Latest news with #Tyvek
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
42nd ABW Mortuary Affairs Team practice thorough site recovery methods
Maxwell Air Force Base - Airmen from the 42nd Force Support Squadron recently participated in a search and recovery exercise on March 28, designed to simulate the aftermath of a tornado strike, preparing them for the emotional and technical demands of mortuary affairs. The three-hour exercise, held at the Maxwell-Gunter Annex's laser tag facility, featured four search zones filled with simulated debris, personal effects, and simulated human remains. Airmen worked in teams to locate, identify, tag, and recover items ranging from earrings to full-body mannequins. 'This particular exercise was if a tornado hit, Maxwell AFB and we had to basically search and recover people's remains,' said 2nd Lt. Shelby Pinner, 42nd FSS career development officer. 'We have very specific procedures and a way of doing it, and so we go out in teams.' More: A legacy of giving: Honoring Alabama native Herman Colvin's military service Pinner noted that while the scenario focused on a tornado, the training had broader applications. 'These skills are applicable in various situations, including aircraft incidents and other catastrophic events,' Pinner said. The exercise also emphasized the importance of documentation. Each find was carefully bagged, tagged, and recorded. 'You have to be specific but vague,' Pinner said. 'If you find a watch, you just say 'gold watch.' But when you're labeling body parts, you want to be a little more specific, so if you find a finger, you'd say, a digit.' The exercise was developed and led by Christine Bushby, 42nd FSS mortuary readiness and plans specialist, who has nearly 28 years of experience in the field. 'You have to be very meticulous,' Bushby said. 'You can come across remains, personal effects something that could potentially identify that person, if for whatever reason, they weren't visually identifiable or found.' Airmen donned Tyvek suits and personal protective equipment as they navigated a dim, obstacle-filled environment meant to mimic a real-world disaster scene. A classroom briefing, held the day before, covered anatomy, disaster mental health, bioenvironmental hazard assessments, bloodborne pathogens and mortuary procedures. 'You see a drawing or rendition of the body parts, but when you're actually searching, it's going to look a little bit different,' Bushby said. 'Debris may be covering it, or there may be damage or trauma to the tissue. So we have to be very meticulous, we ultimately want to recover as much as possible for the families.' Bushby, who has responded to major disasters including the 2011 and 2019 Alabama tornadoes, when working for the state, emphasized that the work can be emotionally taxing but profoundly meaningful. 'When they understand the bigger picture, that we are working to recover someone's loved one, someone's son or daughter they realize it's about something greater than themselves,' Bushby said. 'They start to think, if the roles were reversed, they'd want others to do the same for them.' More: Crusader of the Month at Maxwell AFB in Alabama: Senior Airman Joseph Rivera The exercise was observed by representatives from the 42nd Inspector General's office, who evaluated the teams adherence to mortuary affairs protocols and overall readiness. 'We kind of push the limits to see how uncomfortable we can get but still do our jobs,' Bushby said. 'Commanders should be able to feel confident that we are going to do something that nobody else is required to do and we are ready to perform.' 'The camaraderie built during the exercise was impactful because it was both lieutenants and everybody else,' Pinner said. 'It created that camaraderie for us in the Military Personnel Flight.' The 42nd Force Support Squadron conducts mortuary affairs training annually to ensure personnel remain proficient and mission-ready for real-world contingencies. 'We're the cradle to the grave,' said Bushby. 'People don't like to see me come out, but when things happen, I'm the point for that.' This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: 42nd ABW Mortuary Affairs Team practice thorough site recovery methods
Los Angeles Times
22-05-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Why fire cleanup workers face critical health risks in Altadena
A new study reveals a shocking truth: Only a fraction of fire cleanup workers in Altadena are protecting themselves against toxic debris from wildfires. Despite California regulations, a recent assessment found only a quarter wore gloves, a fifth used protective masks, and a mere tenth donned full Tyvek suits.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Only a fraction of fire cleanup workers are protecting themselves against toxic debris. One community center is fighting to change that
A crew of 10, many sporting bright orange National Day Laborer Organizing Network T-shirts, funneled out of a Mexican restaurant on the edge of the Eaton burn scar. Four months — to the day — after winds smashed a tree into a car next to NDLON's Pasadena Community Job Center and soot blanketed the neighborhood, a University of Illinois Chicago professor, NDLON staff and volunteers sorted into cars under the midday sun and began discreetly traveling every road in fire-stricken Altadena. They watched nearly 250 crews, working long hours (for good pay) under contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, remove the toxic debris covering the landscape in the wake of the fire. Of the over 1,000 workers they surveyed in the burn area on May 7 and 9, only a quarter wore gloves, a fifth wore a protective mask, and a mere tenth donned full Tyvek suits, as required by California's fire cleanup safety regulations, the group's report, released Thursday, found. For Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director and co-founder of NDLON, the results aren't surprising. NDLON — a Pasadena-based, national network of day laborer organizations, focused on improving the lives of day laborers, migrant and low-wage workers — has been responding to post-disaster worker safety issues for decades. Alvarado couldn't help but remember the laborers he and NDLON supported during the cleanup following 9/11 over 20 years ago. 'Those workers are no longer alive. They died of cancer,' he said. 'These are workers I'd known for decades — their sons, their cousins.' As Alvarado watches a new generation of laborers get to work in the aftermath of the L.A. fires, his call to action is simple: 'I just don't want to see people dying.' NDLON has seen lax PPE use time and time again following disasters. Since 2001, NDLON has dispatched to countless hurricanes, floods and fires to support what the organization calls the 'second responders' — the workers who wade through the rubble and rebuild communities after the devastation. Eaton was no different. 'We always respond around the country to floods, fires, no matter where it is,' said Cal Soto, workers' rights director for NDLON, who helped survey workers in the burn area. For the Eaton fire, 'we just happen to be literally in the shadow of it.' When wildfires push into developed areas like Altadena, they chew through not just trees but residents' cars, plastics, batteries and household goods like detergents and paint thinners, releasing hosts of toxic chemicals previously locked away. They include heavy metals like lead and mercury, capable of damaging the nervous system and kidneys, as well as arsenic and nickel, known carcinogens. Organic materials like wood and oil that don't fully burn can leave polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — or PAHs — which can harm the immune system and cause sickness in the short term and cancer in the long term. Read more: The L.A. wildfires left lead and other toxic material in the soil of burn zones. Here are their health risks Their primary opportunities to enter the body are through the inhalation of toxic air or through ingestion, after collecting on the hands of a person who then touches their face or uses their hands to eat. They can also, to a lesser extent, absorb directly through the skin. Masks and disposable head-to-toe coverall suits act as a barrier against the dangerous contaminants. The responsibility to ensure workers are using those protective barriers on the job ultimately falls on the employer, said Soto. However, the breakdown of the safety standards can happen anywhere in the chain: The state's OSHA division can fail to communicate rules to companies and enforce them. Employers can fail to educate their employees or provide the correct PPE. Workers themselves — despite it all — can choose to remove their PPE on long, hot days where a plastic suit and heavy duty mask feel suffocating. 'Sometimes it's uncomfortable to wear all of that crap — particularly when it's hot," said Alvarado, who was a day laborer before founding NDLON. "Sometimes you feel like you're suffocated.' NDLON and its Pasadena Community Job Center, within hours of the Eaton fire, became a hub for the community's response. Its volunteers handed out PPE, food and donations to workers and community members. By the end of January, it had hundreds of helping hands clearing Pasadena's parks and streets of debris to assist overwhelmed city employees. At the same time, day labor, construction and environmental remediation workers quickly rushed into the burn zone along with the donations, media attention and celebrities. Like clockwork, so did the labor safety violations. In a dimly-lit Pasadena church in late January, dozens of day laborers watched as Carlos Castillo played the role of an impatient boss, barking directions at three workers standing before them. 'Hurry up,' Castillo told them in Spanish, handing out boxes of protective suits and masks. One woman, standing in front of the room, fumbled with the straps of a respirator. Debora Gonzalez, health and safety director NDLON, eyed the day laborer's efforts before asking the crowd: 'What is our friend missing?' 'Gloves!' someone called out. Gonzalez and other volunteers called on the crowd, who quickly pointed out more problems with the equipment that the three workers had hastily donned. One had a mask that wasn't sufficient for toxic cleanup; Gonzalez also pointed out that his beard would allow dust to infiltrate. Castillo, a volunteer trainer and president of the D.C.-based immigrant worker-support nonprofit Trabajadores Unidos de Washington D.C., reminded them that when they are cleaning up an area after a wildfire, there could be a range of noxious chemicals in the ash. Gonzalez said she wanted them to be prepared. 'Tomorrow we'll practice again,' she told them. NDLON set up the free trainings for any day laborers interested in supporting fire recovery after some laborers began picking up work cleaning homes contaminated with smoke and ash near the fire zones. Employers are supposed to provide protective equipment to workers and train them on how to use it, but 'many times employers want to move quickly. They just want to get the job done and get the job done as quickly as possible,' said Nadia Marin-Molina, NDLON co-executive director. 'Unfortunately, workers' health goes by the wayside.' As NDLON worked to educate day laborers, another group of workers moved in: The Army Corps of Engineers' contractors. Alvarado quickly noticed that many of the corps' workers were not wearing the required PPE. Never one to let the 'Day Laborer' in NDLON's name limit his compassion, Alvarado reached out to a longtime collaborator, Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois Chicago professor who studies labor standards enforcement, to do something about it. A week later, Juan Pablo Orjuela, a labor justice organizer with NDLON, made sure the air was recirculating in the car as the team drove through the burn zone, surveying workers for the NDLON and University of Illinois Chicago report in early May. He watched an AllTrails map documenting their progress — they'd drive until they had traced every street in northeast Altadena. Read more: When FEMA failed to test soil for toxic substances after the L.A. fires, The Times had it done. The results were alarming Orjuela spotted an Army Corps crew working on a home and pulled the car to the curb. 'Eight workers — no gloves, no Tyvek suit,' he said. Nestor Alvarenga, a day laborer and volunteer with NDLON, sat in the back, tediously recording the number of workers, how many were wearing protective equipment and the site's address into a spreadsheet on an iPad with a beefy black case. One worker walked up to the car; Orjuela slowly lowered the window. 'Do you guys need anything?' the worker asked. 'No, we're OK,' Orjuela said, 'we'll get out of your way.' Orjuela rolled up the window and pulled away. 'I don't really have to tell anybody what I'm doing,' he said. 'I'm not being antagonistic, but you know … I'm just not saying anything to anybody.' Theodore and NDLON hope the window survey, spanning 240 job sites with more than 1,000 total workers, can raise awareness for safety and health concerns in the burn areas, help educate workers, and put pressure on the government to more strictly enforce compliance. 'This was no small sample by any means,' Theodore said. 'This was an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible and the patterns were clear.' For Soto, the results are a clear sign that, first and foremost, employers are not upholding their responsibility to ensure their workers' safety. 'It's the responsibility of the employer,' he said. 'I want to be clear that we have that expectation — that demand — always.' Yet the window survey found even job sites where the PPE requirements are explicitly listed by the employer on a poster at the site, usage was still low. The reality, NDLON organizers said, is that the state must step in to help enforce the rules. 'I understand that the disaster was colossal, and I never expected the government to have the infrastructure to respond immediately,' said Alvarado, 'but at this point, making sure workers have PPE, that's a basic thing that the government should be doing.' Former Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
22-05-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Only a fraction of fire cleanup workers are protecting themselves against toxic debris. One community center is fighting to change that
A crew of 10, many sporting bright orange National Day Laborer Organizing Network T-shirts, funneled out of a Mexican restaurant on the edge of the Eaton burn scar. Four months — to the day — after winds smashed a tree into a car next to NDLON's Pasadena Community Job Center and soot blanketed the neighborhood, a University of Illinois Chicago professor, NDLON staff and volunteers sorted into cars under the midday sun and began discreetly traveling every road in fire-stricken Altadena. They watched nearly 250 crews, working long hours (for good pay) under contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, remove the toxic debris covering the landscape in the wake of the fire. Of the over 1,000 workers they surveyed in the burn area on May 7 and 9, only a quarter wore gloves, a fifth wore a protective mask, and a mere tenth donned full Tyvek suits, as required by California's fire cleanup safety regulations, the group's report, released Thursday, found. For Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director and co-founder of NDLON, the results aren't surprising. NDLON — a Pasadena-based, national network of day laborer organizations, focused on improving the lives of day laborers, migrant and low-wage workers — has been responding to post-disaster worker safety issues for decades. Alvarado couldn't help but remember the laborers he and NDLON supported during the cleanup following 9/11 over 20 years ago. 'Those workers are no longer alive. They died of cancer,' he said. 'These are workers I'd known for decades — their sons, their cousins.' As Alvarado watches a new generation of laborers get to work in the aftermath of the L.A. fires, his call to action is simple: 'I just don't want to see people dying.' NDLON has seen lax PPE use time and time again following disasters. Since 2001, NDLON has dispatched to countless hurricanes, floods and fires to support what the organization calls the 'second responders' — the workers who wade through the rubble and rebuild communities after the devastation. Eaton was no different. 'We always respond around the country to floods, fires, no matter where it is,' said Cal Soto, workers' rights director for NDLON, who helped survey workers in the burn area. For the Eaton fire, 'we just happen to be literally in the shadow of it.' When wildfires push into developed areas like Altadena, they chew through not just trees but residents' cars, plastics, batteries and household goods like detergents and paint thinners, releasing hosts of toxic chemicals previously locked away. They include heavy metals like lead and mercury, capable of damaging the nervous system and kidneys, as well as arsenic and nickel, known carcinogens. Organic materials like wood and oil that don't fully burn can leave polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — or PAHs — which can harm the immune system and cause sickness in the short term and cancer in the long term. Their primary opportunities to enter the body are through the inhalation of toxic air or through ingestion, after collecting on the hands of a person who then touches their face or uses their hands to eat. They can also, to a lesser extent, absorb directly through the skin. Masks and disposable head-to-toe coverall suits act as a barrier against the dangerous contaminants. The responsibility to ensure workers are using those protective barriers on the job ultimately falls on the employer, said Soto. However, the breakdown of the safety standards can happen anywhere in the chain: The state's OSHA division can fail to communicate rules to companies and enforce them. Employers can fail to educate their employees or provide the correct PPE. Workers themselves — despite it all — can choose to remove their PPE on long, hot days where a plastic suit and heavy duty mask feel suffocating. 'Sometimes it's uncomfortable to wear all of that crap — particularly when it's hot,' said Alvarado, who was a day laborer before founding NDLON. 'Sometimes you feel like you're suffocated.' NDLON and its Pasadena Community Job Center, within hours of the Eaton fire, became a hub for the community's response. Its volunteers handed out PPE, food and donations to workers and community members. By the end of January, it had hundreds of helping hands clearing Pasadena's parks and streets of debris to assist overwhelmed city employees. At the same time, day labor, construction and environmental remediation workers quickly rushed into the burn zone along with the donations, media attention and celebrities. Like clockwork, so did the labor safety violations. In a dimly-lit Pasadena church in late January, dozens of day laborers watched as Carlos Castillo played the role of an impatient boss, barking directions at three workers standing before them. 'Hurry up,' Castillo told them in Spanish, handing out boxes of protective suits and masks. One woman, standing in front of the room, fumbled with the straps of a respirator. Debora Gonzalez, health and safety director NDLON, eyed the day laborer's efforts before asking the crowd: 'What is our friend missing?' 'Gloves!' someone called out. Gonzalez and other volunteers called on the crowd, who quickly pointed out more problems with the equipment that the three workers had hastily donned. One had a mask that wasn't sufficient for toxic cleanup; Gonzalez also pointed out that his beard would allow dust to infiltrate. Castillo, a volunteer trainer and president of the D.C.-based immigrant worker-support nonprofit Trabajadores Unidos de Washington D.C., reminded them that when they are cleaning up an area after a wildfire, there could be a range of noxious chemicals in the ash. Gonzalez said she wanted them to be prepared. 'Tomorrow we'll practice again,' she told them. NDLON set up the free trainings for any day laborers interested in supporting fire recovery after some laborers began picking up work cleaning homes contaminated with smoke and ash near the fire zones. Employers are supposed to provide protective equipment to workers and train them on how to use it, but 'many times employers want to move quickly. They just want to get the job done and get the job done as quickly as possible,' said Nadia Marin-Molina, NDLON co-executive director. 'Unfortunately, workers' health goes by the wayside.' As NDLON worked to educate day laborers, another group of workers moved in: The Army Corps of Engineers' contractors. Alvarado quickly noticed that many of the corps' workers were not wearing the required PPE. Never one to let the 'Day Laborer' in NDLON's name limit his compassion, Alvarado reached out to a longtime collaborator, Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois Chicago professor who studies labor standards enforcement, to do something about it. A week later, Juan Pablo Orjuela, a labor justice organizer with NDLON, made sure the air was recirculating in the car as the team drove through the burn zone, surveying workers for the NDLON and University of Illinois Chicago report in early May. He watched an AllTrails map documenting their progress — they'd drive until they had traced every street in northeast Altadena. Orjuela spotted an Army Corps crew working on a home and pulled the car to the curb. 'Eight workers — no gloves, no Tyvek suit,' he said. Nestor Alvarenga, a day laborer and volunteer with NDLON, sat in the back, tediously recording the number of workers, how many were wearing protective equipment and the site's address into a spreadsheet on an iPad with a beefy black case. One worker walked up to the car; Orjuela slowly lowered the window. 'Do you guys need anything?' the worker asked. 'No, we're OK,' Orjuela said, 'we'll get out of your way.' Orjuela rolled up the window and pulled away. 'I don't really have to tell anybody what I'm doing,' he said. 'I'm not being antagonistic, but you know … I'm just not saying anything to anybody.' Theodore and NDLON hope the window survey, spanning 240 job sites with more than 1,000 total workers, can raise awareness for safety and health concerns in the burn areas, help educate workers, and put pressure on the government to more strictly enforce compliance. 'This was no small sample by any means,' Theodore said. 'This was an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible and the patterns were clear.' For Soto, the results are a clear sign that, first and foremost, employers are not upholding their responsibility to ensure their workers' safety. 'It's the responsibility of the employer,' he said. 'I want to be clear that we have that expectation — that demand — always.' Yet the window survey found even job sites where the PPE requirements are explicitly listed by the employer on a poster at the site, usage was still low. The reality, NDLON organizers said, is that the state must step in to help enforce the rules. 'I understand that the disaster was colossal, and I never expected the government to have the infrastructure to respond immediately,' said Alvarado, 'but at this point, making sure workers have PPE, that's a basic thing that the government should be doing.' Former Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Two employees hospitalized, over 300 decontaminated after suspicious package found at CT facility
Two people were taken to the hospital and hundreds of employees at a medical technology company in North Canaan were decontaminated on Thursday when a suspicious package at the facility was found, prompting an investigation by state and federal authorities. Crews responded to Becton, Dickinson and Company on Grace Way shortly before 9 a.m. on the report of a suspicious package that contained potentially hazardous materials, according to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The large response also included local firefighters, DEEP's Emergency Response Unit, Connecticut State Police, the FBI, the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Service, public health officials and the Region 5 Hazmat Team. According to DEEP spokesperson Will Healey, the agencies consulted and determined a coordinated threat assessment was necessary to protect public health. A private contractor was brought in to support the large-scale decontamination operations. Two people were taken to an area hospital 'as a precaution' and were later released, Healey said. Between 300-350 employees were decontaminated at the site and provided Tyvek suits to return home in. The Emergency Response Unit along with the National Guard Civil Support Team conducted a final search of the building late into the night and underwent technical decontamination. Crews were at the scene until around midnight. Healey deferred comment about the substance that was found, and how it was discovered, to the FBI, which is the lead agency in the investigation. 'This incident highlights the critical role of our first responders, not only in assessing potential threats and managing complex emergency responses, but in ensuring the safety and well-being of the public throughout,' Healey said. 'Their expertise, coordination, and professionalism make it possible to respond swiftly, communicate effectively, and carry out decontamination and safety measures with care and precision. We thank them for protecting public health and safety, and helping affected individuals return home safely to their families.' Calls to Becton, Dickinson and Company on Friday went unanswered. A spokesperson for the FBI could not be reached for comment.
