Document Rj9QNwMOMKv3BJ6QoQGzpg4Yk

REMARKS BY J. J. HALL AT THE 1979 CHEMICALS ANNUAL MTG. Slide 1 Good Morning. My name is Jim Hall. I'm Director of Industrial Hygiene for Conoco Chemicals. My concern is the Health of our workforce and how that commodity may be affected by the way we do business. Slide 2 Slide 3 Slide 4 Occupational Health has had it's share of the limelight recently. This array of alphabet soup is a government response to the country's growing awareness of the hazards of the workplace. Manufacturing chemicals within the constraints of a matrix of rules and regulations is frustrating, and might make us wish we were back in simpler times. But maybe, we brought some of this on ourselves. I'd like to read you an employement ad from the "good old days". Slide 6 Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $5 a week. Apply: Pony Express Stables. St. Joseph, Mo. I don't think I'd want to compete for a job in that market. Slide 6A , Today, we are committed to a good industrial hygiene program. This morning I want to give you a feel for what we've done and what we haven't done ~ yet - toward that goal. SAI- 000080184 2 f - Slide 7 Slide 8 The textbooks will tell you that industrial hygiene deals with recognition, evaluation, and control of occuptional hazards. I'd update that definition for 1979 by adding two items: Anticipation and Communication. Slide 9 We've got to anticipate problems. If we had data and were smart enough to use it we could anticipate the next vinyl chloride. Then we can engineer the solutions and include them in our normal capital budget cycle, rather than having to retrofit expensive controls on a crash basis. Slide 10 We've also got to communicate: to both our employees and our customers. We see an obligation to tell them what we know about the hazards of our products and our workplaces. 000 i Slide 11 Slide 12 3- - : Let's talk about specifics, about what we've done and what we will do to give you a good IH program. First: The Chemical Exposure Abatement program has given us a handle on what our problems are, and commitment of engineering and capital resources has corrected many of our gib problems. Second: Our pro gram of multiphasic physical exams provides the data we need to make sure that the health of our workforce is not being adversely affected. ,0*0*.oV 4- - Slide 13 Slide 14 Now, we've got to continue in three major areas- The first is improved documentation and data storage. Second, we've got to learn to use the information we collect, and third, we've got to communicate. With res pect to the first area, we are accruing volumes data. For these data to be useful they've got to be collected and stored in a retrievable form. The data we need fall into three categories: medical, exposure levels, and work history. The medical data is being collected and compiled by a contractor and stored on computer. The expsoure data is being collected and compiled manually by our safety staffs, and stored in loose leaf binders or file cabinets. The work history data is buried somewhere in personnel files. Our job is to put these data in a useable form. ,00.0\ 5- - t1' Slide 15 Once we do that, we've got to be smart enought to use it to our advantage. Epidemiology is the study of incidence of diseases. The computerized data files will let us look at our records and compare the actual medical re sults with exposures. We'll be able to answer pertinent questions such as: Is the incidence of cancer in our employees working with dimethyl fuzzylene higher than we would expect to see in a normal popula tion? What is the overall mortality experience of our workforce com pared to what we'd expect? - Is our occupational environment presenting an unacceptable risk to our workforce? We'll be able to assure ourselves that the risks we take are acceptable and that we won't trip over the next "vinyl chloride*". What's more, we'll have good data to feed into the regulatory process. Higher quality, less burdensome federal standards will be a bonus. IV- SAL. 000080188 6- - (-1 Slide 16 The third area which demands our attention is communication. We want to make sure that our employees and our customers have the knowledge they need to handle our products and processes safely. In today's world, I as an employee, have the right to know what materials I work with and what their hazards are and thatsT great. Slide 17 s We know that the informed employee is an invaluable asset in controlling health hazards in the plant. That's why we've worked hard to give our employees the knowledge they need. We also need to communicate with our customers and give them adequate warning of the hazards of our products and at the same time minimize our product liability risks. One way to meet that obligation is a comprehensive labeling program. Slide 18 This program does not involve labels only, although proper labels are a critical part. It includes material safety data sheet which will give a thumbnail sketch of hazards and proper protective measures to employees and customers. We'll also review our product literature to make sure that we communicate with our prospective customers and give them not only the physical pro perties and capabilities of our products but also their potential hazards 'if handled improperly. t - 7- - Slide 18 So these are Che areas which we'll be working on: CD improved data storage and retrieval (2) proper utilization of those data and (3) a program to communicate with our customers and employees. Thats about where we are and where we're going in our attempt to run a quality Industrial Hygiene Program for you. When we reach our goal we can say with confidence that we're protecting not only the health of our employees but also the health of the company. , 0180 0008