For 10 years, the School of Public Health has allowed students studying occupational health and safety to visit industrial job sites—and witness workplace hazards and safety controls.
The wheels on the bus go round and round—to a coal mine and steel mill in Pennsylvania, a beryllium factory in Ohio, an auto assembly plant in Michigan, Love Canal in upstate New York, and other industrial and environmental sites that hold a place in American history. It’s part of the annual Historical Perspectives bus tour, a 1,300-mile trip that gives medical residents and graduate students—in nursing, medicine, public health, occupational health and safety, industrial hygiene, and ergonomics—a close look at workplace safety issues, then and now.
The bus tour, in its 10th year, was the inspiration of Mitchel Rosen, director of the Office of Public Health Practice at the School of Public Health. He says that the interdisciplinary aspect of the tour is key to its success, because when the students go to work as health professionals, they’ll need to collaborate to properly treat occupational health and safety problems.
“Each discipline looks at workplace health and safety differently,” says Rosen EJB’12. “The industrial hygiene student looks at possible exposures, the medical resident at the potential for illness, and the ergonomics student at how the work impacts the body. An occupational health professional has to understand the entire spectrum.”
While on the tour, the students learn to work collaboratively and share perspectives. Participants include master’s in public health students from the School of Public Health; occupational medicine residents from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; industrial hygiene students from Hunter College; ergonomics and biomechanics students from New York University; and occupational safety students from New Jersey Institute of Technology. The program receives support from the New York and New Jersey Education and Research Center, one of 18 centers funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
By now the trip’s logistics are well established. Early on Day 1, the bus picks up its passengers in New York and New Jersey, then drives several hours to the first location: a mine, factory, farm, or manufacturing plant. The participants have a tour, and then it’s back on the bus where they complete assignments en route to the next stop. They’re on the road four or five days, staying overnight in hotels.
Each site is selected for its specific educational value. A popular stop is the Ford River Rouge Assembly Plant in Michigan, the first mass-production factory built by Henry Ford. Here, students see a working assembly line and learn how Henry Ford’s obsession with efficiency made life so difficult that workers rebelled and tried to unionize. At the Lackawanna Coal Mine in Pennsylvania, students descend 300 feet below the earth’s surface to experience the dangerous conditions that miners routinely face. While visiting the Ohio beryllium plant (it’s a toxic additive used to strengthen copper), students must suit up with respirators and hazmat gear to avoid exposure.
“Seeing these places gives students a first-hand look at occupational dangers and problems that have occurred,” says Rosen. “They learn the importance of worker safety and how hazards can be avoided in the future.”
— Mary Ann Littell
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