for safety and health.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you, Cynthia.
              MEMBER LEWIS:  Yes.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Amy Harper.
              
              MEMBER HARPER:  Well, good morning to everybody.  I'm based in Seattle.  I'm the senior director of workplace training, consulting, and surveys, at the National Safety Council.  I help set the strategic direction for the council's Workplace Safety group; that includes strengthening the competency of safety professionals, encouraging organizations to mature in their safety journey, and contributing to the science and practice of EHS whenever I can.
              I've led a project at National Safety Council recently, to create a maturity and competency model.  I created, and I currently direct, the Safety Standard of Excellence program, which is a partnership between American Staffing Association and NSC, focused on promoting temporary-worker safety and host-employer responsibilities.
              Prior to the National Safety Council, I was in the insurance industry, doing consulting work and training; so I was with Travelers Insurance and Liberty Mutual.  I am a alternate member of the ISO 45001 Technical Advisory Group 283.  And then I've also interacted with the Board of Certified Safety Professionals, doing CSP item validation and the such.
              
              I have a doctorate degree in social and organizational psychology, so my past with safety was not traditional.  But I do have my CSP.  Thank you.  Glad to be here.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you, Amy.  Another Web (phonetic) poster.
              Bill, are you online yet?
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  Yes.  Hi.  I'm online.  Thanks.  Bill Walkowiak.  This'd be my last meeting unless we have another one before July; my appointment ends then.  Wish we could've done more, but I was honored to be a part --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  -- of this group.
              I'm the director of safety policy at the Secretary of the Air Force Office.  I work for the assistant secretary.  And our assistant secretary, of course, is the DASHO from the Department of the Air Force, which is now the Air Force and the Space Force together.  And so I advise her on safety-and-health matters, as part of the team.
              
              One of the recent things I've done is that -- they asked me to lead a assessment of AFFF, or aqueous film-forming foam, basically firefighting foam that has this PFAS chemical in it, the perfluorinated chlorine, which has some negative health effects.  And so we're required by law to get rid of that stuff in our arsenal, and we have to replace it with something.
              And so I got the challenge of working that for about six months.  And we just finished that.  It was -- pretty big project.  Felt like a big, gigantic term paper.  But learned a lot about that.  That was over at Navy Facilities Engineering Command Construction Safety.  I was their director of safety over there.  And they have about a $7 billion-a-year construction budget that they oversee, so that was a lot of learning about construction.
              And before that, I was a deputy for occupational safety at the Air Force Safety Center.  And before that, I served in the Air Force as a pilot and an accident investigator for 26 years.  And that's how I got here.  So thank you.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you.  Thank you, Bill.  Pleasure to work with you.  I do also wish it was more, as well.
              Rebecca, I think you made it on.  Let's see if you are connected.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Hi.  Can you hear me?
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes, we can.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Great.  Hi.  Rebecca Reindel.  I'm a safety-and-health director at the national AFL-CIO, here as a labor representative.  I have experience working at federal OSHA.  And my background is in the toxicology space as well as the public-health space.
              
              And, you know, of course we deal with the whole gamut of workplace exposure issues at the AFL-CIO, representing 56 national international unions in industries across the board, dealing with chemical exposures, biological exposures, physical exposures, injury prevention, and record-keeping, and all sorts of fun and exciting areas.  And so I'm happy to be here, and thank you for having me on the committee.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you very much.
              Steve Sallman.  Unmute and say hello.
              (No audible response.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  We can't hear you if you are speaking, Steve.
              (No audible response.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  Let's move on to see if -- and then, Steve, maybe you can unmute or something.
              Michael Belcher, were you able to connect or phone in?
              MR. LEVINSON:  Anne, I don't think we've seen Mike yet.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  I just wanted to give him one more chance.  All right.  Kathleen Dobson?  
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Hi, everyone.  Thank you, Anne.  My name is Kathleen Dobson.  I work for a company called Alberici Constructors.  I was recently appointed to the committee in January, and I'm very happy to be here.
              
              I've got 22 years of experience in construction.  I am on the committee as a safety representative.  I have a degree in nursing, so I spent about a little less than half of my career in hospital-based nursing, and have transitioned now into the world of construction.  And I'm, you know, thrilled to be here.
              I also serve on the ASSP Standards Development Committee, and I am the current EHS chairperson for TAUC, which is The Association of Union Constructors.  So, wide range of experiences.  And looking very much forward to participating in this committee.  Thank you very much.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you very much.
              David Heller, introduce yourself.
              MEMBER HELLER:  Thanks, Anne.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MEMBER HELLER:  Thanks, Anne.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              
              MEMBER HELLER:  Dave Heller.  I'm a newly-appointed public representative.  Honored to be here, be on the committee.  I'm a chemical engineer.  First part of my career, I was in plant production and in operations.  I worked for Union Carbide Air Products and Chemicals, transitioned over into safety, where I've had corporate positions in loss prevention and process safety, as a plant safety manager in about a 500-person plant in West Virginia, for about six years.
              And I've worked for the Chemical Safety Board in my career.  I was a lead investigator, an investigations manager at the CSB, early on in days at the CSB.  And since 2005, I've been consulting with AcuTech Consulting Group, traveling pretty much around the world, mainly doing process-safety consulting, but also general safety and health.  Glad to be here.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Great.  Thank you very much.
              Andrew Perkins.  There you are.
              
              MEMBER PERKINS:  Hello.  Hello.  Can you hear me?  Just validate.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Absolutely.
              MEMBER PERKINS:  Perfect.  Andrew Perkins.  I am a HHS public representative.  I'm very happy to be part of the committee.  I work for Alabama Power here in Birmingham, Alabama.  I'm a senior industrial hygienist.  I support, all throughout the state, all aspects of industrial hygiene.  Have educational background in computer information systems and industrial hygiene.
              I worked for Briggs & Stratton Corporation and worked for Vulcan Materials Company, with mining experience there, and came to Alabama Power in 2013.  And I'm grateful to be part and be an active member.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Great.  Thank you so much.  We-all want active members.  Thank you.
              And Patricia Bertsche is not in attendance today.  Let me confirm that.  Andrew, is that right?
              MR. LEVINSON:  That is correct, Anne.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  All right.  Steve Sallman, did you want to give it one more shot of unmuting and introducing yourself?
              Or is he offline?
              (No audible response.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  We'll move forward, then.  At this point, Andrew, since we have a lot of new members, do you want to do a quick introduction of the staff who are here?  Or how do we want to do that?
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes, Anne, I think that would be great.  So my name's Andy Levinson.  I'm, again, the acting director of the Directorate of Standards and Guidance.
              How about Lisa Long?  Would you like to say a few words?
              
              MS. LONG:  Hi.  I'm Lisa Long.  I am the director of the Office of Engineering Safety and the director of Standards and Guidance, and also the acting deputy director in Standards and Guidance.  And I'm a chemical engineer.  My background is in a lot of process safety.  And my office handles the more engineering-oriented standards within OSHA.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And Lisa's role on the committee is she is the alternate designated federal official.
              Carla, would you like to say a few words and introduce yourself?
              MS. MARCELLUS:  Yes, sure.  Hi.  I'm Carla Marcellus.  I'm the advisory-committee specialist.  And I think I've worked with a few of you before.  So, welcome.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And, Jenny (phonetic) Levin, would you like to introduce yourself?
              MS. LEVIN:  Yes.  Hello, everyone.  My name's Jennifer Levin, also known as Jenny.  I am an attorney with the solicitor's office, and I'm here as counsel to the advisory committee and very pleased to assist you with any legal aspects of your work.
              MR. LEVINSON:  All right.  And --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- there are several other OSHA career staff that you'll hear from later today during presentations, and they can introduce themselves at that time.  Thanks, Anne.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  You bet.  Yes.  Always want to do that.  It's difficult when it's by the phone.  I'm used to having people in a room.
              So before we get too far, I wanted to do a real quick -- for myself.  I shouldn't assume that people know me.  So my name is Anne Soiza.  And until April 1st, I was the longtime head of Washington State OSHA, or better known as Washington DOSH.  And I'm a chemist by background.  And I primarily worked in industrial hygiene in my early years, but quickly, as a leader in the organization of Washington OSHA, adopted a lot of safety initiatives and oversight.
              
              I've worked basically half of my 33 years in education and outreach and about half of my years in compliance-enforcement activities in Washington OSHA.  I previously worked as a chemist in the private sector and also worked in radiological health for the State of Washington at the Hanford site in Eastern Washington, if any of you know that place, doing low-level radiation monitoring.  So I'm kind of a monitoring, analytical kind of person, so --
              It has been my pleasure to -- devoted my entire career to preventing worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses.  And I've been very proud of what I have accomplished, especially in the last year-and-a-half with the COVID-19 response.  What a way to end your career, is all I can say, in the middle of a occupational-health pandemic.  But anyway.
              It's been a thrill.  I've been on the NACOSH since, I think, 2010 or '11; I'm not sure.  I have been chair for 2012 forward; I'm not sure.  Something like that.  Or maybe it's 2012 and 2013 chair.  I can't remember.  But I've been around a while.  So I am encouraged to pass off the reins to the future chair.
              
              And I encourage the members who are new: really don't be afraid of being very active.  NACOSH has a very important role of advising HHS and Department of Labor OSHA, and we want to help those two federal agencies succeed in reducing worker fatalities and injury and illnesses in our country.  So take action.  And set some modest demands of OSHA and HHS.  If you want to know more and be more active, then take the reins and be so, is my recommendation to you.
              So, quickly on the agenda.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes, Anne --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- one sec.  This is Andy.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Mike Belcher and Steve Sallman were both listening in.  They've not been able --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Oh.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- to unmute.  Can we try them again and see if we can hear them now?
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Well, of course.  Absolutely.  Thank you, Andy.
              Steve, can you jump in?  Let's give it one more shot.  
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Yes.  Hopefully you can hear me.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Oh, my gosh.  Look at you.
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  All right.  So much for -- I overcame my technological challenges, so -- I apologize.  Well, first of all, thanks for the honor and privilege of being able to serve.  Unfortunately, the pandemic has certainly interrupted things.
              
              But I'm Steve Sallman.  I'm the director of Health, Safety and Environment for the United Steelworkers.  I've been with the Steelworkers for 17 years.  Prior to that, I came from the State of Iowa, at the state program there, where I spent almost five years.  And before that, I spent 13 years at the Bridgestone/Firestone plant in Des Moines, Iowa, where I was a full-time health-and-safety representative for Local 310.
              So thanks for the honor and privilege of being here.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Good.  I'm so glad that we were able to make a connection, Steve.  Thank you.
              And then Michael?  
              (No audible response.)
              MR. LEVINSON:  All right.  I guess Mike is still listening, and we can see if he --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- can join in later.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  Thank you.  So anybody else before we move on to the agenda?  Any other comments?
              Court reporter, how are you hearing things?  Okay?
              (No audible response.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  You bet.
              
              So on the agenda, those of you -- pretty much we had our introductions.  We've got members who their term is ending in July.  We have new members on board; congratulations to all of you.
              We're going to go quickly through the minutes.  We'll do a vote.  We do have to vote to accept the minutes, if I'm not mistaken, Andy and others.  And then we'll have some training on our ethics and then we'll move into the NIOSH update, an update from OSHA, and we'll have a break if that's the appropriate time for the break.  We'll have a heat-stress presentation, and then we'll have a presentation on OSHA's safety-and-health program.  We will have public comment at the end.
              Normally, these meetings are not just an afternoon; they normally are a day or two long and so there's multiple breaks.  And so we're trying new things today.  This is a public process.  We do want the public to participate.  And so I wanted to give you a heads-up.  The time that that will occur will be towards the end of the meeting.  Is there anything else I need to run through, OSHA staff, before we go into accepting the minutes?  
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Sure, Anne.  The only thing for the minutes is that the only people who should vote on the minutes are people who were members and attended that meeting.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Right.  Okay.  So those of you who were members December 12th of 2019, please get ready to say yea or nay to accept the meeting minutes.  Hopefully you've had a chance to look over the summary minutes for the last NACOSH meeting.  And with that, I'd like to ask: those in favor of accepting the minutes, please say yea.
              (Chorus of yeas.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Are there any nays or corrections?  
              (No audible response.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Hearing none, I see that the summary minutes for Thursday, December 12, 2019, of the NACOSH meeting held in Washington, DC, have been accepted.
              
              MS. LEVIN:  This is Jennifer Levin, the counsel.  I'm going to move those minutes into the record --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MS. LEVIN:  -- today, as --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Great.  
              MS. LEVIN:  -- an exhibit.
              (Whereupon, the summary minutes of the NACOSH 12/12/2019 meeting were received into the record.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you very much.
              MS. LEVIN:  Thanks.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So next on our agenda, Vanessa Myers -- for those of us who are members of the committee, we do have to have ethics review and training on the record.
              So, Vanessa, I'm going to turn it over to you right now.
              If that's an appropriate step, Andy.  This is the time, right?
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.  That's correct, Anne.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  Thank you.
              Vanessa --
              
              MS. MYERS:  Thanks, Anne.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  There you are.  Okay.  Great.
              MS. MYERS:  There I am.  Thank you.  Thank you, guys, so much for having me today.  I will keep this training relatively brief.  But I want to thank you-all for your service to the department.  As Anne has already stated, the work you do for the department is critical, and we appreciate it very much.
              I am here today to provide you ethics training as there are federal ethics rules that apply not only --
              (Audio interference.)
              MS. MYERS: -- public information that you may be privy to as a part of your service on the committee.  So I'll cover these, each one, briefly in turn.
              
              First, the misuse of your government affiliation: You may not use your association with the government to try to obtain personal benefits or favors for yourself, your friends, your relatives, or your business associates.  Because you-all are not federal employees, you may not represent that you serve or act on the federal government, unless you are specifically authorized to do so as a part of this committee.
              Therefore, you should not be using the Department of Labor seal on your personal business cards or stationery, or refer in any of those apparatuses as your relationship to a government office, to make it seem as if you represent that office.  If, however, you wanted to include that you were an advisory-committee member to this committee, that is absolutely permissible.  But you just want to make very clear what your role is and how you are --
              (Audio interference.)
              
              MS. MYERS: -- may find this a little humorous, but it could happen.  It has happened in the past.  No business should ask you to endorse a product, based on your role on this committee.  The government is not allowed, nor are federal employees, to endorse any private business or enterprise.
              I already touched on the misuse of government resources.  But you want to make sure that, if this max-telework-capability period ends and you happen to be in our offices either in your community or in Washington, DC, at headquarters, you want to make sure that you are not using government equipment, supplies, services, or the time of government personnel for your own personal use, especially if that had to do with any of your outside-employment activities, because the department's use policy prohibits strictly any use of government equipment for profit-making activities.  While this may not be very relevant right now, before you know it, you may be in Frances Perkin Building in Washington, DC.  So it's important to keep that in mind.
              
              Lastly, with the misuse of government information, there may be information that you obtain as a part of your work with this committee, and it may not be used for your private activities or disseminated to any person outside of the government, unless they are authorized to receive this information.  This could be non-public data, non-public economic analyses, information on ongoing civil or criminal investigations, private personnel information, or classified national-security information, or even non-public Labor Statistics data.
              A good rule of thumb is that, if it is on the department's website, if it is in the Federal Register, if it is otherwise public, it is public information that you are free to share.  But if it is non-public information, you cannot release it to any other individual.  That is part of a criminal statute.
              
              So we want to make sure that you're very clear on that.  And this committee does a wonderful job of letting you-all know if there is non-public information that has been revealed to you.  But if you ever have a question, you can absolutely ask your designated federal officer or Jennifer Levin, who can connect you to me.  
              To cover the last few pieces of this -- separating your government work and the private work -- sometimes -- and I imagine, in both cases of this committee, the non-federal committee member has been this before the department, in their other capacity, in their private capacity, whether as an individual or as a representative of their organization.  You're strongly encouraged to deal with that other department business on days when you are not here in your capacity as an advisory-committee member.
              Of course, if it's unavoidable that something happen on the same day, it's helpful to have another representative of your outside organization handle the matter.  Or if it absolutely has to be you on both matters, talk to us briefly first, ahead of time, so that we make sure that we have cleared all the hurdles there are to clear on that.
              
              Lastly, before I talk about political activities, I want to talk about conflicts of interest.  If there are government matters that you are asked to work on or discuss, in which the organization you represent or your employer has an interest, we highly recommend that you disclose that interest to the other committee members.  It should be made verbally and recorded in the public record, prior to working on or discussing the issue.
              In most cases, this is not going to prevent you from your service to the government.  You are here because of your outside affiliation, because of your expertise in this field.  But when it is very clear that a matter that you are about to work on or discuss -- your employer or the organization which you represent has a strong interest, maybe a strong financial interest, for example, we highly encourage that you disclose that interest into the record.
              
              And very last, I would like to talk about political activities.  For full-time federal employees, there is a law called the Hatch Act, which prevents us from advocating for or against the success or failure of a partisan political party, a partisan political candidate for office, or a partisan political group, while we are on duty or in the government workplace.
              This restriction is much lesser for you, although we strongly encourage that you keep your political activities very, very separate from your service to the department.  You are restricted only while you are on government premises or using government equipment, to engage in partisan political activity.
              As a practical example of this, if you are supporting a candidate in a local election in your community, you should not tweet out your support of that candidate while you are in the Frances Perkin Building in Washington, DC.
              
              Likewise, if you were in the Frances Perkin Building in Washington, DC, and using one of our phones, you should not be using that phone to campaign for a political party or fundraise for a political party.  So I strongly encourage you to engage in your political activities on days and weeks when you are not providing service as a part of this committee.
              I want to stop there and ask if there are any questions from the community members?
              (No audible response.)
              MS. MYERS:  Hearing none, I want to thank you again for your time.  Again, that PDF document has my contact information as well as the contact information for our alternate, designated, agency-ethics official and the counsel for ethics, Sabrina Gray.  So thank you-all, and best of luck to you in the year ahead.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  Thank you, Vanessa.  While we were having our ethics lesson and rule review, Michael Belcher was able to get on, I'm assuming.
              You want to say hello, Michael?  
              MEMBER BELCHER:  Yes.  Thank you so much.  And I apologize for that audio snafu.  But always good.  Thank you again for having us.  Again, it is an honor to serve on this committee.
              
              A little bit has changed since I last attended the NACOSH meeting in person.  I am now with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.  I took on a new role, working for a not-for-profit.  So my first venture into that space.  And I'm proud to say that I'm the national vice president for child safety and quality assurance for all the Boys & Girls Clubs, of which there are over 4,000, primarily in the United States.
              And so in addition to protecting staff members and employees, we also have the responsibility of protecting our many members, of which there are about four million people who call the Boys & Girls Clubs home.  So it's a great new challenge for me, and one that has been fantastic so far.
              So for those of you who don't know me: I've been in safety for about 30 years, in a wide variety of industries, including manufacturing, distribution, telecommunications, and so forth, which is, I guess, another way of saying I've earned these gray hairs.
              
              So I'll cut it short at that and just say again it's a pleasure to be here, and looking forward to participating in today's session.  So thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you so much.  And that sounds like a very honorable non-profit to use your skills and ability.  So that's great.  That's an important issue: child safety.  So, excellent.
              MEMBER BELCHER:  Absolutely.  
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So anything else, Andy?  How're we doing?
              MR. LEVINSON:  So --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Anything you want to mention?
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.  So I think we're doing great.  I think the only thing to mention is: all of the ethics issues that Vanessa raised -- if you have any questions about them as we go forward, either I'm available, Lisa Long, who's the DFO, or Jenny Levin, who is our committee counsel, are available to help you in the future, should anything arise.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  And with that, I think what we need to do is confirm that we actually have Dr. Howard on the line.
              DR. HOWARD:  Andy, can you hear me?
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes, we can, Dr. Howard.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Oh.
              DR. HOWARD:  Oh.  It's a miracle.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Great.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Oh, great.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Anne --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  John --
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- take it away.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  Well, hey, everybody.  I'm extremely pleased to introduce one of my very favorite people.  I have lots of favorite people, by the way, but, really, John is one of my favorite people.  And he is just a powerhouse when it comes to surviving what we've been living through the last year-and-a-half, for sure, but also just the leadership that John has expressed in all sorts of paths to making sure that occupational safety and occupational health stay on the forefront of science and data, and pushing the envelope.
              He's got excellent staff, one of which, John, is online and Janice.  I don't know if Janice made it online, but -- NIOSH is a great organization within the CDC, and we are just so happy to have you present to the committee every time we meet.  So, John, I'm going to turn it over to you for the NIOSH update.
              DR. HOWARD:  Okay.  Great.  Thanks, Anne.  And thanks, everybody, and thanks, for the new members joining.  Just want to emphasize, you know, NACOSH is actually serving both the Department of Labor and the Department of Health and Human Services.  So --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  That's right.
              
              DR. HOWARD:  -- some of you are our members and some of you are DOL's members.  So you serve both departments.  And we're delighted to have you, and delighted to hear all your thoughts, any one that you have.
              I echo Anne's sentiment: Be active.  Tell us what you think.  Offer ideas.  We enjoy advice.  We may not take every piece of advice, but we enjoy hearing all the advice.
              So I'm going to give you a update today.
              Next slide, please.
              So I'm going to do a little --
              Oops.  One more back.  Somebody's trigger-happy there.
              Okay.  So I'm just going to give a little bit about NIOSH basics and then I'm going to talk about prevention research, which is what the statute tells us we're supposed to do, and also offer service.  Then I'm going to talk a bit about the COVID-19 response, which we've been involved in, obviously, and then end up with a couple other programs.
              So next slide, please.
              
              So just to remind you: We are in another department.  We have wonderful statutory partners, both at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which we have a separate FACA for, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  Some people say we're joined at the statute with OSHA.  And indeed, we're just delighted to be able to see NACOSH meeting again, after all this time.
              Next slide, please.  Just one more back.  There you go.
              So just want to tell you: We're located in a few states in the United States; actually, eight states and the District of Columbia.  And we're in four different time zones.  These are our laboratories and our facilities throughout the United States.  You may be located near one.
              Next slide, please.
              
              Just a short -- you can hardly see this, but these are all the wonderful people that are in our leadership team throughout NIOSH, that I'm privileged to work with.  And without them, I wouldn't be able to do anything, including this presentation.
              Next slide, please.
              So this is our budget for NIOSH, per se, the kind of NIOSH that we think of when we think of the statute; that is, prevention research.  About 450 million split between extramural and intramural programs.
              Next slide, please.
              So we're going to talk about prevention research, then, in occupational safety and health.  I mean, that's what we do.  That's the bread and butter of our statute.
              Next slide, please.
              So for those of you that want more detail on our 32 programs, I encourage you to go to this website.  We have what are called Program Performance One-Pagers.  We found that people just do not have time to really get into all the details of each of our programs, so we decided one page was going to do it.
              
              And so every year we update our 32 PPOPs, as we called them, listing what the priorities of the program is, what they do in that program, what they've accomplished, and what's next for the program.  So, encourage you to look at all those.
              Next slide, please.
              So these are just some examples of the research programs that we have.  And as you know, NIOSH is the only federal agency that does research in occupational safety and health per se.  So we are it when it comes to doing that.  So we have lots of partners across both federal and state government, on all these particular programs that you see here listed, and these are just selected ones.
              Next slide, please.
              
              We have a lot of basic, what I call, old-time print publications, which of course now are all digital and can be downloaded from our website.  This is just an example of some of the more recent ones that we've done.  Probably the most recent one is a Current Intelligence Bulletin on health effects of occupational exposure to silver nanomaterials, which are a very common type of nanomaterials used now in advanced manufacturing.
              Next slide, please.
              One more slide, then, and we're going to talk about what we've done in terms of trying to organize ourselves across the distributed eight states and four time zones.
              Next slide, please.
              
              And what we've done is create program-centric connections between all of our laboratories, and what we've also done is look at a few specific topics that we have created intramural Centers of Excellence for.  We started out with nanotechnology many years ago.  We now have one on direct-reading and sensor technologies, one on occupational robotics, productive aging and work, maritime safety and health, motor-vehicle safety work; and fatigue research is one of our newer ones; and our workers'-compensation studies; trying to marry the world of injury-and-illness compensation with that of injury-and-illness prevention.
              Next slide, please.
              I'm going to give you a little example of two of those centers.  This is the Center for Occupational Robotics Research.  As you know, we're seeing more robots in the workplace, not only the old-style industrial robots that were in cages used by auto manufacturing, but also collaborative robots, or cobots, that work not in cages but they actually work together with a human worker, and increasing both the capability of the human worker, as well as some of the risks.
              OSHA NIOSH joined the Robotic Industries Association in an alliance a few years ago, which has been very productive.  And recently we've joined the National Science Foundation international robotics initiative to expand their large portfolio of research in robotics, to worker safety and health.  And that's been very productive.
              
              Next slide, please.
              The other center I wanted to highlight is the Center for Work and Fatigue Research.  You know, this is a very difficult topic, both for workers and employers: how to navigate your way through the fact that we as human beings get tired.  Our biomechanical, our biocognitive, our biosocial systems do not keep working 24/7.
              And a lot of times with the workflows that we have, the work arrangements that we have, the pressures that are in enterprises, we see fatigue raising its head most often.  Certainly we've seen it in transportation industry and manufacturing and service, but we're seeing it now throughout a lot of industries.  We've seen it in healthcare especially, in terms of doctors and nurses.  And we now decided to put a center together to draw all the NIOSH research that's been going on over 25 years, in this connection between work and fatigue.
              Next slide, please.
              
              Okay.  So let's talk about extramural research and training programs.
              Next slide.
              So our extramural research-training program is a vital, vital aspect of NIOSH.  We could not do our work if we were only an intramural program.  And so we have a robust extramural program.  And if you want to find more information on it, you can go to our website and just enter: extramural.  You should be able to find it.
              Next slide, please.
              We have a number of centers that we fund, and these are sort of comprehensive places, usually in academic medical centers, with collaborations across the academic university campus, with engineering schools, nursing schools, public-policy schools.  We have 18 NIOSH education-and-research centers, which are listed here.  We have 11 centers for agricultural safety and health.
              Next slide, please.
              
              And we have Total Worker Health centers throughout the United States also.  These centers, as I say, are vital.  They both do research as well as service in occupational safety and health, and they are part of the national network that exists from the federal government, from Health and Human Services, from NIOSH, to bring research into practice.
              Next slide, please.
              Now, we do do service too.  It's all not just pure ivory-tower research.
              Next slide, please.
              
              The Health Hazard Evaluation Program -- which is our frontline workers.  These are disease detectives, as often they're referred to in television and the movies when they talk about CDC.  But these are folks that go out -- they're specialists in health and safety.  They're usually multifunctional teams of doctors, nurses, psychologists, industrial hygienists, safety engineers, et cetera.  And they go out and look at these new emerging issues that are happening.  And as I'll talk in a minute, they were very busy during the COVID-19.
              Next slide, please.
              So we're going to talk just briefly about COVID-19, which you could talk about the next hour.
              Next slide, please.
              This is just a short summary, if you will, of the outputs that have happened during COVID-19, by the Centers for Disease Control and NIOSH.  And as you can see here, as many of you know, we have published 7,116 different documents, guidance documents, about all sorts of topics.  And some of you, I think, have seen those.  We have also done a number of outreaches to businesses, as I'll talk about.
              The next slide, please.
              
              So this is a NIOSH response.  We've done, ourselves, 30 guidance documents, a number of manuscripts, a lot of communication products.  But the one I wanted to emphasize is: we've conducted field and also virtual occupational safety and health support in 200 different facilities, 27 states, the District of Columbia, six tribal nations, in protein-processing plants, in schools, in various other types of venues that have reached out to CDC and NIOSH for engagement about how to protect workers.  And this has been significant.  We continue that activity in our vaccine task force at CDC, where we're still trying to get essential workers vaccinated.
              Next slide, please.
              And this is just another dimension that some of you, I think, already know about: our National Personal Protective Technology Lab, whose portfolio requires certification of all respirators used and required by OSHA standards.  And you can see here, just in terms of respirator approval decisions, that first row, the conventional operations, our annual output was 400.  We did 809 as response output.  So we had a 100-percent increase.  And you look throughout this data.  It's been absolutely unbelievable in terms of the amount of work that our NPPTL colleagues in Pittsburgh have been able to do.
              
              Next slide please.
              We've also been able to --
              And if you hit the button one more time, it should do a little -- oh, no, I guess it doesn't.
              Well, anyway, what we've done is laboratory work.
              I think, if you're using the PDFs, it won't do it.
              But these are an example of a laboratory setup, where we began to look at face shields, face masks, gaiters, all sorts of things.
              Next slide please.
              
              And as you can see here, from the studies that we've done on behalf of CDC, we've been able to figure out, you know, what is the filtration efficiency for all these things that people are wearing.  And a lot of this work had never been done before.  And you can see, compared to the N95 respirator, some of these clearly have less efficiency in terms of filtration.  But it's not zero; there is some protection.
              Next slide, please.
              Now, what we could've used, of course, last February but we had to wait until February 17th of 2021 to get a consensus standard, ASTM F3501-21, on barrier face coverings, which helps a lot of manufacturers be able to send their products to a testing lab and have the testing lab do performance-related standards, to show that their product does, like what we did in the laboratory, have certain percentages of filtration efficiency.  I think this will help us in, God forbid, our next pandemic.  But it certainly is something that we would've loved to have seen about a year-and-a-half ago.
              Next slide, please.
              Now, I'm just going to end with two other slides.
              Next slide, please.
              
              We have a number of programs that we administer; they're not NIOSH prevention-research programs. One of them's the Energy Employees Occupational Illness and Compensation Program Act, that we work with the Department of Labor and the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, not at OSHA; the Department of Energy.  And this results from the work that atomic-weapons workers did, and still do, to keep up the nuclear arsenal.
              The other administered program that some of you may have heard about, which we also host, is the World Trade Center Health Program.  This is a primary health plan like any other federal health plan, with patients, pharmacies, and other types of screening evaluation.
              So thank you very much.  And I'll just hit the last slide and see if anybody has any questions, Anne, if you're entertaining questions; or not.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Are there any questions for NIOSH or Dr. Howard?
              MEMBER REINDEL:  I do.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  I --
              
              MEMBER REINDEL:  I have a --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Go ahead.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  -- question.  
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  Please identify yourself.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Thank you.  This is Rebecca Reindel with the AFL-CIO.  Hi, Dr. Howard.  How are you?
              DR. HOWARD:  Hi, Rebecca.
              
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Hi.  So, question related to COVID, your work during COVID, and looking at now and going forward: Are there plans for NIOSH to be documenting the impact that the COVID pandemic has had on workers?  There's been some really good examples of this being done, and different studies that have been done in different states; you know, the Hopkins research in Massachusetts; you know, there's California and Washington; some good studies that are more state-based; but thinking about how to document really the impact of looking back on the past year-and-a-half and how that's really affected workers.  Plans for NIOSH to do that, going forward?  
              I know that the National Center for Health Statistics has been taking in information.  I think NIOSH may or may not be working with them on coding industry and occupation information, but really looking at, you know, identifying, documenting the industries and occupations affected, the disproportionate impact on people's color, and, you know, that type of impact study, going forward.  Was just wondering.
              DR. HOWARD:  Yes.  Well, Rebecca, great question.  And yes.  The answer's yes, yes, and yes.  We would love to do that.  We want to do that.  We're planning to do it.  We did it, for instance, in the Deepwater Horizon; we had a number of different, sort of, after-studies or hot washes that we ended up publishing.
              
              You know, one of the limitations right now is that I have to get the people who are responding, out of the response.  We have to end the response here, before we even start looking back.  Right now, we're not quite there.
              As some of you know, vaccinations overall in the United States, or for at least one shot, is about 65.4 percent.  But when you look at various states, there's a huge range: 80 percent, Vermont; 35 percent in Mississippi.  And then when you look by counties, it's even worse.  You have some counties that are only at 15-percent vaccination rate.
              So, you know, we need to get beyond where we're at right now.  Now, I don't know whether it's going to be next month or three months from now or whenever, but the kind of people that need to sit down and start thinking about what happened and what did we experience and what did essential workers experience and all that are still very much in the response.  So the answer is yes, we would love to do that and we would love to do it with all of our partners.  
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  NACOSH members, any other questions for John?  
              
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Sure.  This is Steve Sallman.  Can you hear me?
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              DR. HOWARD:  Yes, I can --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Go ahead, Steve.
              DR. HOWARD:  -- Steve.
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Well, thank you for your time, Dr. Howard.  We appreciate all that you and your staff are doing, especially during this pandemic.  And a lot of people are putting in a lot of overtime and doing things that they don't get paid for.  So first of all, I just want to acknowledge everyone within NIOSH, and thank you for what you're doing.
              I also wanted to ask you: what could be done for workers who are in workplaces, who are not vaccinated, for whatever reason?  There are more and more rollbacks of protections, whether it be mask mandates in states.
              
              But I was hoping maybe you could share some things that could be done in workplaces, applying the hierarchy of controls, and such, that could still protect people, because we're very concerned about the variants that's going around.  And just wanted to know if there's anything that you could share with this committee and the public, of how we can still protect those people who are not vaccinated.  Thank you.
              DR. HOWARD:  Yes, thanks, Steve.  Great question.  And as you know, both OSHA has some really wonderful guidance they just published, we have a lot of guidance about the workplace.  And I want to emphasize that, for the unvaccinated, there's nothing that has changed.  Okay.  The pandemic still rages for them.  And in fact, with the Delta variant, as you point out, Steve, there's actually a heightened risk for them.
              
              So all of the non-pharmaceutical interventions that we did last year, last June this time, need to be done for unvaccinated.  Whether they're employer, whether they're state, whether they're county, whatever, has anything to do with it.  These are individual-type things that people can do, that unvaccinated workers need to do, because they are at risk.  Okay.
              So I would suggest that that we look at all of the guidances out there, because nothing has changed for them; the risk is the same, and the mitigation measures are all the same.  And I know there's a little more of a headwind in certain states than in other states.  But it's an individual decision.
              And so if we can educate the unvaccinated worker, as you say, that is unvaccinated for whatever reason, including some vaccinated workers who are immunocompromised, who may not have as much protection as the non-immunocompromised vaccinated worker, those types of workers all need to remember that risk doesn't go to zero just because you're vaccinated, okay, and it definitely doesn't go to zero when you're unvaccinated.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Great question.  Thank you, Steve.
              
              Any other questions for Dr. Howard, or NIOSH activities?  And again, it is normal, at NACOSH meetings, to have a presentation by NIOSH staff, on their recent activities.  And I think today's was a really good overview, since we have so many new members.
              I want to thank the staff who helped prepare the presentation, and Dr. Howard and John and -- for attending, and Janice for helping present the great work that NIOSH does.  And in honor of all of you and all of us public-health officials, I thought I'd just share one of my departure retirement gifts from my staff, for all of us public-health officials.  I got my little coronavirus stuffed animal; it was given at an appropriate moment, in the heat of seven-day weeks.  It's a pretty cool little item.
              But anyway, just thank you so much for everything that you're continuing to do and all the pressures that the NIOSH staff had to stand up to during the past year-and-a-half in particular.  Makes us proud.
              
              DR. HOWARD:  Well, thank you, Anne.  And you guys have a --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              DR. HOWARD:  -- great meeting.  And I look forward to the next NACOSH meeting soon, I hope.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.  Thank you, John.
              Jenny, do you want to put the NIOSH update into the record?
              MS. LEVIN:  Yes, I do, but first I want to move into the record our agenda for today, as an exhibit.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Oh, perfect.  Yes.
              (Whereupon, the meeting agenda was received into the record.)
              MS. LEVIN:  Yes.  And then as a --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Absolutely.  
              MS. LEVIN:  Great.  Move the NIOSH presentation by Dr. John Howard into the record as an exhibit.  Thanks.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you, Jenn.  Yes.
              (Whereupon, Dr. John Howard's presentation was received into the record.)
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  And next, the OSHA update.  Jim, are you online?
              Andy, do want to introduce our OSHA leader?  
              MR. LEVINSON:  Sure.  But let's confirm --
              Jim, are you on the phone?
              DEPUTY ASST. SECRETARY FREDERICK:  I am, Andy.  Can you hear me now?
              MR. LEVINSON:  Excellent.  Yes, we can, Jim.  Thank you.
              DEPUTY ASST. SECRETARY FREDERICK:  Yes --
              MR. LEVINSON:  So Jim Frederick is our permanent deputy assistant secretary for OSHA and has been acting, since the beginning of this administration, as the assistant secretary.
              Jim, how about if you take it away.
              
              DEPUTY ASST. SECRETARY FREDERICK:  Okay.  Thank you, Andy.  And thank you to everyone for convening this meeting of NACOSH, and for the opportunity to be with you today.  In order to be a leading voice in workplace safety and health, OSHA needs to hear from experts in the field who represent our wide range of stakeholders, and that's why the advisory committees are so important.  I'm very pleased to join you today to hear your views, to see and hear your recommendations, and to work with you to make workplaces across the country safer and more healthy.
              As you know, this year, as John Howard said in his presentation, we at OSHA also are commemorating 50 years since the agency first opened its doors on April 28, 1971.  Workplace safety has certainly improved over that half-century, and it's in large part thanks to the work of this advisory committee and the organizations and groups that have been represented here over the years.
              
              However, there's much, much more work to be done and because there are still too many workers that get hurt or become ill or die at work.  And those injuries and illnesses often could've been very easily prevented.  And so that's why the importance of the work that we are all doing on this committee and the work you're doing back at your normal jobs is just vitally important.  And this is also why OSHA's mission is so important.  And it's one of the main reasons that we're all here today.
              So I know that one of the topics that you're discussing the meeting today is around the pandemic and COVID-19.  And as the pandemic has highlighted, OSHA's mission is as important now as in any time over the 50-year history of the agency, with more than 600,000 people in this country who have died from COVID-19.  Many of those people were simply doing what they had to do to provide for themselves and their families.
              
              President Biden's January 21st executive order directed OSHA to take several steps to help protect workers from contracting COVID-19.  Since January, we've taken those steps.  In January, OSHA issued updated stronger guidance providing a roadmap to help businesses decrease risk and improve worker safety so that they could reopen and stay open safely.
              On March 12th, OSHA issued a National Emphasis Program for COVID-19 and revised our approach to focus our enforcement efforts on employers that put the largest number of workers at serious risk of contracting the coronavirus, as well as employers that retaliate against workers for complaints about unsafe or unhealthy conditions.  We also began prioritizing to get compliance officers onsite during inspections.
              Since January, we have also considered and issued an emergency temporary standard.  The science tells us that healthcare workers, particularly those that come into regular contact with people either suspected of having or being treated for COVID-19, are the most at risk.  
              
              And that's why the emergency temporary standard is focused on healthcare settings and is tailored to cover the workers that most likely come into contact with someone carrying the virus.  This includes hospitals, nursing homes, emergency responders, and other high-risk areas in healthcare settings.  Throughout the pandemic, healthcare workers in these settings continue to be the source of the highest number of complaints that OSHA has received and continues to receive.
              The standard exempts certain medical facilities that are able to pre-screen patients and reschedule any that are symptomatic.  The ETS includes measures familiar to most Americans at this point in the pandemic, such as physical distancing, masks, and paid medical removal, like paid sick leave when necessary.
              We use a layered approach to better ensure gaps or weaknesses in any single approach don't result in an infection.  And we closely follow the CDC guidance for healthcare workers.  Information about the ETS, including fact sheets, frequently asked questions, and other compliance-assistance materials, are available on the OSHA website at osha.gov.
              
              In addition to the healthcare-focused ETS, we have also updated our January guidance in line with the latest science and shape of the pandemic, to help employers and workers in other industries protect workers who are still not vaccinated.  The updated guidance is also available on our website, and we hope that everyone, both on the committee and participating in this NACOSH meeting today, can help share it as wildly as possible.
              The pandemic is still evolving, and OSHA will continue to monitor vaccination progress, virus variants, and other factors that will guide our continued efforts to ensure that workers are protected from the virus while they are on the job.  We will also continue to provide employers with compliance assistance that they need, to keep their workers safe and healthy and to implement the emergency temporary standard required.  These are all important steps in making sure that we as a nation can effectively defeat COVID-19, that businesses can reopen and remain open safely, and that workers are protected.
              
              In addition to the ETS, OSHA has other regulatory activities in the works.  The spring 2021 regulatory agenda reflects the administration's priorities, with a renewed focus on improving working conditions related to workplace health and safety.  OSHA has added several items to the regulatory agenda, including rule-making on heat-illness prevention in indoor and outdoor work settings.
              Illness from exposure to heat is preventable but, every year, thousands of workers become sick from overexposure to heat, and in some cases this is fatal.  OSHA is initiating work to increase the tools available for the agency, to address this hazard.  Our Heat Illness Prevention Campaign builds awareness of prevention strategies and tools for employers and workers, to reduce occupational heat illness.
              
              We have been updating the campaign to recognize both indoor and outdoor heat hazards, as well as the importance of protecting new and returning workers from hazardous heat.  As noted in the spring regulatory agenda, OSHA plans to issue a request for information on this topic.  We want to use the RFI to initiate a dialogue on preventing occupational heat illness through regulatory approaches for managing exposure to hazardous heat.
              We also intend to form a NACOSH work group to help engage stakeholders and better understand current best practices and challenges in occupational-heat-illness prevention.  This includes how we define hazardous heat exposure across a variety of industries, in order to help the agency decide how to address this important topic.  The OSHA staff will talk with you later in the meeting about this in more detail, as well as solicit your input on developing the charge for the work group.
              
              These and other activities outlined in the spring 2021 regulatory agenda emphasize OSHA's renewed commitment to workplace safety and health, and serve as an important step in returning the agency to its core mission of ensuring that all workers in every workplace have the health-and-safety protections that they need and deserve.
              It's important that we take steps to address the pandemic and a myriad of other issues facing workplaces and, to do so, that we are fully engaging with all of our stakeholders to address their needs, share their good practices, and get their help, sharing our information and resources with audiences that we may not otherwise be able to reach.
              We have to do everything in our power to prevent worker fatalities and serious injuries and illnesses.  We can best accomplish this by focusing our efforts where they can have the biggest impact.  This includes high-hazard workplaces, reducing exposure to hazardous chemicals, and addressing long-standing issues such as falls and heat illnesses.
              
              And as we address the issues of today, we also have to think about the future.  While we may not know yet what tomorrow's hazards will look like, there are basic tenets of workplace safety that will always apply.  Commitment to safety and health, from top-level management and supervisors on jobsites, is critical, as is the development and continuous improvement of safety-and-health-management systems, with real and meaningful employee involvement.
              I can't emphasize enough the importance of employee involvement in developing and implementing a safety-and-health plan in a workplace.  Workers know the job, they're the best able to identify hazards, and they're the ones whose health and safety is at risk from unsafe work conditions.  It's also important that every worker knows about their rights and is empowered to speak up about health-and-safety concerns in their workplace.
              
              Finally, every worker must be provided training in a language that they understand.  It's important that we do everything we can to convey these messages to employers and to workers.  And it's equally important that we are reaching all workers.
              We know that, too often, many workers have been left out or forgotten due to their citizenship status, because English wasn't or isn't their first language, or because of the color of their skin.  Too often, these workers are not aware of their rights or feel uncomfortable raising safety concerns.  These workers are entitled to the very same protections as anyone else, and we have to do everything in our power to make sure they get them.
              OSHA will work with all of our stakeholders to address the issues surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion.  We are committed to reestablishing strong relationships with victims' families.  We have recently met with the United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities organization and a number of family members from that organization, to discuss their experiences on how we can support them as they seek answers about what happened to their loved ones.
              
              Unfortunately, every day there are new families who lose a loved one to a workplace tragedy.  These families may not be familiar with their rights or OSHA's role in the investigation of their loved ones.  We will be meeting with families on a regular basis so that they can share their concerns and ideas and learn more about the OSHA processes.  No one deserves to be in their position, and we owe it to them to be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve.  We also need to listen to them and to help learn from their experiences.  We want these families to know that OSHA is here to support them throughout the inspection process and beyond.
              
              We also have to make sure that the agency has the resources necessary to build back better, to achieve its mission, and to help prevent workplace fatalities and serious injuries and illnesses.  This includes increasing staffing, particularly the number of OSHA compliance officers, and ensuring that every OSHA employee has the tools necessary to do their job.
              This is reflected in the agency's most recent budget request.  We're requesting increases in funding and staff for training, outreach, and compliance-assistance activities.  We're also requesting a $2 million increase for the Susan Harwood Training Grants, to cover emerging hazards in a post-pandemic economy, such as increased workplace heat hazards in the face of global climate change.  Last week, we announced the availability of $10 million for the Susan Harwood Training Grants on infectious diseases, including COVID-19, and this fund came from the American Rescue Plan funding.  
              
              Due to the June 18th federal holiday, the grant-funding opportunities were withdrawn from the Federal Register, but we're republishing the grant-funding opportunities this week, and new application deadlines will be posted when the Federal Register notice is live later this week.  Please continue to check OSHA's website for information on the Harwood Grant funding opportunities.
              These grants will fund training and education and help workers and employers identify and prevent work-related infectious diseases, including COVID-19.  This funding opportunity is in addition to the more than $11 million in FY2021 Susan Harwood Training Grants for targeted-topic, training-and-education-materials development, and capacity-building that were also announced last week.
              Applicants are allowed to apply and receive both an infectious-disease grant and a regular 2021 Susan Harwood Training Grant.  As I said, more information is available on our website.  And please help us share these grant opportunities as broadly as possible.
              
              So in closing, just, again, thank you for inviting me to join you today.  I'm glad that this group is convening.  And I look forward to working with you on the issues impacting workplace health and safety, now and as we look into the future.  We value your participation on this advisory committee and we value the input from NACOSH to the agency and the department.  And we also value the interaction with NIOSH through this committee, and all of our other works that we do with them.
              So I'll now turn this back over to Andy and the committee.  And happy to field a couple of questions if time permits.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Anne, would you like to moderate and see if there are any questions?
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.  Thank you, Jim, for your presentation.  A quick and very thorough review, touching on all sorts of different topics.
              NACOSH members, now is your time to ask questions.  Remember, for the court reporter, to identify yourself before your question.  Thank you.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  This is Rebecca.  I have a question for Mr. Frederick, but I didn't want to go first, because I went first last time.  If anybody else has a question?
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Maybe you're the icebreaker.  Go ahead.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Okay.  Yes, so thanks for all the great work, of course, just like NIOSH; all the around-the-clock work that you and your staff have been doing this year -- well, sorry, for the past couple months.  I had a question about COVID enforcement.  I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about where we are.
              You mentioned the National Emphasis Program and some of the other -- the interim enforcement directive, now that OSHA has an ETS out in the healthcare space.  Can you give us a bit of an enforcement update since the NEP came out?  You know, what's been going on?  Has OSHA been back in the workplace in person?  You know, what kind of inspections have been going on, et cetera?
              
              DEPUTY ASST. SECRETARY FREDERICK:  Sure.  Happy to, Rebecca.  And then also, you know, there probably is opportunity to share a little bit more detail, both what's currently available on the website, and, you know, if there's some additional questions, happy to try to either field those or provide some detail later.  
              Yes, since the National Emphasis Program initiated, inspections have been taking place in all regions of the country, and those have included onsite components.  Those are an ongoing process and continuing.  We also continue to field and respond to complaints pertaining to COVID exposures in workplaces.
              And then as part of the ETS issuance of earlier this week -- you know, it's in the Federal Register on Monday -- a number of the enforcement ancillary materials, information documents, will be ready and available for review and use by the field offices in the coming days.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Thank you.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So I'm not sure how many members of NACOSH understand that, in about half of the country, there's also enforcement conducted by State Plan states.  And I just wanted to point that out; that there is a State Plan website on the OSHA website.
              As a member of OSHSPA, I am also representing the State Plan state activities in more than half the country.  There was enforcement for COVID, actual worksite visits, et cetera, being conducted by individual state plans.
              So if you have desires to know more about that, I recommend contacting the local state plan that you're interested in, or the OSHSPA association in general.  There are COVID-19 enforcement actions taken both by OSHA and by the State Plan states so that the full United States is covered.
              
              I just wanted to point that out, that OSHA's not in every state when it comes to enforcement, so -- other than where they have jurisdiction; excuse me.  Part of NACOSH is to understand the full net of occupational safety and health administration in the United States; it's not just OSHA, so -- thank you for allowing me to jump in there.
              Any other members have a question for Jim?
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  Yes.  Bill Walkowiak.  I have a question.  
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Go ahead.
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  Yes.  So I'm just curious about the emphasis on the heat-illness prevention.  Was that precipitated by an increase in heat injuries reported?  Has there been some event that precipitated this, or is it kind of a proactive effort?  I know in the Department of Defense, we have a lot of experience with heat in our deployments around the globe, and there's a lot of process.  We have to prevent heat injuries in that department.
              So I imagine we'll be gathering best practices and so forth, and looking for some data to support it.  But I'm interested in what was the event that caused this.  So why did this one stand out as a new effort?
              
              DEPUTY ASST. SECRETARY FREDERICK:  So, no, thank you for an important topic of, you know, how we got to adding heat focus onto the regulatory agenda.  And there was not one specific item or one incident or even one season of summer heat that was the result of adding this onto the agenda.
              However, what was more of an approach was an area of concern of, you know, recognizing the hazard and the increases of the hazard over recent years, and trying to come up with a process to first, you know, as we've said, better evaluate and assess what we have available to us currently, and receive some information, and hopefully have very, very good, thorough stakeholder engagement and involvement in that process.  We hope that our request for information is very thoroughly responded to by as many stakeholders as possible.
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  Okay.  Thank you very much.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Any other member questions?
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Hi, Anne.  Yes.  This is Kathy Dobson.
              Jim, hi.  How are you?  And I appreciate you being here and sharing with us.  I know that the occupational-heat-illness prevention was really focused on agriculture when it first got going.
              But yes, I work in the construction industry, and it's obviously of great impact to us.  And I appreciate that we're going indoors as well, with this effort.  But I was wondering if you could speak to some of the other National Emphasis Programs that are out there and that the agency is focusing on, as well.
              
              DEPUTY ASST. SECRETARY FREDERICK:  Certainly.  So, you know, there are emphases on a number of items, and, you know, we also have a number of both regional and area emphasis programs that are in place.  And, you know, the full list -- to recognize and understand, when we discuss emphasis programs, is that those are areas, as the name describes, of an area for emphasis around the enforcement efforts, due to whatever the topic is that has driven that to be included in the emphasis program.
              But it's just, you know, one part of the full system that OSHA is employing in the enforcement arena, and, you know, it means that we're still responsive to complaints, responding to serious injuries and fatalities, in addition to doing the work around the emphasis programs, and making certain, again -- in areas from construction, to manufacturing, to healthcare workplace settings, and everything else that is covered by OSHA -- that we are trying to focus our resources into the areas where they are most effectively able to be responsive to the needs of workers in those industries.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you very much, Jim.  Appreciate it.
              Any other member questions?
              (No audible response.)
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  I put a link to all the directives and NEPs, in the chat, for all attendees, if anybody wants to click there.  Last call for questions.
              (No audible response.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Well, Jim, thank you so much for your time today.  Staff, thank you for the presentation, preparing not only for the meeting, but also just the presentation and all of the points.  I know that, as a leader, I relied on staff to help me make my presentations.  And I know that, Jim, you did that as well.  So much that our staff do, and all the activities that they're doing.  And so that was a really good review.
              Right now, Andy, I think it's time for, in accordance with the agenda -- but also I really think it really is important that we take a stretch break, at a minimum.  And so I think at this time we should take the ten-minute break, unless --
              Jenny, do you need to do anything for the record, at all?
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  I don't know if Jenny's on, but I don't think we need to.  This is not an adjournment.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  No.
              MR. LEVINSON:  It's just a ten-minute break, so --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Right.  Right.
              MS. LEVIN:  Oh.  Right.  I'm sorry.  
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Right.  Yes, I wanted to know --- yes, I just wanted to know if she wanted to put anything into the record.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Jim had remarks, but he did not do a presentation, so I don't think there's anything to admit to the record.
              MS. LEVIN:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  I think that Jim's remarks will just be in the transcript.
              MS. LEVIN:  Yes.  That's right.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  I was just doing my due diligence.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.  Absolutely.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay, everybody.  So I have 11:36, but I know -- it's 36 after; let's say it that way.  So I will try to click in at approximately 45 after the hour, and I hope to see you-all back.  So be sure to at least stand up if you aren't going to take a break, okay?  Thank you so much.  And we'll be back at 45 after the hour.  
              (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 2:39 p.m. and resumed at 2:49 p.m.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  We're going to go back on the record.  And next on the agenda is the heat-stress presentation.  And, Andy, I'm going to turn it over to you to do introductions and walk us through presenters.  Thank you so much.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Thanks, Anne.  So I'm going to turn this over pretty quickly to Augusta Williams and Ashley Bieniek-Tobasco.  They are working with Jessica Schifano in the Office of Physical Hazards, on the topic of heat stress.
              
              As Jim Frederick mentioned earlier in the presentation, OSHA has just added a request for information to our regulatory agenda, and we'll be doing that later this year.  And then Jim also mentioned OSHA's intention to create a NACOSH work group on heat stress.  And Ashley and Augusta will be talking about that as part of their presentation, so let me turn it over to the ladies.
              MS. WILLIAMS:  Hello, everyone.  Good afternoon.  My name is Augusta Williams. And as Andy mentioned, I am in OSHA's national office, in the Directorate of Standards and Guidance, in the Office of Physical Hazards, and will be kicking things off today on our presentation on occupational-heat-illness-prevention efforts at OSHA, before passing it off to Ashley momentarily.
              Ashley, did you want to introduce yourself before we get started?
              MS. BIENIEK-TOBASCO:  Yes.  Apologies.  Thanks, Augusta.
              
              Hi, everyone.  I'm Ashley Bieniek-Tobasco.  I'm also in the national office, in the Directorate of Standards and Guidance, in the Office of Biological Hazards.  And I'll be talking with you in a little bit about the heat-illness work group.
              MS. WILLIAMS:  Great.  Thanks.  So over the next hour, we'll be discussing occupational-heat-illness-prevention efforts here at OSHA, including, first, current ongoing efforts at the agency, as well as OSHA's intention to engage a NACOSH work group on this topic.
              Later in the portion of the presentation, we'll provide an overview of this NACOSH work group, potential questions of interest for the group, as well as its intended composition.  And these portions of the conversation on the questions of interest and the workgroup composition will then be open for discussion by the committee.
              
              But to kick things off, I first thought it'd be helpful to give everyone an overview of kind of where OSHA's Heat Illness Prevention Campaign started and where it's been in recent months.  The campaign was first launched in 2011, and it focuses on educating employers and workers on the dangers of working in hazardous heat.
              In recent months, we've been collaborating with the Office of Communications to brainstorm strategies, moving forward, now that the Heat Illness Prevention Campaign is nearly ten years old.  One of the top priorities that has emerged from these brainstorming sessions was that we really wanted to have conversations and engage with our partners and existing stakeholders to learn what guidance and campaign needs employers and workers currently have when it comes to preventing occupational heat illness.
              
              Today we wanted to give a brief update as to what we've heard so far during these conversations, and as well as how these efforts have since expanded in future -- in recent months, and kind of what brings us here today and the work we want to do moving forward.
              While these conversations with various partners are still ongoing, since January we have had over 20 calls with a variety of internal stakeholders.  Due to COVID-19, these efforts have remained largely internally focused to date, but we do have an extensive group of external partners that we are still engaging with and plan to connect with in the coming months.
              So far, our efforts have been exploratory, and we have focused on listening and learning what, to date, has been useful that the agency has produced for the Heat Illness Prevention Campaign, as well as what's needed and what would be helpful to add to the campaign in the future.  We're still in the process of fully summarizing all the takeaways from these calls, and we plan on using all of this information to inform short- and long-term strategic planning related to the heat campaign.
              
              From the conversations we've had to date, though, several key themes and priorities have been reoccurring and mentioned on a majority of calls, and we wanted to bring those to the committee's attention today.  One of the first has really been the number of individual industries that have been identified as being at risk for hazardous heat exposure.
              Over 30 industries have been mentioned to date, and these have been really split between both indoor and outdoor industries.  The list provided here, which gives a sampling of some of each of the indoor and outdoor industries, are just some of those that were most popularly and most commonly mentioned throughout the calls we've had.
              
              Some of the examples for outdoor include construction, agriculture, sanitation and waste removal, oil and gas, those working in utilities or railroading.  And then in indoor: industries such as foundries, manufacturing, food processing, warehousing.  And again, that's just a sample of some of those industries that have been identified as being at risk for hazardous heat exposure.
              
              Throughout these calls, over 25 different topics have also been discussed as one that stakeholders would like OSHA to provide either new or additional information on.  Some of these include: a greater emphasis on indoor heat exposure; acclimatization of new and returning workers; providing clear information on the signs and symptoms of heat stress, and how to administer first aid in the event of a heat emergency; how employers should protect workers from hazardous heat during COVID-19 if wearing face coverings; providing practical solutions for employers, such as what engineering controls might be necessary; how do they implement these solutions in realistic ways in the field, in the workplace; how to understand the variety of temperature metrics that exist, and how to use those in real time; how to protect workers in unique work arrangements, such as the temporary workers; various risk factors employees may have in interactions of various substances, such as energy drinks, with extreme heat; as well as employer responsibilities and workers' rights during a hazardous-heat exposure in the workplace.
              And then from these calls, we also gained a lot of knowledge on the design and look and feel and the engagement of the Heat Illness Prevention Campaign.  For example, stakeholders were, you know, very clear that communication and guidance materials created should be, you know, representing the diversity of workers that are exposed to heat, as well as being available in languages that are needed in these industries.
              So far, over 17 languages have been mentioned as being important for these various industries, as well as ensuring our materials are approachable for low-literacy audiences.  As we've been updating existing materials and creating new communication materials, we've been working to address these various topics.
              
              And then we are also dedicated to kind of improving some of the engagement tactics that various stakeholders have mentioned, such as better leveraging social media and more actively pushing out new and updated materials to regional and local offices.  With this information, we've been able to prioritize several communication products and updates for the summer 2021 heat season.  OSHA's main heat poster has been one of the campaign's most utilized resources, but many of our stakeholders agreed that it needed some updates.
              From this poster, which a image of that is shown here on this slide, we've been able to also create employer products, such as social-media infographics, a pocket poster, as well as talking points and outreach presentation slides for regional and field officers to provide messaging either to the media when asked for it, or to push out to employers and local officers, so that we're able to provide consistent and uniform messaging across the agency, on this important topic.
              
              Across these products, we've been able to actively incorporate the feedback we've heard from stakeholders to date, such as placing a greater emphasis on acclimatizing new and returning workers, providing information on first aid in the event of a heat emergency, clarifying the signs and symptoms of heat stress as well as those signs and symptoms that point to a medical emergency.
              We've been able to provide practical recommendations for employers and workers, to prevent hazardous heat exposure in both indoor and outdoor work environments.  That goes a bit further beyond OSHA's previous campaign tagline of: Water.  Rest.  Shade.
              And throughout all of these, we've been really dedicated to adding a worker voice and perspective.  One product that is still in the earlier stages of development is a personal video message to communicate the impact of hazardous heat and what that can have on workers and families.
              
              Some of the gaps that our partners and stakeholders identified throughout these calls, to date, we've been able to address through updating existing, or creating new, communication and guidance products.  However, there are still some larger remaining gaps, questions, and challenges workers and employers are facing when preventing heat illness at work.
              
              Some of the most commonly discussed that we've heard to date include, you know: better understanding the full scope of industries facing hazardous heat conditions at work; 30 industries have been identified to date, across indoor and outdoor work environments has made us understand the scope of industries facing these hazardous conditions; also, tracking and monitoring hazardous heat conditions in indoor and outdoor work environments; strategies to prevent occupational heat illness in indoor versus outdoor work environments; providing employers practical and feasible solutions, in a variety of industry settings, that they're able to use to truly protect workers; providing guidance and recommendations on how employers can be making decisions to protect workers from hazardous-heat conditions, on a variety of timescales; better understanding the full range of health outcomes that are related to hazardous heat; looking at the economic incentives as well as disincentives related to occupational heat illness; and then lastly, preventing occupational heat illness in the face of climate change.
              And these were just some of the most reoccurring and commonly discussed, you know, large gaps and challenges that we've heard so far in these stakeholder and partner conversations that we've had, and kind of point to some of the work we'd like to do moving forward.  And with that, I will pass it back to Andy.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Thank you very much, Augusta.  So as Jim mentioned earlier in his talk, OSHA intends to create a NACOSH work group to advise the agency, on heat stress.  And we've done this one other time recently, which was on emergency response and preparedness.
              The way that NACOSH work groups function is that they are subgroups of NACOSH itself.  So the work group does not make recommendations to OSHA or NIOSH directly.  The work group makes recommendations to NACOSH, who then has the opportunity to accept or change or reject any of the findings of the NACOSH work group.  And then NACOSH itself makes recommendations to the assistant secretary for OSHA and the director of NIOSH.
              Now, the way that the work group works is that there are typically two to three NACOSH members who will sit on the work group.  Typically, we do something where there's a balanced committee representation; for example, labor and management.  So we have one labor, one management representative on the Emergency Response group.
              
              Then the assistant secretary for OSHA will pick ad hoc subject-matter experts, who will then sit on the work group to represent different perspectives and interest groups from labor and management, or professional-society and trade-association groups.  OSHA and NIOSH can provide technical assistance and administrative support to the work groups.  And then the work group will meet.
              The work group will be given a charge by the assistant secretary.  And one of the things that we're looking forward to in this next portion of the conversation are recommendations from NACOSH about what should be in the charge to the NACOSH work group, and then are there particular stakeholders who should be at the table, or -- we've identified different types of stakeholders -- if there are other types of stakeholders that we've omitted that NACOSH thinks would be useful to have on the work group.  And then at the end, Anne, as the chair of NACOSH, can select the two to three members of NACOSH who expressed interest to serve on the work group, going forward.
              
              So before we move on, let me see if there are any questions or if I got any of that wrong and Jenny Levin wants to jump in and correct me.
              MS. LEVIN:  No corrections from me.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Great.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So I don't want to correct but I do want to add a little flavor.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  This is Anne Soiza.  So especially for the new NACOSH members: we have had subgroups, which were led by one labor and one business leader; so only two NACOSH members per se.  And then we had experts from all walks of life, on the actual work group itself.  But we've also had work groups where the entire NACOSH committee was the work group, and we also added people from outside.
              
              So there's no fighting about who NACOSH members want to be on the group; let's put it that way.  We do want it to be balanced, and that is the preference is that business and labor are balanced on the leadership of the work group.  But I just wanted to point out that it could be somewhere in the continuum of multiple members, more than two.  So --
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Just wanted to add that.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Sure.  And --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  It --
              MR. LEVINSON:  And the other thing that I think is important to point out is the workgroup meetings are in addition to the regular NACOSH meeting.  So the work group --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Excellent.  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- they may coincide with.  So it could be that there was a multi-day meeting where there is a heat-stress workgroup meeting first, followed by a NACOSH meeting.  It could be that they're on different days.  But this is, just so that everybody's clear, an additional set of meetings and work obligations, beyond normal NACOSH business.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.  That actually is an important note for everybody to make is that this is in addition to the NACOSH functionality in terms of time commitment.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And just to add a --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  There is a --
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- little more color, for example, when we --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- did the Emergency Response work group, they held six meetings over the course of a year.  They have a different charge and a different type of work than would be going on for this particular heat-stress work group.
              But they met six times in public.  They had subgroups, within the work group, that met privately for work sessions.  So there was a lot of other activity going on before they then came back to NACOSH with their findings and recommendations.  So I just want to make sure everybody's clear about that.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Right.  And one question I have for you, OSHA, is: is there a time frame that you would find ideal to be getting the final report back from the NACOSH work group?
              MR. LEVINSON:  So I think that the answer to that is it's a little bit up in the air.  I think that a probably one-year time frame for the work group is about right.  It could be a little bit longer.  It could be a little bit shorter.  I think we've got to see what happens with the request for information.  I think we've got to see what NACOSH recommends in terms of a charge to the work group.
              So obviously, the more information that's considered, the more topics that are debated AND discussed among the work group, that may lengthen the charge or the time that the committee works and then how quickly the committee is able to come to some consensus and make recommendations back to NACOSH, you know, kind of --
              
              So there's nothing set in stone, and I think we're very flexible.  And I think the one other piece that Jim Frederick wanted me to convey is that he and the agency are very open to input from NACOSH members, on what the charge to the committee should be.  And that's why we want this conversation before simply creating a work group, because we think you need input from NACOSH to make sure that the work group is composed of the right people and talking about the right issues.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.  Exactly.
              MEMBER LEWIS:  Anne, this is Cindy Lewis.  I have a question on clarification, because we have some of us that are rolling off the committee soon but may have --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MEMBER LEWIS:  -- applied to be on the committee again.  How would we continue (phonetic) to be involved?
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Go ahead, Andy.  Do you want to talk about that?  Or not?
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  I don't really, but I think we have to.  So some paperwork is in process right now, and I can't really talk about it, because, until things --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Right.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- are signed --
              MEMBER LEWIS:  Sure.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- by the secretary, we can't really talk.  But I think perhaps we might be able to give people some direction offline.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Right.  So I think my recommendation would be: any NACOSH member who is interested in either leaving the group or working on the group or has somebody who is really top-notch in this field, who they want to forward the name of, all of that should be -- you should be freely sharing that information.
              What did you want to accomplish today, Andy?  You want volunteers today, or is this just -- you want to wait until the next meeting, or what?
              MR. LEVINSON:  So I think let's run through the rest of this presentation --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- where we talk about the topics and the types of stakeholder groups that we think might be appropriate.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.
              MR. LEVINSON:  And then I think what we would like is an expression of interest from NACOSH members who might like to be also on the work group.  And so --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Perfect.  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  That sound good?
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  Yes, that sounds like a great plan.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  I think Ashley is going to take the next portion of the presentation.
              
              MS. BIENIEK-TOBASCO:  So thanks, Andy.  So as Andy mentioned, we hope to engage in a discussion, at this meeting, of the questions and topic areas which will be of interest and consideration for the work group.  And we'll first have a brief overview presentation of the draft list of topic areas and associated questions, and then we will have a facilitated discussion on each of these areas, to ensure that we are capturing the important and relevant questions and challenges around heat-illness prevention.  And you can see the current list of topics listed here, and we'll go through a set of questions under each topic area.
              Following the discussion about the topic areas and associated questions, we'll then have a brief overview of the workgroup composition, followed by a discussion around the composition of the work group, to ensure we are including appropriate stakeholders.  And the overview parts of the presentation are meant to be brief so that we have plenty of time to discuss.
              
              So the first topic is heat-illness prevention, and I'm just going to read through these questions for everyone's awareness and then we can always go back during the discussion period if needed.  Under heat-illness prevention, we have three questions: what are current practices in occupational-heat-illness prevention; what are the existing best practices in occupational-heat-illness prevention; and what challenges are there in occupational-heat-illness prevention.
              The next category is heat hazards: how is hazardous heat currently identified and defined in indoor versus outdoor industries; what are existing best practices in identifying heat hazards in indoor and outdoor work settings; how are workers notified of hazardous heat; how should they be notified of hazardous heat; where are heat hazards being experienced and in what industries; and what challenges are there with identifying heat hazards.
              
              The next category of questions is in the topic area of acclimatization: what are current practices for implementing acclimatization; what are the best practices for implementing acclimatization in various industries and across businesses of various sizes; what are the challenges with acclimatizing workers, including temporary workers; and are there different challenges for acclimatization in indoor work settings versus outdoor work settings.
              The next topic area is monitoring: are there industries implementing exposure, medical, or physiological monitoring for heat exposure; what are the best practices for implementing a monitoring program, and how effective are the monitoring activities; how is monitoring implemented or tracked; and what challenges are there with this type of monitoring.
              The next topic area is heat emergencies: how do organizations with both indoor and outdoor work environments deal with heat-illness emergencies if they arise; what are current best practices in workplace response to occupational heat-illness emergencies; what are the challenges with responding to a heat-illness emergency; and what should be included in a heat-emergency response plan.
              
              The next category or topic is worker training and engagement: how are workers involved in heat-illness prevention; what types of training programs are being implemented, and how effective are they; what are best practices in worker training and engagement and heat-illness prevention; are workers involved in the design and implementation of heat-illness-prevention activities; and what challenges are there with worker training and engagement for heat-illness prevention.
              And then the last topic area is existing state standards: of the existing state standards, have any been more effective or challenging than others, and why; what are challenges with implementation of existing state standards; what components of a state standard or program should be included in federal guidance or regulatory efforts; and what would not be feasible to include at the federal level.  Yes, that was the last topic.
              
              And so again, we're interested in making sure that we have input on the topic areas and the questions under each of these topic areas.  And if there's anything important that is missing or that should be considered -- so at this time, I think I'll hand it over back to Anne to have some facilitated discussion.  I think we have approximately 30 minutes for discussion before we move into the discussion around the workgroup composition.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  So was the intent of OSHA for NACOSH to discuss questions for NACOSH at this time?
              MR. LEVINSON:  So --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Is that --
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Go ahead.
              MR. LEVINSON:  So, Anne, what we're thinking right now is that all of these categories that Ashley just went through, and the questions in particular, are the things that we would like to use to shape the charge to the NACOSH work group on heat stress.  And so --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- what we're looking for is not necessarily answers to these questions now from NACOSH.  The question is: are we asking the right questions and do we have the right topics?  And if there are any topics or questions that NACOSH would like to see added or amended, or if there's some that you think should not be in the charge, removed, that's what we would like to discuss right now.
              So maybe, Ashley, if we go back to the first slide of this portion.
              MS. BIENIEK-TOBASCO:  Yes, I think that's probably the best thing to do is to take it in bite-size pieces.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  Yes, right here, Ashley.  Right.  So the heat-illness prevention.
              MS. BIENIEK-TOBASCO:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  And I think that the real question is: are these the right questions for the broad topic of heat-illness prevention?
              
              MS. BIENIEK-TOBASCO:  And just a quick note: There should've also been a one-page handout included, that lists all of these on a one-page PDF.  So you may have that in your handouts as well.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  So that one-page handout was provided to the NACOSH members, and at the end of this section we will add it to the docket so that everybody else in the public can have access to it.  But it's essentially just the same list of questions on one page instead of on all the different slides.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MS. BIENIEK-TOBASCO:  Right.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So, NACOSH members, do you have any comment on the questions that are on the slide at the moment?  
              
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  I have one that -- Bill Walkowiak.  It might be covered in a sub- portion.  But I think we probably should look at are there any current or emerging technologies that could be put towards some of the illness prevention, you know, like wearables and things like that, in the workplace, as we're looking to encapsulate the best practices with other technology; was -- first thought I had.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Great.  That's a great thought: technological solutions to actual prevention.  People are always doing crazy, wonderful things in inventing best practices and new things that can help workers.
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  Right.  Like, they have this clothing now that wicks away moisture and cools.  There's a lot of stuff that's emerging out there.  I think we'd be remiss if we didn't at least address it as one of the subtopics.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Right.  And although I think it might be buried, I don't think it is a major topic area.  And I would actually encourage OSHA to consider that as a major -- I think it's -- important function for a work group of NACOSH, regardless of the topic, to kind of lay out what are the technological best practices at this time or on the short horizon in the future.  I think it's important.
              One of the main functions, I think, is to share information as broadly as possible.  And sometimes it has to be collected.  And NACOSH work groups can serve that function.
              Any NACOSH member?
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Yes.  This is Steve Sallman.  Can you hear me?
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Okay.  Good.  Well, then that means everything's still working at my end; so I'm relieved.  First, I just want to make sure that the scope of this includes both indoor and outdoor workers, because heat does not discriminate just because you work indoors or outdoors.
              
              And I think that's first, is that we clarify -- the scope has to include both.  To leave one set of workers out is to say someone is not essential or important to the work that is done in our great country.  And so therefore, it has to include both indoors and outdoors.  So that's the first point.
              And then the second point is: I do think it's important to identify -- you sometimes have to name things before you can solve it.  But we need to name what are the barriers or obstacles that's getting in the way of workers having the protections that they need.  And sometimes it's simple things of just being able to have a break.  So I think it's important, if we're going to work towards solving it, that we also name the problems or the barriers and obstacles that are getting in the way.  Thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Another NACOSH member?
              MEMBER LEWIS:  This is Cindy Lewis.
              MEMBER BELCHER:  Yes.  This --
              
              MEMBER LEWIS:  One of the things that I'd like us to take a look at when we talk about current best practices or current practices in general is the difference between large-business and small-business practices, because I think that has a very big -- a different kind of impact.  And then also kind of a sub-element of that is the lone worker, because, especially when you get into some of the questions on the slides after this, talking about emergency response and those types of activities, that's going to be very different.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Another NACOSH member? 
              MEMBER BELCHER:  Yes.  This is Michael Belcher I would say, given the interest that we're seeing today in human and organizational performance, and the realization that human error is behind many injuries and illnesses, there's an opportunity here to explore the connection between temperature extremes and the increased rates of human error.  For example, temps go up and error rates can increase; you make mistakes, you forget to do things.  And so to the point we heard earlier, that's true whether that's indoors or outdoors.  So just would suggest that.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So in my experience -- if you don't mind me -- I'm going to put on my member hat, take of my chair hat.  I'd like to share -- in our enforcement -- we've actually had a heat-stress rule for a very long time in Washington, and one of the challenges that I have seen is that it is really important for education and training of employees to be in the language that they truly understand; the materials don't have to be, but it needs to be at least translated.  And I just wanted to share that experience.  It's important that that aspect of truly communicating what the hazards are and what are the steps that they need to take, whether it's indoor or outdoor --
              
              There has been a lot of attention, obviously, for ag.  workers, but there are many hot jobs that are not in ag., from delivery workers who deliver refrigerators and dryers and washers, to foundry workers, et cetera.  There are pockets, typically, in some of those industries, where they're totally not English-speaking populations.  And so it's just really important, I've found, in Washington State, and it's probably true elsewhere.
              Another NACOSH member?
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Yes.  Anne, this is Kathy Dobson.  And I think that one of the errors that are made is that people in different parts of the country -- for instance, I'm from Michigan.  People in Michigan don't tend to think of our state as being a hot state.
              You know, if we were working down in the Southeast, Southwest, we would definitely have a heat-illness-prevention plan.  But I see a lot of -- especially our smaller subcontractors that work in construction, they don't implement any kind of a heat-illness-prevention program, because we're in Michigan and, you know --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              
              MEMBER DOBSON:  -- it doesn't get hot here.  Well, it does get hot and sometimes, you know, we run into tremendous issues with heat, for outdoor workers as well as for those who work indoors in facilities that may or may not be air conditioned or ventilated very well.
              And so I think that, if this is a OSHA emphasis program, you know, and it continues to be so, we need to really stress, no matter where you're at, no matter what time of the year it is, that you can run into heat problems no matter what.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  I had actual personal experience with that when we were doing our public hearings and adopting the rule in Washington State.  People really felt Washington was a cold state.  But the issue is is that -- actually, I think northern states actually have more of a challenge, because people are more unaware of what to do.  And second of all, the acclimation aspect profoundly has an impact.  Our populations -- because we can have heatwaves that are unexpected.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Anne --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So --
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- maybe we move on --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- to the next slide, which --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- I think gets to some of those issues around how are people defining heat.  And maybe this gets to -- you know, we'll address some of the concerns about different regions of the country and trying to come up with parameters that employers and employees could recognize are dangerous.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Right.  Exactly.  So, NACOSH members, comments on this or any other topic connected, on these ones?  Guidance for OSHA?
              (No audible response.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So they will develop a charge for the work group, kind of narrowing the scope of things.  So what are the most important things to you, in your experience?
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And while people are thinking, I think one of the underlying concerns expressed in certainly, you know, these first couple of bullet points or questions is the concept of: there are different ways to define heat.  We've certainly heard people have challenges in the real world, with wet-bulb globe tests.  Different states have used different temperature indicators.  Some people wait until the National Weather Service has identified a heat wave in the area.
              And so, you know, we're trying to figure out how do we identify, you know, those times when people are -- how would they know that they've got to worry about heat.  And then as somebody mentioned, in the northern states this acclimatization topic is another key piece that's emerging in the science as very important.
              So on those two topics, does that help spark some comments from NACOSH?  And if not, maybe, Ashley, if we could go on to flesh up the acclimatization one again quickly, and then monitoring.
              
              Do folks have thoughts or questions that might help us in the charge around these questions, or are these the right ones?  It sounded like maybe there was an interest in targeting some small businesses versus larger businesses.  I noticed in the chat, somebody also mentioned longer-than-eight-hour work shifts and how is that factoring in.  
              MEMBER REINDEL:  I have a question.  This is Rebecca Reindel.  I may have missed it in one of the slides, but is there an area to focus, on not only, you know, ongoing heat-illness prevention but under, say, emergency response, other, you know, foreseeable situations that are not normal, you know, business practice?  You think about, you know, different disasters or other situations that come down the line, and ensuring that there's a plan in place under those circumstances.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  So I don't think we had something that really covered that, Rebecca, but I think it's a great comment that we can certainly add to the list of questions.  And I think, you know, perhaps even, you know, having talked with some of my colleagues on the West Coast, wildfire season and people wearing masks or respirators when outdoors, you know, on those days when there are air-quality concerns.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.  That's been a real joy to deal with.  Yes.
              NACOSH members, any comments?
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Yes.  This is Kathy Dobson again.  You know, again, from a construction perspective; many contractors don't believe that they have any time to deal with acclimatization, because you bring somebody on and you put them to work.  And --
              UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  Yes.
              MEMBER DOBSON:  -- so, I mean, it does not matter whether they've been exposed to the heat and are, you know, more comfortable working around heat, than others.
              
              And from a union-contractor perspective as well, we, first, don't have the opportunity to really conduct any sort of a pre-employment physical examination.  You get what you get, coming out of the union halls.  And so you may get young people, you may get old people, you may get heavyset people, you may get thin people, you may get people with underlying health conditions that you are not aware of.  And I think that, somewhere in this, there needs to be some sort of an evaluation of the workers' preexisting health conditions as well.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Sure.  So, Kathy, does that kind of fit under that third bullet that's on the screen now, about temporary workers of various --
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Yes.  Oh, yes, yes, yes.  Absolutely.  You know, we don't often think of -- at least for me, I don't think of our construction workers as temporary workers, even though they are.  You know, we think of a temporary worker as somebody who's coming, you know, out of a, you know, third party; Hey, you need six workers, here they are; as opposed to, Oh, you need six construction workers, here they are.  It's the same sort of a situation.
              
              But there are so many variables when you're dealing with these short-term workers, you know, because they may be on a jobsite for a few days to a few weeks or months, and the issue around heat stress or heat-illness prevention is not so much proactive as it is reactive.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.  So this is Anne.  So I would like to weigh in a little bit and maybe introduce the concept of transient worksites in addition to transient workers or -- not in terms of the traditional way we think of transient, but, you know, workers who are there for two or three days and then they go on to the next job.  That's why --
              
              We didn't go down the road of acclimization requirements in Washington, but what we did say was that it was an important educational component; that workers needed to understand and their supervisors needed to understand the importance of acclimization when it came to heat waves; and then the encouragement of the things that they can do proactively for all workers: breaks, shade, water, and training.
              But the concept of transient worksites is important because, you know, some construction workers might be inside for, you know, a week here and there, and then they'll be outside for, you know, 10, 12 hours a day on the job, for three or four days or even one day.  So it just really is: whatever the work group does is going to have to address some of those issues.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Can I suggest -- Ashley, maybe if we go forward to the worker-training-and-engagement slide and see if there are other questions or thoughts from NACOSH members, on these questions; are these the right questions or are there other questions.  
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Yes.  This is Steve.
              MEMBER HARPER:  Hi.  This is --
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  I'm sorry.  Go ahead.
              
              MEMBER HARPER:  This is Amy Harper.  I was going to go back to heat hazards for one second and add that maybe there was something we could add here about what reliable predictors or precursors there are to the presence of heat hazards.  And that would help get to more of a monitoring or preparedness standpoint for employers to know that those things are coming.  So just kind of moving a little further up the prevention food chain here --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MEMBER HARPER:  -- to think about those precursors.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Next?  Steve, did I hear you?
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Yes.  Thank you, Chair.  I was going to simply add that what's missing on this slide is whether it's a represented workplace or unrepresented workplaces.  It's not just workers but also their representatives, because there are safety committees in many, many workplaces, whether, you know, they're Steelworker-represented or not; hopefully they will be at some point; just for a little fun here.
              
              But look, the issue is, even when I worked for the State of Iowa, I went into workplaces that were not represented, and they had a safety committee there.  So, you know, in a way they are still an employee representative.
              And those people talk to workers.  People come to those representatives and talk about the concerns of their workplaces, and come up with solutions.  And to not include: and their representatives, in this slide -- I think it needs to be edited to say, you know: workers and their representatives, where it's needed.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Any other NACOSH member want to comment?
              
              MEMBER HELLER:  Yes.  This is David Heller.  One thing I've seen, especially in the Middle East and when the temperatures are high -- and this is mainly for outside workers -- is modifying the work schedule.  Out in the day shift, we'll run from 3:00 in the morning until 11:00, or 2:00 to 10:00, just to avoid the heat in the day.  And that can run into issues versus union contracts, or other, you know, personal issues, as far as timing and childcare.  But modifying work schedules is something I've seen often as a way to try to get out of that worst part of the day.  That's something that can affect a lot of people.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And, Ashley, how about if we go to the last slide in this section, on the state standards, and see if this sparks any other thoughts, maybe particularly for you, Anne, as a state that has a standard; if there are good ways that you think --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Well --
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- we could engage the OSHSPA members.  That's the --
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Well, I definitely think that there should be at least one OSHSPA member on the work group.  So that's one thing.  The other thing I would say is that something that comes into play in Washington we did not put in our rules, because we have it elsewhere, is that employers have to have an emergency-response plan.
              We actually have seen employers get into trouble with their workers suffering ill effect or in a 911-covered area.  And so remote workers, lone workers -- employers have to think broadly about what kind of work, where are they working, are they isolated workers, isolated worksite, so that they have an emergency plan that covers all of those, in terms of medical response.
              So I just wanted to point that out, that we've actually had some fatalities, not as many as California, but we've had fatalities, because of the lack of medical response being timely.  And then in terms of OSHSPA, clearly there are several states that have rules, and OSHSPA would be a really excellent contact to gather all this information for the work group.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  So how about, with using that as a bridge, maybe, Ashley, if you can go to the last presentation.
              
              MS. BIENIEK-TOBASCO:  Pardon me.  OSHA wants to ensure that we are considering all appropriate stakeholders for inclusion in the work group.  We want to ensure balanced perspectives across both indoor and outdoor work settings, as well as across the following categories of stakeholder group: labor stakeholders; management stakeholders; stakeholders from professional societies and trade organizations; technical experts; and representatives from government and OSHA State Plan, or public sector.
              We are interested in learning more about which stakeholders are currently involved in heat-illness-prevention efforts, and continuing from this discussion that we've just been having, and particularly those that are most actively involved in those for which heat illness is of concern.
              
              So Anne mentioned OSHSPA.  So definitely we'd like to continue the discussion here as well.  And as Andy mentioned earlier, the work group will have approximately 12 to 13 members.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  So what we're looking for is: Are these right stakeholder categories?  Are any of you aware of particular organizations that have been very active either, you know, in any of these categories: either in indoor or outdoor, or both?
              I should also note that, again, OSHA and NIOSH can have our staff supporting and providing technical assistance to the work group.  So we're not included in the 12 to 13 folks that we're trying to get as outside subject-matter experts or committee members.
              
              MEMBER DOBSON:  This is Kathy Dobson again.  And in one of the committees that I'm involved in, the A10 Committee for Construction and Demolition standards -- you know, it's a consensus committee.  But they have been working on a heat-illness paper, possibly going into an ANSI standard.  At the very least, it will end up being a technical report.  I'd like to suggest reaching out to them.  And our contact at the secretary of ASSP is Tim Fisher.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.  And Tim actually noted that in the chat.  
              UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  Yes.
              MEMBER DOBSON:  I didn't see that.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.  So somebody who's been active in the A10 committee, you're suggesting, would be a good --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- perspective to add to this?
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Yes, for sure.  I also know that, you know, the Laborers' Health and Safety Fund of North America have been actively involved with their membership as well.  
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Yes, this is Rebecca Reindel.  I'd like to suggest bringing in somebody from CPWR, the construction training and research group.  It would be an excellent addition to this group.
              
              MEMBER LEWIS:  This is Cindy Lewis.  Is this going to be presented to ACCSH as well, or is this only being presented to NACOSH?
              MR. LEVINSON:  So we were going to mention it at the next ACCSH meeting, but this is a NACOSH work group because it's going to be broader and more expensive than just --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Right.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- the construction industry.  And we do intend to have construction folks represented on the labor-and-management side here.
              MEMBER LEWIS:  Again, this is Cindy Lewis.  The reason I'm --
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.
              MEMBER LEWIS:  -- asking is because, when NACOSH worked on the temporary worker, wasn't that both a joint effort between ACOSH and NACOSH?  Or there was a relationship there between the two groups at that time?
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes --
              MR. LEVINSON:  That one I'm not sure about, Cindy, but I can definitely look into it.  And --
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes, we did do that.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Okay.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  We did do that.  But ACOSH was given a charge to create its own work group, and then that work group fed into a joint presentation to NACOSH, from the NACOSH work group.  They both presented a joint result. So that can be done.
              Obviously, construction is a major area where this is a health concern.  But I think NACOSH is -- I mean, we are also talking about indoor and outdoor.  It covers a lot more industries.  And so I think that's really up to OSHA if you want to charge ACOSH to have a work group on this as well, be kind of a subgroup of NACOSH.  You know, I think we would be open to that too, so --
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Sure.  And, Cindy, that's a good point and, Anne, those are good points.  And what I can do is I can bring that back to Jim and see, you know, what his thinking is, moving forward.  And let's definitely explore that topic a little bit more -- or that option a little bit more.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.  The only caution I would give all of you is that that temporary-worker effort -- because there were multiple work groups, it did take a lot longer to get it done.  Just pointing that out.  The more people you have involved, the more -- it's broader -- and this is a broad topic.  So just weigh that into the consideration about the timing of -- or maybe it's about the narrowing of the scope of what you want covered.  Maybe that's a way to control the time line.
              MEMBER HARPER:  This is Amy Harper.  Are you looking for the NACOSH members to put forward names of folks that could be potentially members of this work group?  
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  So I think, you know, probably not individual people.  But if there are organizations that you know, that have been very active, that fall into one of these categories, we certainly would like to know.  We've been doing outreach, you know, as part of the heat-campaign refresh, and we're just looking to make sure that we've kind of captured the people that are going to be active and have experience in these areas, because we are looking for people that are going to be subject-matter experts and can bring different perspectives to the table.
              So if you have folks that you think would be particularly good, Amy, we would love to hear names; and if not, that's okay too.  And we've got our thoughts.  We wanted to just throw this out to NACOSH to see if you-all had different perspectives on who might be productive.
              MEMBER HARPER:  Okay.  Thank you.  
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So this is Anne Soiza.  I'm looking at the public sector, not from -- obviously, public-sector workers are outside and are subject to heat illness.  But I wanted to say that maybe -- you might be able to kill two birds with one stone, so to say.  You might want to consider the fire-service industry.  They could call upon their wildland fire-service folks for input, not to be on the committee but for input.  They could pull in information about emergency response to remote locations, in addition to the fact that they themselves are in turnout gear, perhaps, fighting in 90 degrees.
              Yes, so there is, I'm sure, in the fire-service industry, both on the labor and the business side, the management side, representatives who could maybe fill more than just one or two of these question buckets for the work group.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Excellent.  And I think, just being mindful of time and that we're right at about a time for a break, if anybody on NACOSH has final thoughts or recommendations before we wrap up this section?
              MEMBER REINDEL:  My only question -- this is Rebecca Reindel -- is, if we think of somebody after today, how we can put that forward.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Sure.  You can always e-mail me or Carla or Lisa.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Right.
              MR. LEVINSON:  And I think you've gotten e-mails from all of us.  You can always reach out to any of us.  And we're happy to take any follow-up thoughts or names of organizations that might be good.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Great.  Thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Any other important comments that you just have to say, NACOSH members, before we take our break, on this?  
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And I think, Anne, the one other thing is if there are any NACOSH members who are interested in being on the work group.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So let me caveat that by saying that this would be: interested.  You can change your mind.  But if you have a burning interest at this moment in time, you might want to say so at this moment.
              
              MEMBER REINDEL:  Anne, this is Rebecca Reindel.  You can ask add me to the Interested list.
              MEMBER DOBSON:  And this is Kathy Dobson.  Likewise.
              MEMBER LEWIS:  Cindy Lewis.  Likewise.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  And I trust that you will tackle this at the next meeting, Andy and Carla, correct?
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.  Thank you very much for your presentation, Augusta and Ashley and Jessica; we appreciate it.  Any parting words from the OSHA folks on this particular topic?  
              (No audible response.)
              MS. LEVIN:  Anne, when we're done, I'd like to move this into the record.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And thank you very much for your very thoughtful comments.  And we look forward to working with NACOSH on a charge to the committee and the formation of a work group, and a lot more work on this very important topic in the near future.  Thank you.  Jenny --
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you.
              Jenny?  Yes.  
              MS. LEVIN:  Yes.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Go ahead, Jenny.
              MS. LEVIN:  Great.  At this time, I move into the record the OSHA presentation on the NACOSH heat-illness-prevention work group.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Very good, so moved.
              (Whereupon, the OSHA presentation on the NACOSH heat-illness-prevention work group was received into the record.)
              MS. LEVIN:  Thanks.
              MR. LEVINSON:  And, Jenny, can we also move in the separate list of questions, the one-pager that we sent the NACOSH members?
              MS. LEVIN:  Yes.  So I move into the record the one-page information sheet on the work group, that was provided to the NACOSH committee members.
              (Whereupon, the one-page information sheet on the work group was received into the record.)
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you again for your great work; keep it up.  It's a very important topic.
              All right, folks --
              UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  Thank you.  
              CHAIR SOIZA:  -- I have 48 minutes after the hour, and I would propose that we take a short break.  Be sure to stand, at least, if not walk around; get some water, do whatever you have to.  And let's try to be back at 55 after the hour.  All right?  All right.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Thank you.
              (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 3:51 p.m. and resumed at 3:59 p.m.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  And today's presentation is on OSHA's Safety and Health Program.  And again, I'm going to -- should I just introduce Pamela?  Or Andy, why don't you go about and do that.  Does that --
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Sure.  Thanks, Anne.  So there are two presentations in this section: The first one is from Pam Barclay, who's going to talk about a bunch of work that OSHA's been doing in the general topic area of safety-and-health programs or safety-and-health management systems. And then the second presentation will be by Lisa Long, who will talk about some work that we'd like to do going forward with the committee, related to this topic.  So let me turn it over to Pam to talk about safety-and-health programs.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.
              MS. BARCLAY:  Perfect.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you very much.
              MS. BARCLAY:  Thanks, Andy; I appreciate it.  Hi.  My name is Pamela Barclay and I'm the health scientist in the Directorate of Standards and Guidance, and I'm here to talk a little bit about safety-and-health programs; in particular, maturation frameworks that we are in the process of developing.
              
              So the recommended practices for safety-and-health programs were released in 2016.  Following that release, OSHA has worked to develop additional guidance on using leading indicators, which has been well received, and updating the OSHA 7500 course that's taught at OSHA education-and-training institutes across the country.  This work has led us to think more critically about the components and actions needed to develop and implement a successful safety-and-health program.
              But looking at the landscape, including OSHA recognition programs, consensus standards, even NSC's programs, we know that it can take years to develop a program --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes --
              MS. BARCLAY:  -- especially --
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- Pam, hang on one sec.  I think somebody hasn't handed you the ball to advance the slides.
              MS. BARCLAY:  Oh.
              MR. LEVINSON:  So your slides are still on the title slide.
              MS. BARCLAY:  I had it.  Did somebody take it?
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  There you go.  Okay.  Now the slides have just started advancing.
              MS. BARCLAY:  If someone gives me the control, I can advance them myself.
              MS. MARCELLUS:  Pam, you just need to let me know when you want me to advance the slide.
              MS. BARCLAY:  Okay.
              MS. MARCELLUS:  This is Carla.
              MS. BARCLAY:  Yes.  Can you go to the Why It Matters slide, please?  Thank you.
              By looking at the landscape, including OSHA recognition programs, consensus standards, and NSC's programs as well, we know that it can take years to develop a program.  So the question to us was, you know: how did the business progress and grow over time, and how can we help people to keep moving forward?
              
              Our target audience are small- and medium-size employers.  And we often hear from stakeholders that they know that safety-and-health programs can help prevent injuries, illnesses, and fatalities, but they're not sure what steps to take to get started.  And so the process seems really daunting.  We wanted to develop a system of actionable items that they could take to progress.
              Next slide.
              There are many safety-and-health management systems and program guidelines out there, and they're all very good.  And so while we're inclusive in regards to the content that's being pulled into the framework, we are using OSHA's recommended processes as the organizing scheme.
              The recommended practices breaks down the components of the Safety and Health Program into the following elements: management leadership, worker participation, hazard identification and assessment, hazard prevention and control, education and training, program evaluation and improvement, and communication and coordination for host employers, contractors, and staffing agencies.
              
              You can move on to the next slide.  Thank you.
              We extracted the actions that are described in Safety and Health Management System guidelines, including the recommended practices, OSHA's Form 33, the OSHA Challenge program, and safety-and-health management system consensus standards.
              And so then, these actions were placed into the framework according to their focus and their level of complexity.  Level-one activities are entry-level and encourage businesses to get their foot in the door, to start implementing some foundational pieces for the development of a program.  Level-two activities are rooted in growth and further development of the program.  Level three focuses on ensuring safety and health are integrated into business processes, and serves as a launchpad for businesses that want to seek recognition or certification.
              Can you go back to the -- thank you.
              
              Level four brings in elements of sustainability and social responsibility.  Certification is not necessarily the end point, and there are actions businesses can take to continue to improve their program and become a leader in their industry and community.
              Ultimately, the goal is to create concrete and actionable tools for employers to use in their workplaces.  Each one of these cells (phonetic) will be developed into worksheets the employer can use to develop their safety-and-health program.
              Next slide, please.
              We anticipate meeting businesses where they are.  Users will be able to assess their existing safety-and-health practices to guide next steps that they can take to improve.  Employers can proceeded at a pace that works for them, and continue to move forward as far as they desire.
              
              Ideally, businesses will go as far as they can, but we do understand that having a certified program, for example, is not the end goal for everyone.  The worksheets are designed with explanatory content followed by activities that help the employer to tailor the content to their particular workplace and needs.
              Next slide, please.  
              As we flesh out the framework, we're continuing to develop the accompanying suite of materials, including worksheets, tools, and supplemental information.  We're also looking to bridge with the Safe + Sound Campaign, to further understand how tools like this may be used.  Lastly, we're beginning to look at ways to garner stakeholder feedback on this project and the deliverables.
              Next, slide.
              
              We're excited about the potential of this work, as it affords us some unique opportunities in viewing safety management from a holistic lens.  We're able to bring in concepts of industrial organizational psychology and risk management, to better understand how to motivate changes in workplaces.  And we're also able to identify tie-ins to broader concepts of sustainability and social responsibility and what's happened so far in the environmental realm, so that we can leverage some of those aspects, to move safety and health forward.  
              And that is it for me.  And so, Lisa, I think that you're taking it from here.
              MS. LONG:  Had to unmute myself.  Thanks, Pam.
              Andy, do we want to take any questions right now or just move into the next presentation?
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes, I think, let's see if the committee has any questions on the maturation model.  And so before we move into this next presentation by Lisa, you know, really what we're looking for in this maturation model is that, if the process of implementing a safety-and-health program is like running a marathon, each one of these fact sheets is one step in the journey, and that, you know, what we've heard from folks is that we need bite-size chunks that are very actionable; and taking some of the sometimes more esoteric and concept-oriented aspects of safety-and-health programs at the ANSI and ISO level, and turning it into, again, concrete actions that a small- or medium-size business could implement; and explaining to them what those steps are; and then explaining here's level one, for somebody who is just getting started; here's level two, for somebody who's maturing; here's level three, for somebody who is fully successful; and how, for example, you know, a safety mission statement looks at kind of each of those different levels as the organization grows in maturity on its safety mission, or how worker engagement changes across time as the engagement activities start at maybe a surface level and then move to deeper levels.  So let me see if there are were questions for Pam about this activity.
              
              MEMBER HELLER:  Hey, Pam, this is David Heller.  Have you looked at how the maturation process could learn from things like ISO 45001 or even the OSHA VPP process?
              MS. BARCLAY:  Yes.  So we are actually pulling in information from both of those programs that you mentioned.  And the actions and the end space of achieving certification or recognition for those programs are being pulled into the framework, as we look to see how businesses may go from, you know, essentially maybe having nothing to potentially going to be to achieving certification or recognition.  Absolutely.
              MEMBER HELLER:  Okay.  Cool.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So this is Anne Soiza.  I was wondering is this OSHA's idea, or did you grab this from somewhere else or -- I'm just wondering is this the next level after I2P2?  What is the source of this?
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  So, I think, let me respond to that, Anne.  So it's not the next level of I2P2, right?  I2P2 was a prior, you know, kind of regulatory effort that the agency was thinking about.  This is an outgrowth of the work that we did, revising the 1989 guidelines to the new --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- Safety and Health Program guidelines.  Then we revised the 7500 class, which is the introduction-to-safety-management class that's taught at ed.  centers around the country.  Then we did guidance on leading indicators, to try and promote businesses, using leading indicators.
              And in the process of all of our work with Safe + Sound and all of these other activities, what we found is the OSHA-recommended practices, the ANSI and ISO documents all described the end state of: this is what an organization looks like when they have an effective safety-and-health program.
              
              And what we found is, particularly for small- and medium-size businesses, that it can be intimidating to show them the end state, and that many businesses either don't think that they have the time or the resources to go on that full journey.  And so what we started trying to do is breaking it down into individual steps that can help people move a step in the right direction towards better safety management.
              And as Pam said, they may or may not ever go to VPP or SHARP or ANSI certification or ISO certification, but they can maybe do something that's a little bit better than what they're doing today, and do it in bite-size chunks that they think they can do.
              And so that's the genesis of all of this; it's taking the learnings out of Form 33 and the Consultation Program, as well as all those other larger documents, and trying to integrate it and chunk it into bite-size chunks.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Great.  That context is extremely important, I think, for the NACOSH members.  So thank you for going over that; appreciate it.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And while folks are thinking, before we see if there are any other questions: This is something where there's going to be a lot more work.  And then, we think that there's going to be a lot more stakeholder engagement.  So in the same way that we had a public meeting for the recommended practices when they came out, and the same way we had a public meeting on the leading-indicators document when it came out, we're envisioning similar stakeholder engagement before this reaches its final form, to get feedback and input from all of the people who are interested in this topic.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Great.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Are there any other thoughts or questions from NACOSH members, before we turn this over to Lisa?
              All right.  Lisa.
              
              MS. LONG:  Okay.  Thanks, Andy.  Okay.  So you've heard a little bit about what we've been doing related to safety-and-health programs in Pam's presentation, and now I'm going to be talking what we might be thinking about doing next and how you, NACOSH members, may help with it.  So my presentation is really intended to be the start of the conversation about risk-based safety and how it can help OSHA accomplish our mission, and then also how NACOSH could help.
              Next slide, Carla.
              Okay.  So let's start by talking about what risk-based safety is.  I don't believe there's really a definition out there, for risk-based safety, that's well accepted, so I found a couple of leading organizations and I've got here some information about what they say about risk-based safety.
              So FAA says risk management is a formalized way of dealing with hazards.  It's a logical process of evaluation, where you weigh the potential costs of a risk against the potential benefits you might receive as you allow that risk to stand uncontrolled.
              
              CCPS, or the Center for Chemical Process Safety, also has a lot of experience in risk-based safety, and risk-based process safety in particular.  So risk-based process safety uses risk-based strategies and implementation tactics that are commensurate with the demand for process-safety activities, availability of resources, and existing organizational culture, to design, correct, improve process-safety-management activities.  And so that could also be translated to safety as opposed to process safety.
              And one thing that I wanted to note is, with this approach of risk-based safety, it's just important to know that it doesn't mean that anyone would ignore a hazard.  Rather, it's just a way of prioritizing hazards so that you can spend your resources on the biggest hazard or the most consequential.
              Next slide, Carla.
              
              So there are many different organizations with different definitions of hazard and risk.  We just pulled one here from ISO 45001: A hazard is a source or situation with a potential to cause injury and ill health.  And a risk is a combination of the likelihood and occurrence of a work-related hazardous event or exposure, and the severity of the injury and ill health that can be caused by the event or the exposure.  And we have some examples here.  So I think it's important to think about what is hazard and what is risk, before we start this discussion.
              And next slide, Carla.
              So why should OSHA think about risk-based safety?  I just want to start off by talking about some research that the Campbell Institute has done and what they said about it.  So basically, Campbell Institute, part of the National Safety Council, says:
              
              Looking at workplace safety statistics over the last 20 years, we find that the total recordable injury rate in the US has been on a steady decline to less than three recordable accidents per 200,000 workers in 2016.  It is a significantly different story with the number of fatalities, which has had a much slower decline, and has in fact even started to increase the last few years.  Institute members have recognized serious-injury-and-fatality prevention as the next step in their journey to safety excellence.  Instead of focusing on the entire safety triangle and its layers of near misses, recordable injuries, and lost-time injuries, they are honing in on that slice of the triangle that has the potential for causing SIFs, or serious injuries and fatalities, and making concerted efforts to prevent and eliminate those precursors so SIFs do not occur.
              So that's kind of the biggest reason is right there, because the rate of serious injuries and fatalities are declining at a slower rate than recordable incidents.  And we recognize that and need to think about what we do next.
              We also recognize that resources are not unlimited and we may need to prioritize those to focus on the most significant incidents.  Also, historically, many accidents are attributed to unsafe acts, and risk-based safety recognizes prevention of injuries requires looking at human factors, which is very important.
              
              I think you're a few slides ahead of me, Carla.  If you could back up two slides.  One more.  Okay.  No.  You need to go backward two slides.  Next slide.  Right there.
              Okay.  And then, so, yes, human factors is something that we need to think more about in a different way, and the risk-based safety approaches recognize this.  And then also, many companies have started to implement risk-based safety, and many organizations are starting to recognize the value of risk-based safety.  And I got a few names up there.  But basically, if all these other people are thinking about it, shouldn't we at OSHA too?
              Next slide, Carla.
              
              So this is a graph, an imperfect graph because, the way the numbers are represented, BLS changed.  But you can sort of see the decline in occupational injuries and illness on one side, and then the more serious -- actually, the fatalities on the other side, declining at a much slower rate.  And this is something we need to think about.
              Next slide.
              So next I'm just going to discuss a few things that we need to consider or think about when we talk about OSHA and risk-based safety.  And first of all, we can recognize that OSHA does take risk into account when we develop standards, but then sometimes, after we develop them, we have a requirement that is specification-based.  So a good example of that are PELs, where we use risk to determine a PEL, but then there's a specification standard written with a PEL in it.
              Also, once the specification standards are determined and the standards developed, many OSHA standards are very prescriptive and hazard-based.  And a couple of examples of these are powered-industrial-truck standards and hazard communication.  So they're very rigid and, I might add, often come out of date quickly.
              
              We do have a couple of performance-based standards where those approaches are incorporated in a standard already.  A good example would be PSM, or process safety management.  And then another example is the new Walking-and-Working Surfaces standard, where we have some performance-based elements built into the standard.
              Next slide, Carla.
              And also, we should recognize that there are some issues that OSHA's thinking about that are really well suited for the performance-based and risk-based approaches.  So some of these include lock-and-tag and controlled circuits as energy-isolation devices; workplace violence, where you might do a workplace-hazard evaluation.  And then the whole concept of chemical management, where, instead of setting specific PELs, we may use a different approach to do this.  So risk-based safety may help us with some of those issues.
              
              There are a couple of other things that we need to recognize as well, and one is that risk-based issues can be more difficult to determine, in compliance.  So if you have a risk-based standard, it may be hard to figure out what it is.  It's not the same as just, yes, your guardrail needs to be six inches high or whatever the number is.  It might be you really have to take a look at the risk and the risk assessment and what people have done.  And this could be a lot harder for people to do it.  There is tremendous benefit there, in that it does provide flexibility for employers.
              And then finally, also to point out that risk-based issues can be much more difficult for small or medium businesses to understand.  So there's always a challenge there.
              Next slide, Carla.
              
              This slide plays right into Pam's presentation.  And I think she had this in her slide too.  Andy certainly talked about it at the end.  We started with the recommended practices for safety-and-health programs, the update, and then we did some leading indicators.  We updated the 7500 class.  And we're working on the maturation-model framework that Pam presented.
              So our question is: Given all of what we've talked about so far with risk, and then looking at where we are in our Safety and Health Program, is there room to talk more about risk-based safety in the work we've already done in terms of safety-and-health programs?  Should it be incorporated into OSHA standards?  Should it be incorporated into the guidance for Safety and Health Program?  Should we have a separate piece of this program, on risk and how to deal with it?  And just general: how does the concept fit in?
              And then next slide.
              
              So I just follow that up with, you know, there was a specific of: how does it fit into our Safety and Health Program?  But there's even a more general: what should we at OSHA do regarding risk-based safety?  How should we think about it?  How can NACOSH help us with this?  How should we think about risk?  How should we think about hazard?  Can we bring speakers in to talk to NACOSH and educate you more?  Should we have stakeholder meetings on it?  Should we be doing some guidance on it?  How do we just involve NACOSH and all of our stakeholders in general, in this conversation?
              So like I said, my presentation was really just designed to be a starting point of, I think, a conversation that we start with NACOSH before anyone else, on how do we use risk-based safety to advance our mission, and how can you help us do that.  And so with that, I'll open it up for questions.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  NACOSH members, questions for staff?
              MS. LONG:  And comments.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  And comments, yes.  Thank you, Lisa, by the way.
              
              MEMBER LEWIS:  This is Cindy Lewis.  It's more of a comment, keeping in line with the safety-and-health maturation project and the levels that are being built into that.  The risk base could be something that could be thought about more at a higher level as a continuous improvement for those organizations that have matured, have learned, and are looking for something, I'll say, new, to try and keep their processes going.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Other questions, comments?
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  Yes, I have a question.  Bill Walkowiak again.  So I thought risk management was part and parcel to a mishap-prevention program.  What's the difference in risk-based safety versus a safety program?  I mean, we manage risk in the workplace already.  So is this a different way to look at it?  Is it a different way to combat it?  I might be naive to the latest terminology or something.  Maybe you could simplify it for me.  
              
              MS. LONG:  Yes.  So I think the difference is, when people are thinking about programs just based on hazards, you're treating every hazard equally, and sometimes you're addressing the easiest ones first.  And what the data shows is that that method got us a long way.  But what's happening is we're seeing a big decline in those minor injuries, but we're not seeing the same decline in the more serious injuries and fatalities, because all hazards are being treated equal, and we don't see people always prioritizing their resources towards the hazards that they could make the greatest impact on.  Does that help?
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  Yes, it does.  So I think maybe, because I'm in a larger enterprise just by resources, we're required to prioritize those as a matter of business.  But yes, I can see maybe standardizing that for different-size organizations with different levels of resources to address the hazards.  So, good.  Thank you.
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And, Bill, this is Andy.  So I think there are two things that you're kind of hitting on; one is: we, in our recommended practices, say to people, Identify all the hazards, and then say, Prioritize what you're going to work on, without really giving a lot of guidance about how one would prioritize.  So I think that question is kind of very ripe for thought and input on how to move forward.
              And then the other piece of it is what you just started to hit on at the end, which is, when you're in a larger organization with a lot more systems, you have perhaps better visibility and capability.  And as you deal with smaller and medium-sized businesses, this concept of how do you make sure that people are focused on the right combination of hazard and risk, sometimes gets more complicated, particularly when these are rare events with high consequences, right?  And maybe somebody in your organization has never seen an event like this, even though it's something that's a known risk in your industry.
              
              MEMBER WALKOWIAK:  So, great.  Andy, thanks.  That's a good explanation of it.  Similarly, we'll do things in ours, like, you know, fall protection, you know, the four-foot general industry rule.  Probably not magic; you know, four-foot one inch and three feet 11 inches isn't going to probably change the severity of the injury.  And we don't have a lot of mishaps that are serious in that aspect of the program, where we have a ton of machine-guarding laws, right?  So, you know, we'll probably emphasize more the machine-guarding laws, because we're actually having injuries there.
              And so we do it like that.  You know, and it's harder to convince those with the resources, to put them towards rare events when we have actual events to address, you know.  So it's a challenge, I think, in the safety business.  But I think this is a great topic.  Over.
              
              MS. LONG:  Yes, and I think, you know, the important point out of this part of the discussion is that we at OSHA are not thinking the same way that a lot of large corporations are.  A lot of large corporations are already doing the risk-based safety and prioritizing in some ways, but the way we operate doesn't necessarily recognize that.  And so maybe we need to change some, with the field of safety changing, and to help people with that.
              MEMBER HELLER:  Yes, it's David Heller.  I think OSHA could do quite a bit to help.  I was thinking about large corporations versus small and medium.  And most of my industrial career is in large corporations.  And I actually had the time to sit around and interpret, whereas if you're in a small corporation and you're the safety manager and quality manager and you're the lab manager, you just don't have that time.  So where OSHA can kind of fill in those gaps can be a big help.
              MS. LONG:  Thanks, David.  And, you know, especially important where, if that small business is just going out, you know, counting the widgets, doing the small -- the specification-type safety things to help, then they're not looking at the larger issues, often.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  This is Anne Soiza.  I think one of the gifts that OSHA could give in this safety-and-health maturation project and risk-based focus would be to help small and medium businesses get on the ladder, get on the safety-program maturation ladder.
              One of the things in Washington we've done -- we're very fortunate to be data-rich -- is we published, by sub-industry, the top hazards for all of those industries, for all employers in Washington State, so that they can focus on the top two or three things that they -- even though they might not have experienced it in their actual workplace because they have three employees, it's good for them to know that these are the three things that are really harmful, leading to serious fatalities or serious injuries and illnesses.
              So, encouraging, educating small business getting on the Safety and Health Program ladder would be where I would focus, is -- they don't have the resources.  They wear multiple hats.  And they just don't know where to even get the information.  So thank you.
              
              Another NACOSH member, for comments or questions?
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Kathy --
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Yes, this is Steve --
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Go ahead, please.
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Oh.  No.  I've spoke some, so please go ahead.  Thank you.
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Yes.  This is Kathy Dobson once again.  And so is this approach sort of, you know, a failure-mode-effect analysis where you're looking at severity and the number of people exposed and the occurrences, where you're looking for a worker engagement process?  That's part one.  And part two is: has OSHA considered how they're going to enforce risk-based safety?
              
              MS. LONG:  So I think, in answer to part one, it does consider -- and there's different techniques that you can use to do it.  But the FMEA technique you were talking about, where you sort of have a hazard and the frequency and you determine the likelihood, you look at the risk, and you focus on those, that is what we're talking about.  And employee engagement is an important part of that, because they're often the ones that understand how risky something is.
              We know that accidents are not always a predictor of what will happen next.  So you may have not had the big thing happen yet; but just because you haven't, doesn't mean that's not the next thing to happen.  Employee engagement is really an important piece of that, because they see more than many other people do.  So I think that, yes, it is very important.
              
              And on the second question about how would OSHA enforce these risk-based things, I think that's one of the reasons why we want to have this discussion, because they can be difficult to enforce.  It's a little bit harder for a compliance officer, or for even a safety professional within a company, to look at something that is risk-based or performance-based and say this is correct, because you kind of have to think your way through it rather than just saying, Okay, this needs to be four-foot high and it's not.  And so we're looking for advice and help on that.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And I think, to expand upon that point, we're looking at this issue of risk in a multitude of different venues, right?  So one of them is the broad topic of guidance in safety-and-health programs or safety-and-health management systems, which is kind of a larger how should we think about this?  And again, it's kind of this concept of you've identified a hazard and then you have to prioritize which hazards you're going to fix first, right?  So that's kind of a conceptual piece.
              
              And then there's individual standards.  So for example, as Lisa mentioned, we already have this in process: safety management.  People have raised this as a potential topic around lockout/tagout.  So in individual standards, when we're talking about enforcement, that will be part of the conversation in any rule-making activity, right?  So I think we're looking at, you know, kind of getting involved in the topic.
              And I think the other piece of this is, again, we've had a lot of people in the profession look at the topic of the slower decline in fatalities than in injuries, and trying to figure out how do we deal with, you know, these low-probability/high-consequence events, and is there a different way of thinking that gets us to preventing these fatalities.  And so I think that's where part of this conversation also goes.  Does that make sense, Kathy?
              MEMBER DOBSON:  Yes.  Thank you very much.  I appreciate it.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Other comments?  Questions?
              
              MEMBER HARPER:  This is Amy Harper.  We recently put together a new course on risk assessment, and one of the things we start in the course teaching -- and we get a lot of small businesses, medium-size businesses coming through, who don't understand the concept of risk assessment.  The first thing we ask them to do is to understand the concept of task-based risk.
              And so you kind of break apart a job and you get down to a task level and you, you know, kind of teach them about the aspects of risk related to a specific job task.  And that's more palatable to them than sort of like this broad, Okay, think about all the risks that are involved in your workplace.
              And then we teach them to look at their sources of data that they might already be collecting as part of their safety program, to give them clues as to what might be generating some of these losses already, and, you know, how they can tackle those.
              
              So for example, you know, you asked a question, Andy, about how do companies prioritize, how should we teach them to prioritize these things, given their limited resources.  We'll start with what's already caused an incident already, right; so looking at past history, OSHA logs, workers'-compensation data, looking at those things for clues and identifying the tasks that were done at the time.
              We always list body part, we list cost, we list all of these other things, but the task is never, usually, identified unless it's in some kind of written description.  But it's knowable.  And we teach companies to look at the past that was involved at the time that that incident took place.  And then from that analysis, they can start to see certain themes emerge.  And some of those might've been smaller incidents that could lead, obviously, to larger ones.
              We teach them to look at inspections and audits or observation data; you know, are there clues there; first-aid or near-miss data.  And then, you know, if you're a small organization, you may not have had any injuries.  You may not have workers'-comp, you know, data to look at.  Then where do you start?  You can look at your standard operating procedures and look for things that don't occur very often, and you can look for things that are non-routine.
              
              But that is typically where you will find that workers don't understand what the process is for something like that, because they're faced with these, you know, sort of things that are out of the norm, and they don't know how to react to them, so they make it up on the fly.
              But those things are also knowable.  If you talk to employees and engage them, they will tell you, you know, if you ask them, Where are those opportunities where you've had to, you know, sort of make something up on the fly, or where have things gone wrong that you've had to react to, that there is no SOP for.  JSA could also be one of those things.
              So, you know, just kind of entering anything (phonetic) in that conversation to at least introduce it, this whole concept of task-based risk, is, I think -- it's been helpful for us.
              MS. LONG:  Thanks.  Thanks, Amy.  That's pretty helpful.
              
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Chair -- is this --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  -- on?
              CHAIR SOIZA:  It is on.
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Yes.  Okay.  Thank you.  I just wanted to comment.  As I've listened to this -- there's always a power dynamic in this risk base, and that typically does not include workers and their representatives.  There is a power struggle that goes on.  This is about who gets to define what the risk is and how much we'll take.
              And having two co-workers who I used to work with, who's no longer with us today -- if we had a combustible-dust standard, no doubt in my mind those two brothers would be with us today.  So who gets to define who's going to take the risk, who's going to suffer the risk, and who's going to pay the most?
              
              And in today's world, we're seeing everyone doing more with less.  And I believe David touched on it.  Even when we go to a workplace, we see safety managers who used to have a staff of people and then, all of the work that's been happening with COVID, for them to be able to even try to work on the normal day-to-day stuff on top of COVID -- it's been very difficult not only for safety managers but for union safety representatives, safety-committee representatives in non-organized workplaces.
              And this really still comes back to, if we really wanted to look at this, yes, there's risk in everything.  So then the question becomes: how do we apply the hierarchy of controls?  And I heard it mentioned about some of the health standards.
              
              So why are we drifting away from the hierarchy of controls?  If you have a respiratory-protection standard and you have a program, the first thing that you do is try to eliminate that hazard; you don't just hang respirators on people.  But we've all learned now, through a pandemic, what an N95 is.  So we need to get the best that is available on the market and get it to the workers.  But it shouldn't become normalized.  And here we are; we --
              Somebody had mentioned low probability, high consequence.  And who gets to define, then, what's going to happen?  Because we have good people out there trying to do good things, with bad results.  And then all of a sudden, that gets categorized as, I believe I heard, an unsafe act.  So who defines that?
              And meanwhile you've got an opening in the floor, and people have been working around this.  And I go to a workplace after we've had a fatality where somebody fell through that opening, and everybody said, Yes, we knew it was a matter of time.  But it got normalized.  They wouldn't fix the problem.  People had tied things open with a rope to try to keep the machine running.  And then after it's all done, then we see all this stuff happen.
              
              And risk-based safety needs to be maybe called something else.  Why not just call it hazard identification and controls?  Because that's really what this is going to boil down to, and applying the hierarchy of controls.
              And where people aren't set up for success, it's typically because there's human-factors engineering involved, not just human factors.  It's the engineering.  You know, we've seen people leave gas caps off of cars, and locking keys in cars.  And what did we do?  We design it better so, and that way, we've eliminated the gas cap so you can't forget it.  We put the key fob on, because we're not going to be 100 percent every day when we show up in workplaces.  And this pandemic has brought that clearly out, to when people are now trying to soldier through.
              
              And I would also add that this isn't just about a physical hazard.  We haven't seen work organized where our crews used to be -- like, this was a three-person crew on a machine, and they're now down to three and two.  And then when something goes wrong, you have fewer hands and help to help with that.  Were also seeing new working with new, new training new, and that also needs to be in this conversation as well.  So thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So for the record, that was -- Steve Sallman, I believe that was you, correct?
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  That's correct.  Thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.  I just wanted to, for the record, put that --
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Please remember to state your name.  Thank you.
              
              MS. LONG:  Steve, thank you for those comments.  I think that's absolutely why we wanted to talk about this.  The hierarchy controls really should be a part of this conversation, and is and always, because we should be focused more on that than we are, you know, like you said, the unsafe acts.  We should be eliminating the hazards.  And sometimes the risk-based approach might help us do that in a better way than what we've done in the past.  
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Yes, Lisa, and I appreciate you recognize that.  And may I suggest that, you know, we don't talk about that pyramid, because that, I think, has been debunked a long time ago, about all of this: what's holding up the pyramid is what the worker did or didn't do, and what's missing in that pyramid is the hazard and, if you eliminate that hazard, then we don't have those fatalities and life-altering injuries.
              And I would strongly suggest that the hierarchy of controls gets included into this slideshow and that becomes one the first slides that we talk about, is sound hierarchy of controls.  So I appreciate you recognizing that.  Thank you.
              MEMBER REINDEL:  This is --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Other comment?  Yes.
              
              MEMBER REINDEL:  This is Rebecca Reindel.  Hi.  Just want to piggyback a little bit on that, what my colleague Steve said.  This definitely appears to be more of a business model than a safety model.  And so just some word of caution.  I totally agree, you know, on the hierarchy of controls and on the good points that Steve raised, and I think -- you know, some questions I have around it.
              So a lot of word of caution, I think, around, you know, this model.  And so part of this is a distinction between an employer's role in keeping a workplace safe, and OSHA's role.  And I think those are two different things.
              So it sounds to me like we're trying to have OSHA act like an employer, because this is what employers are doing.  And I think we needed to be very careful about distinguishing these roles, because there's a difference in a regulatory agency and providing guidance and setting the model and adhering to the Occupational Safety and Health Act -- and there's a difference between that and the employer's role in keeping the workplace safe.
              
              So some words of caution there, but also some questions around the data that's being provided on here in terms of injury rates dropping and the types of -- you know, we have serious injury -- I mean, just to put a little perspective: We have greater reporting now for serious injuries, so we have better data on those.  But I think injuries overall -- we know that the data that's reported to BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is, you know, severely underreported.  You know, the studies show that it's two to three times underreported.
              And so if we're relying on overall injury rates dropping, that's actually a false reliance on other injuries that are happening.  And I'm wondering if there are other data sources that are being taken into account here.
              
              But we certainly just have -- where we have better reporting requirements, you know, we see better information.  So we see the better information around serious-injury reporting, because of the requirements around that now, and also, obviously, fatalities; that's triggered to underreport those.  So if you could help us understand a little bit more about that, why these are being distinguished in the first place in the data.
              MS. LONG:  So thanks, Rebecca, for the comment.  And I certainly have to say that OSHA's role is different than an employer's role.  And we recognize that as well.  And so it's more of us using an approach that helps employers be safer, not us taking on an employer's role or responsibility.
              And then to your other question: I think, you know, when I put the slide up, recognize that that isn't perfect data.  But that is what many leading organizations are finding is that we are not seeing the same decline in serious injuries and fatalities as we may be in the more minor recordable injuries.  And I credit that to other organizations, because I don't have the data to back that up.
              
              And that's one of the reasons why we wanted to have this conversation, because we're asking: Is this something that we should start thinking about?  And if we do, how should we be doing that?  So maybe one of the first things we should be looking at is more data.  And that's what we're looking for from NACOSH members.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Right.  And I think, to build on what Lisa said, right, this is not the last conversation; this is a starter conversation.  OSHA's intent is that NACOSH be certainly much more active than it's been in the past year-and-a-half, but also more active than it's been before that.
              And whereas OSHA and NACOSH typically had two meetings a year, we are looking to move to four meetings a year.  Some of those may be in-person.  Some of those may be virtual.  We're still feeling that out as the pandemic continues to evolve.
              
              But I think what we're looking for is, at a next meeting that might take place in September, who else, you know, could we invite to do a presentation?  Are their professional societies and trade associations?  Are there other organizations?
              I think, Rebecca and Steve, we certainly heard your perspective loud and clear.  Are there other people, you know, that you would recommend, that might add to the conversation as we continue to talk about, you know, this larger topic?  
              CHAIR SOIZA:  This is Anne Soiza.  I would like to note: one of the functions of NIOSH is to provide data to both Department of Labor and to NACOSH.  And so I would encourage, at a future meeting, NIOSH be asked to present on this specific topic.
              
              The premise that you put forward -- I know that, last year-and-a-half, I was almost entirely focused on COVID-19 education and enforcement.  So I'm normally quite the data geek, and I was actually surprised to -- I'd like to test that premise that has been talked about today: is that decline in fatalities slower than the decline in other illnesses and injuries, or not?  I'm normally quite plugged into this kind of stuff, and that's not where I would've gone.
              So I'm not questioning what was said.  I'm just saying that I don't think that's -- I don't know how widely accepted that is as truth, and so I would encourage, you know, NIOSH and other researchers to either agree with that premise or not, or present their data on it, would be my suggestion for moving forward.
              MS. LONG:  Thanks.  That's a great comment and that's maybe a really helpful place to start.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Are there other folks working in this general area, that people are aware of, that would be helpful for NACOSH to hear their perspective and experience?
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  The health-and-safety executive in the UK does quite a lot on risk-based safety.  They put out some research reports on risk-based decisions.  So there might be an opportunity to sprinkle in some insights from the UK and from Europe.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Other input --
              MS. LONG:  Thanks, Steve.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  -- NACOSH members?
              MEMBER LEWIS:  ASSP has an entire risk organization that they've developed.  Might be useful to get in touch with some of their folks and see what they've been working on, to have that presented as well.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Sure.  And we have ASSP as a partner organization through OSHA alliances.  We can absolutely reach out to them.  And I know, you know, ASSP has been active on some of the chat stuff as well --
              MEMBER LEWIS:  I'm sorry, that was --
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- on this meeting.  So --
              MEMBER LEWIS:  -- Cindy Lewis who made the comment.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.  Absolutely.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  This is Anne Soiza again.  There has been a lot of research; I don't know if it'll be presented in the NIOSH-DOSH (phonetic) presentation.  But you know, there've been a lot of studies comparing worker-comp-injury-and-illness rate and fatalities, and, you know, you might pull in those researchers too, if they're not in NIOSH itself.
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  This is Steve Sallman.  One other person I would encourage you to talk to and listen to is your own staff.  The compliance officers that goes out and works with us on our fatality investigations do outstanding work under very trying circumstances, and they get to the what-failed instead of who-failed.  And certainly it comes back to compliance.  But they also listen to all of the system failures, and then they have to look at it and say, All right, where do we have a standard and where is there a violation?
              
              But don't miss the quality of the OSHA staff and the career staff that are there, that have lived and breathed this in the worst of times with people who are, you know, trying to give their statement to a compliance officer with a box of Kleenexes in front of them and trying to sip water to swallow the lump in their throat.
              And you've got a lot of great people who have heard a lot of things about what failed, instead of who failed.  And I would encourage you to talk to those people and -- you know, and we've seen willful violations that's involved fatalities.  You've got a lot of information right there within your own stables.  Thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thanks, Steve.
              So is there any other new-topic comment or question that a NACOSH member would like to bring up at this time, regarding safety-and-health programs and risk-based assessments, et cetera?  
              
              MEMBER SALLMAN:  Yes.  This is Steve Sallman.  I would like to add to the conversation.  I appreciated the presenters today as well as John Howard and Jim Frederick, because something has to be done in the government, about the lack of resources, the understaffing, especially in the whistleblower-protection areas.  After what workers have gone through, especially essential workers who have remained on the job and then tried to complain about their health-and-safety issues, there's clearly a need for more resources.
              And when people aren't getting contacted by folks, because we know that you're understaffed at OSHA and NIOSH, this really needs to be addressed.  And if, you know, somebody's needing that conversation or that support system, waiting a long period of time, you lose faith in those who are there to protect them.
              And so I just want to emphasize the issue about understaffing at NIOSH and OSHA.  And this piece about kind of talking about the risk base was -- we used to use a lot of the fatal facts at OSHA when we did have these failures, and how could we learn and improve.
              
              And, you know, the Mine Safety and Health Administration does a pretty good job about sending out reports on fatalities, and one-pagers with a picture, and bringing attention to the hazard identification and what kind of controls are needed.  And people share those in toolbox talks.  And I think it's time that -- and I know this might be a resource issue, but a lot of people got a use out of those fatal facts.
              And we try to do lessons learned, what we call in the Steelworkers: hazard alerts.  And we sanitize them.  You won't know geographically what happened.  You won't know what employer was involved.  There's no names.  And the idea is to learn and improve.
              And I think there's an opportunity here.  If we're trying to remove the needle on fatalities and life-altering injuries, then let's not learn these accident by accident or incident by incident, whatever terminology people use.  But it's hazard by hazard.  And if we can start bringing some attention to this --
              
              And I'll give you one example.  We've had several fatalities, in the Steelworkers, that involved somebody hooking up respiratory protection of an air-supply line to a nitrogen line.  And it was a contractor that was killed at a Steelworker-represented workplace.
              And we reached out to the other international union that lost a member in one of our represented workplaces, and they said, Oh, yes, we've had those happen at our workplace too, this isn't the first time that a worker has been killed by hooking up a respiratory-protection line to nitrogen.
              And we need to do more about lessons learned and how can we prevent that from happening again, because we just keep fixing this kind of tree by tree, and we're not treating the forest of where this is happening.  And so if we're really wanting to do something about risk -- it all seems to be just at that location, and that's got to go further.
              
              And that's why that whole terminology needs changed from hazard identification and controls, because we can't keep doing this over and over and expecting different results when we talk to other unions and other places, about workers getting killed of hooking up an air-supply line to nitrogen.  And host employers have responsibilities, contractors, everything, and that whole system has to come together.
              So I wanted to throw that in before the hour got away, and I'll finish there so others can speak.  Thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you, Steve.
              Other comments from NACOSH members?
              MEMBER BELCHER:  Yes.  This is Michael Belcher.  I'll jump in here, because I think this is very much needed.  We've got to shift our approach from managing compliance, managing hazards, to reducing risk.  I'm a former president of American Society of Safety Professionals and worked on a OSHA blueprint that was made as a recommendation to OSHA in 2017.  But we laid out, I think, a very good rationale for doing this.
              
              We have to keep up with what's happening around the world, and we're falling behind.  I saw that firsthand when I had the opportunity to go to places like Great Britain and see what HSE was doing there and the same things happening with other countries.  So --
              I won't elaborate too much, but this is really needed and it's the only way we're going to reduce severe injuries.  We already know we're hitting a plateau.  We've talked about that today.  And we can't simply keep doing things the way we've been doing it, so -- I know we're running out of time, so I'll be brief and just leave it at that.  Thank you.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you.
              Any other open discussion, NACOSH members?
              (No audible response.)
              CHAIR SOIZA:  So, Andy, how would we like to get comments?  Who do they send their comment to, from the public, people listening in?
              
              MR. LEVINSON:  So people from the public can certainly send comments either to me -- my e-mail is Levinson, L-E-V-I-N-S-O-N, .andrew@dol.gov -- or they can send e-mails Carla Marcellus, who I think is listed -- I think our e-mails are on the agenda; I'm not certain, though.  But you can always send e-mails to me, and people can add their comments.  Do we have time --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay.
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- Anne, I think, maybe to see if anybody from the public has any comments, for maybe a few minutes?  
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Well, that's why I wanted to --
              MR. LEVINSON:  Yes.  Oh, okay.  So if the public wants to do comments now, the operator can do that.
              Operator, are you online?
              THE OPERATOR:  Yes, I'm here.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Can you please explain to the attendees how they can indicate that they'd like to make a comment or ask a question? 
              
              THE OPERATOR:  Sure.  Absolutely.  If you'd like to ask a question or make a public comment, please press star-1 and Recording (phonetic) when prompted.  And if you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star-2.
              One moment to see if you have any questions or comments.
              MR. LEVINSON: While we're waiting for the operator to see if there are comments, let me please -- or let me thank Bill --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Absolutely.  
              MR. LEVINSON:  -- and Pat and Steve and you, Anne, for all of your work on NACOSH over the past term and before that, for many of you who were on before.  All four of you are going to be going off the committee, and I hope you're going on to full retirement.
              
              And I just wanted to thank you-all very much for your service to the agency.  I know that the past year-and-a-half certainly has been very, very challenging for all of us as OSH professionals.  And I certainly apologize for the lapse in NACOSH meetings over the past year-and-a-half.  But, you know, we're looking forward to better times ahead.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Yes.
              MR. LEVINSON:  So thank you very much.
              MS. LEVIN:  While we're waiting, we need to move into the record the OSHA presentation that we just saw, so I want to --
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you, Jenny.  Thank you.  
              MS. LEVIN:  Yes.  Sure.  Thanks.  I'm going to go ahead and do that.  Moving into the record the OSHA presentation entitled Safety and Health Programs Maturation Framework and Risk-Based Safety at OSHA, as exhibits to the transcript.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Thank you.
              (Whereupon, the OSHA presentation, Safety and Health Programs Maturation Framework and Risk-Based Safety at OSHA, was received into the record.)
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  And thank you, Pamela and Lisa, for your presentation and the work in preparing, and handling the questions.  Thank you so much for your work today.
              MR. LEVINSON:  And then, Operator, do we have anybody who's indicated that they'd like to make a statement or ask a question?
              THE OPERATOR:  I'm showing no questions or comments at this time.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  So I would say, if they don't indicate, in the next minute, a desire to make a public comment to the NACOSH membership, then we will consider the public comment closed.
              MR. LEVINSON:  While we're waiting that last minute, as I indicated, OSHA is very interested in engaging with NACOSH in a much more robust way; so looking at four meetings per year.  So we're going to get in touch with you about finding a time sometime in September when we can all come back together and continue these conversations.  So please be on the lookout for an e-mail from Carla about that.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  I'm very, very pleased to see the re-engagement of this process.  And members who are new: I just wanted to share with you that we used to meet three to four times a year, and we got a lot of work done.  And I'm really looking forward to seeing from a distance all the work that you're going to produce as time goes forward.
              Saving lives is such a rewarding career and an important thing that we do as service.  Many of you who are in the private sector or in labor, this is an important public service that you provide to the United States, and I just really want to thank you for your efforts in the future.
              Operator, are there any public members who've indicated they want to make a comment at this time?
              THE OPERATOR:  There are no questions or comments at this time.
              
              CHAIR SOIZA:  Okay. So we will consider the public-comment period offered and closed at this moment in time.  Andy, Carla, any OSHA staff, Jenny, is there anything else that you want to do before I adjourn the meeting?
              MS. MARCELLUS:  None from me.
              MR. LEVINSON:  No.
              UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  No.
              UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  No.
              CHAIR SOIZA:  All right.  Well, thank you so much, everybody.  This culminates my 12 years on this committee.  And I'm looking forward to -- or associations with it.  And then I just wanted to say thank you and good luck to everybody.  Keep up the excellent work that all of you do, every day that you do it.
              And I pray most of all that the COVID-19 pandemic gets over quickly and we can get back to the other ongoing hazards that harm people every day, that we need to be paying attention to as well.  Thank you very much.  And NACOSH is now adjourned.
              MR. LEVINSON:  Thank you, everyone.  Have a good day.
              (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 3:51 p.m.)
