REGION SIX BREAKING NEW GROUND IN NANO TECHNOLOGY TRAINING

Region 6 hosted, at the request of the Cincinnati Health and Safety Center a Nano Technology Session with 10 Officials and members of our Carbon Black Local Unions in Louisiana and Texas.  Locals 273C, 458C and 483C participated in this effort.  The purpose of this session was to gain input from those members for future seminars on this subject.  Drs. Bruce Lippy and Kristen Kulinowski of Rice University have, under Federal OSHA grant dollars developed a program that was geared mainly to train health and safety professionals and now with our help they hope to bring it to the workers in the field, the ones who have the day to day exposure to Nano materials.  We are so proud of our members in Region 6 for agreeing to participate in this program as it will set a precedent for developing curriculum not only for our members, but the entire industry in the manufacturing of Carbon Black and use of Nano Technology. The hope is that after Dr. Lippy and Dr. Kulinowski have developed this new curriculum, then Director Morawetz from our Cincinnati H&S Center can write a new grant request from OSHA that will include this information in future training at the center or on location at various Carbon Black Plants, and the development of worker trainers at carbon black facilities.

All of us are very fortunate that we have people like Dr. Lippy and Dr. Kulinowski doing their work on behalf of working men and women in our industry and that Director Morawetz has contacts with people like them and is continually improving and upgrading our Cincinnati H&S Center.