127: The American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA)

Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode is recorded March 19th, 2025. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer, and today our guest is Larry Sloan. Larry is CEO of the American Industrial Hygiene Association, or AIHA. And before that, he served as CEO at SOCMA, a trade association representing the US specialty chemical industry. Mr. Sloan started his nonprofit career at the Adhesive and Sealant Council and was promoted to his first CEO role there in 2005. He began his career as a chemical engineer at Air Products and later worked for Nalco Chemical in marketing, manufacturing and sales capacities. Larry has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Larry joins us today from Falls Church, Virginia, welcome to the show.

Larry Sloan:

Thanks very much, Jill. Great to be here.

Jill James:

Yeah. So, Larry, this is the Accidental Safety Pro, and somehow you ended up as the CEO of the American Industrial Hygiene Association, but I bet you have a winding story as to how you landed there after earning your chemical engineering degree and your MBA. So, where did things start out for you? What's your origin story?

Larry Sloan:

Yeah, everybody's got a great story to tell. Everybody's journey in life is different and mine is certainly unique. I was a technical sales representative actually working for a family business in the nineties, and I was selling water treatment equipment, large pieces of capital equipment that are used in both municipal wastewater and drinking water plants. And I did that for about seven years, and I did very well financially, but I just decided at the end of that seven years I wanted to pivot and really do something a little more altruistic and become a part of a team. Being out on the road, back then, this is before the proliferation of cell phones, I had one of those bag car phones back in the nineties, you know?

Jill James:

I did too.

Larry Sloan:

Yeah. So I literally had dinner with a very close friend of mine from engineering school, and I had understood that she had been in the nonprofit sector from many, many years prior, and she had been working for what was called a trade association. And so, I sat down with her and I said, "Look, I'm in the DC area, I don't want to relocate. I'm hearing about this nonprofit sector, you've been working for this trade association now for seven or eight years, what is this all about? Do you think that I could segue my skills into the nonprofit sector, and what would that look like?" And literally she looked at me and she said, "You would be absolutely perfect for a job in a chemical trade association."

Jill James:

Okay.

Larry Sloan:

And so, one thing led to the other and she explained to me how to apply for job opportunities with different chemical trade associations, and I had a series of interviews. I landed my first trade association job in the summer of 2000, and I started out as a membership director in the Adhesive and Sealing Council, and from there I kind of progressed to SOCMA, which is a specialty chemical association. And I worked at SOCMA for a period of time, and then when I heard about the opportunity at AIHA, I expressed interest. The attorney that we had at SOCMA is the same attorney that we have here at AIHA. So, when the opportunity came about, he said, "Larry, you really should apply." And I said, "What is AIHA? What is industrial hygiene? I don't know anything about this." And so, I threw my name in and I was selected to be interviewed during the first round of interviews, and that was in May of 2016, and I then apparently impressed them enough that I made it to the second and final round. It was a very short interview cycle. And that was in July of 2016, and it started out with me being one of four finalists and I thought, "Eh, I have a chance at this." And then one dropped out and then the next one dropped out, and then it was down to just two of us. And so I was like, "You know what? I have a really good shot at getting this job." And I got very excited at that point. And so, I flew out to Seattle and interviewed with the search committee, which I think numbered eight or nine people, it was a very large search committee. And they asked me-

Jill James:

That's an intimidating number of people.

Larry Sloan:

Yeah, it was fun. I felt very comfortable with the group from day one. And then, obviously I did well and got the opportunity to present myself in a slightly different perspective. They gave me an exercise to run through with the group, which I did, and I think two or three days later they awarded me the opportunity to take the job. So, and I started in October of 2016.

Jill James:

Yeah, wow. So you have worked over 20 years in the nonprofit sector now?

Larry Sloan:

I have. And what makes me a little bit different than many other nonprofit folks is that I started out in the trade association side of things, where the members are companies, and then I pivoted over to an individual membership organization, AIHA, where the members are individuals. And I didn't realize the difference in the cadence and the tenor of one versus the other, but there are definitely differences between running a trade association versus an individual membership organization. Big difference.

Jill James:

For sure. So, you said when you were interviewing for the job, "What's an industrial hygienist? And more importantly, what is AIHA?" Well, not more importantly, but that was the job you were applying for. For our audience, especially maybe for the safety professionals who are listening who are like, "I don't really know what that association is." How do you describe AIHA today?

Larry Sloan:

Yeah, that's a very good question. Because the term industrial hygiene really is an archaic term, and it really doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people. So, one of the things that we've worked on over the last nine years that I've been at AIHA is how do we communicate who we are as a profession to folks that are not in the profession? But very simply put, AIHA is an association of scientists, engineers, and other professionals that are responsible for worker health and safety. Health and safety are related. They're first cousins, but health is really about longer term exposures to workplace hazards and the impact on their health and wellbeing. So, safety may be about trips, slips and falls and getting electrocuted, whereas workplace health is about not incurring or contracting cancer or other debilitating illnesses or hearing loss, or things that might take many, many years to develop.

Jill James:

Yeah, that's perfect, that's actually similar to the way that I explain it as well. And when I'm trying to explain the differences between the professions, I often say they go together like salt and pepper. They sit together, you don't say safety without saying health, and you don't say health without saying safety. They go together in the work that we're trying to do. Yeah, wonderful. So, tell us about AIHA today and what your focus is, and I believe that you have some domains that is your primary focus.

Larry Sloan:

Yeah, AIHA has really evolved over the nine years that I've been at the helm, and it's been a very exciting journey, and it's why I'm still around, because the organization is very different than it was when I joined in 2016. We still have the same core values, if you will, and we're still putting on our annual conference and webinars and all the other wonderful things that I think we do and provide for the profession, but a lot of the initiatives that we've launched over the last many years have really evolved. And the pandemic was definitely a major external factor that I think has driven the association in exciting new directions. Every three years AIHA reviews and updates its strategic plan, and I think that this is a great opportunity for us to reflect back on what have we accomplished over the last three-year period, and what do we want to adjust our priorities to be in the next three-year period? And so, I have now been through three iterations of our strategic plan. And the latest plan started January 1st of this year, and I want to mention that one of the things that makes AIHA a very interesting place is that, unlike other nonprofits, we're a rather complex organization. We're not just an organization of 7000 plus individual members, but we also are an organization that encompasses what we call three limited liability corporations. So, I just want to take a quick step back and explain that AIHA is a membership of these 7000 plus individuals, we have chapters around the country as well, there's about 60 chapters that are affiliated with AIHA. We have these limited liability corporations, one has to do with lab accreditation, another one has to do with proficiency testing for labs to assess their competency in what they do, and then the third one is a registry programs LLC. And so, the total revenues from these three LLCs accounts for about 50% of our total top line income, which is not insignificant.

Jill James:

No kidding, interesting.

Larry Sloan:

And we also have two foundations. We have an education foundation that provides scholarships to students that are studying either undergraduate or graduate, and then we have something called the Guideline Foundation, which provides a variety of programs, including what are called emergency response planning guideline values. These are basically occupational exposure limits for the community. So, for example, if you have a chemical plant explosion, God forbid, the first responders need to look at these values, because typically it's going to be a high volume capacity chemical that is exposed, or that spills, or that is liberated into the community. And so, you want to make sure you're protecting the community to the best of your ability. And so, we're the only organization in North America that updates and develops these values called, again, Emergency Response Planning Guideline Values. So, that's a very important part of the Guideline Foundation. There's a couple other programs that I'll talk about later that are also a part of the Guideline Foundation. And then finally we have a Product Stewardship Society, which is a whole separate organization, with its own annual meeting and its own membership. And so, all of this together makes up the AIHA.

Jill James:

That's a lot. And so, when thinking about what you just talked about with lab accreditations and testing and registry, would the labs exist anywhere a lab might exist? Or we think, of course, I thought about universities right away.

Larry Sloan:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah. Who seeks the accreditation?

Larry Sloan:

So, there are some 300 labs mostly in the United States that are divided into different categories, if you will. So, we have industrial hygiene labs that will do things like asbestos fiber counts.

Jill James:

Sure.

Larry Sloan:

Or they will analyze for silica dust, things of that nature. There are beryllium labs that work directly with the US Department of Energy, for example. There are lead labs. There are microbio labs. And we also have what are called unique scope labs, which are basically other types of fields of testing, like food labs and forensic labs. And so, when you look at all of these different laboratories, they must be accredited by the ISO Standard 1725. And all of this is basically managed by a global organization called ILAC. And so, we are one of several accrediting bodies around the world, and our domain, if you will, is predominantly again the United States, and we accredit labs that are in those five different categories. And so, the lab accreditation program is also driven by the proficiency analytical testing LLC, whereby if you want to be accredited under the ISO standard, your lab must engage in a series of tests throughout the year that are managed by a PAT provider. So, we have those two that are hand in glove that feed one another. Now, you don't have to use AIHA's PAT program to be LAP accredited, but many of our labs are. And so, we have a very loyal following of laboratories, and the LAP program has been in business since 1974, so we just celebrated our 50th anniversary.

Jill James:

Wow. That's beautiful. I'm thinking about a long time ago, I don't recall if I told you this in our prep call or not, I worked for OSHA as an investigator, and I'm thinking about a time where I sent a sample of feather dust from a rendering plant to a lab. I don't remember if it was maybe Salt Lake, I think it was a NIOSH lab, and I asked them, "Can you blow this up? See if this is explosive for me." And so, that's probably an example of a lab that AIHA accredits.

Larry Sloan:

Yeah. We have a variety of labs, like you said earlier, some of them are academic laboratories, some are affiliated with the US government, the state government, and some are private labs.

Jill James:

Right. The work that you do with emergency response and the values, as you were speaking I was thinking of different events that have happened in the past and where those values may have been put into play, and I'm thinking of a train derailment that probably happened a few years ago. Was it Ohio, maybe? I'm trying to remember.

Larry Sloan:

It was, it was East Palestine, Ohio, and they actually did use the ERPG value for the chemical.

Jill James:

Yeah, yes. Your organization is very busy.

Larry Sloan:

We are busy, but it's still not a very well understood profession, so there's this continuing challenge for us as a professional society to distill down the very simple terms, who we are, why we are important, and what is the impact on business.

Jill James:

Yeah. Can I ask about that, in terms of you mentioned 7000 plus members? What is the value that an individual member gets from the organization?

Larry Sloan:

Well, first off, it's networking. And I don't want to understate the importance of networking, but we've got folks in the membership that started out as student members and literally have worked their way through their career stages, and they have built these impressive networks of peers and colleagues that they have depended upon and who have depended upon them. And so, when we talk about our annual conference and the other events that we put on throughout the year, and of course now the virtual networking, that's a very critical component of being a member of AIHA. And then of course, if you would like to pursue and earn your Certified Industrial Hygienist credential, the CIH, that's kind of like the gold standard around the world, you want to maintain that credential and earn your continuing education credits each year. And so, AIHA provides a wealth of educational training that helps you earn those points to renew every so many years. Those are the two predominantly value propositions for being a member of AIHA, and then there's discounts on other services and so forth that we offer.

Jill James:

Sure. Wonderful. Well, do you want to share the domains that you focus on?

Larry Sloan:

Sure. So, we have been working with an outside consultant in our strategic planning process, and we have continued the engagement at the summer of last year. And the domains that we have provided, the domains that we are offering up in our current strategic plan are as follows, there are four external facing domains and one internal facing domain. And so, the first four are really aimed at the profession, at the membership. And so, the first one is the pursuit of knowledge. So, what are we doing to ensure that we are remaining cutting edge in the type of education and resources that we provide to the membership? The second one is called Advancing the Profession, and that has to do with a series of initiatives where we're really pushing the envelope and really suggesting that you want to do more as an industrial hygienist beyond just meeting regulatory compliance, right? You want to step up your game and make sure that you're doing everything possible to protect your workers, whether you are, again, employed by a manufacturer, or whether you are a consultant to a client. What more should you be doing as a IH professional to safeguard your worker health and well-being? The third domain is member and volunteer engagement. And this has to do with all the committees, the special interest groups and the advisory groups that we've set up to help advance the profession and to serve as a source of community. And then the fourth one is impact and awareness. And that gets into how do we explain, again, the benefits of the profession, the value of the profession, the government relations work we do at the federal and state level? And then the fifth domain is what's called organizational excellence, and that's really about how we lead staff here in Falls Church. Are we recruiting the right folks? Are we making sure that folks feel like they're being motivated and challenged? Do we have the right computer systems in place? Are we managing our finances properly? The internal workings of the organization that helps us then better serve the membership.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm. Larry, if someone is interested in serving on an advisory group, and they're in the profession and are a member, can they express interest? How does that piece work, for people who might want to be more involved in the organization?

Larry Sloan:

Sure. So, there are specific volunteer groups, and that's the term we use generically to refer to the 60-some odd different committees and working groups and advisory groups that we offer.

Jill James:

Wow, okay.

Larry Sloan:

We have a lot and we have our own little vernacular as to what's limited to members, versus open to the public. So, for example, let's start at the top. We have these advisory groups and task forces at the national level, and many of them are open to anyone. For example, we have a TSCA task force that was set up a couple years ago. TSCA refers to the Toxic Substances Control Act, managed by the US EPA. And we decided to open this up to anybody, because we want this to be an opportunity for AIHA members to interface with folks from chemical trade associations, US government, and other bodies that have an interest in TSCA reform. We also want to make sure that the folks that work for the EPA are able to be a part of the conversations within this particular group. We have other advisory groups that are limited to AIHA members only. And then as we go down the hierarchy of these groups, we have technical committees. For example, we have a noise committee. We'll have an ergonomics committee. We have an exposure assessment strategies committee. And these committees are limited to AIHA members only. This is really where a lot of the granular technical work gets done, and we want to make sure that you're a member of the association-

Jill James:

Of course.

Larry Sloan:

... to play a role in that type of work. Now, we have a few working groups that are in that same structure. We have an oil and gas working group, and we have a mining working group. And there again, because it's a working group, we're allowing non-members to be a part of the conversation, because we want to make sure that we're reflecting stakeholders from trade associations that might represent those industry sectors. We have special interest groups that are limited to members, and those are things like the Fellows Special Interest Group. So, when you are very well distinguished in the profession, there's a process in which you can apply to become a fellow of the organization. Of course, that is requiring AIHA membership. We have a Minority Special Interest Group for non-White, if you will, professionals, and that's been in progress now for over 25 years. We have a new Pride Special Interest Group that was founded a couple years ago for LGBTQ+ professionals, as well as advocates of that community. That is a very popular group. And then finally, we have what we call these professional development committees that are limited to members, like we have a career and employment services committee. We have a student and early career professional committee. We have a mentoring committee, and a few others. And so, we have this hierarchy of committees and working groups and so forth, that some are limited to members and some are open to the general public.

Jill James:

A lot of opportunities for people to be involved if they choose to.

Larry Sloan:

Yes. And there are opportunities, obviously, if you want to become a member of these different types of groups, whether you're an AIHA national member or not, you just go to the AIHA website and there's a Get Involved page and there's instructions on how to sign up for these different types of groups. And then we also offer, when we're populating these groups at the national level, like advisory groups and task forces, or forming a new group, because we love to form groups, there's an open call process, and then we'll send the open call announcement out to either the membership or to the general public. If it's to the general public, we'll promote it through our social media channels, like LinkedIn, and then we'll get a series of applicants that apply, and then we will then decide which of those are the most qualified to serve in that particular capacity.

Jill James:

Well, it sounds like a worthwhile organization to be part of as a professional. I love it. Larry, you mentioned some of the groups are focused on specific hazards or exposures. You mentioned heat. I think it appears as though you've been doing some real interesting work with heat stress as well, do you want to talk about that?

Larry Sloan:

Sure. So, a few years ago one of the groups that we formed was a Thermal Stress Working Group. And so, thermal stress being hot or cold. Well, the current focus of the group is on heat, hot temperatures. And again, since it's a working group, that means it's open to anyone, members and non-members. We have folks from the US government, from state government, private sector, public sector, academics. One of the first projects that the Thermal Stress Working Group wanted us to pursue was the creation of a new heat stress app for your smartphone. There are existing apps that are out there, there's an existing NIOSH, OSHA heat stress app, but that app is based on the concept of the heat index. We decided that we wanted to create an app based on the concept of wet bulb globe temperature, which is known as the gold standard for measuring heat stress. And so, we developed a subgroup from that Thermal Stress Working Group, of volunteers, both members and non-members, to develop the parameters behind what we would like this app to be and how it would operate. And so, once we had those parameters we interviewed a series of companies in the app development business, and this is not something that we really were very experienced at doing, we never had developed apps before this particular project.

Jill James:

Right. How do you go about interviewing someone to find the... Yes, yes, please go.

Larry Sloan:

Yeah. Well, we had, through the contacts within the Thermal Stress Working Group, we had some academic contacts, and they told us of app developers that their schools had worked with in the past. And so, we had a short list of four or five different app developers, and we basically sent out this request for proposal to all four or five of those companies, and we evaluated the pros and cons of each of their proposals, and we ended up selecting a company that was very closely related to a university that, coincidentally, had been working on an algorithm that was modeling WBGT in an app-type environment. And so, it was the perfect marriage of working with our friends at, I think I can say this, East Carolina University and their app developer, a company called Dualboot. And we've been working with them over the last couple years now, we're now in the final year of this project, which was specially funded by our board of directors, and the first version of the app, which released last summer, was relegated to outdoor workers. So, think of construction workers, agricultural workers, delivery people. We have now continued the development of the app into a version 2.0, which is going to drop in May of this year. It'll be developed for both outdoor and indoor workers. And the whole concept of the app, again, is to calculate the WBGT, based on pulling live weather data from your community and having the user answer a series of very simple questions, including, "How hard are you working?" And there's a scale from minimal to extreme. "What kind of clothing are you wearing?" And there's a dropdown menu for that. And, "What kind of cloud cover are you seeing in your community?" And by answering those three simple questions and then having you enter your GPS coordinates, you just enter your city and state, or even your street address, it will then pull corresponding live weather data from the National Weather Service, and it'll calculate your heat stress based on all of those inputs. And then based on that input, or those series of inputs, it will calculate the relative heat stress from minimal, low, medium, high and extreme. And then it'll give you a series of health recommendations that you should consider based on the relative heat stress. And that's the process that's going to be used for the indoor worker as well. If you're working in a non-climatized environment, you'll follow a similar methodology that will then calculate your relative heat stress, with a corresponding series of health recommendations.

Jill James:

Beautiful. So, people are listening and wondering, how do I get this app? What do they search for in their app store?

Larry Sloan:

So, they can go either to their Apple or Google Play app store and they can just type in AIHA Heat Stress. We are the only ones that are branded that way, and you will then see the link to the app and you can download it to your smartphone. Right now, the publicly available version is for the indoor workers only. We're in the process of alpha testing version two for the indoor worker. And again, that should be available to the public by early May, and we'll be sending out an announcement about that. But we're pretty excited about version two because then it will be applicable to all types of workers. Plus we're adding in an additional component, if you're working near a piece of radiating heat equipment like a boiler or an oven-

Jill James:

Sure you're in a foundry, yeah.

Larry Sloan:

Whether you're outdoors or indoors, that's going to be an added layer of applicability that the app will cover.

Jill James:

Gosh, this puts so much powerful information in the hands of, yes, the professionals like myself and all the others that are listening, but in the hands of the workers.

Larry Sloan:

Right.

Jill James:

It's fantastic.

Larry Sloan:

We specifically wanted to make sure that when we developed this heat stress app, that it was designed for the business owner and the worker. So, language that we've used is relatively simple, in its syntax. We try to avoid technical terms, and we keep reiterating to our members that this is not an app for you, it's for you to share with your workers, with your customers-

Jill James:

I see.

Larry Sloan:

... your clients.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. So, the professionals might still be using the old-fashioned sling psychrometer to firm up what they're finding in the app.

Larry Sloan:

Right.

Jill James:

Yeah. Okay. Wow. So, from that, it sounds like the Weather Channel got interested in talking with you. Is that true?

Larry Sloan:

Yes. It was quite an exciting opportunity, through our outside public relations firm last summer, the Weather Channel contacted us and said, "Hey, we're interested in this app. What's it all about? Can we set AIHA up for a very quick live interview?" And so, I was literally timed to the minute as to when the interview was going to take place. I think it was last August. And I was prepared to be basically beamed into the studio, and I literally had, I think I had under two minutes to basically tell the story.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh, and did you land that plane on time?

Larry Sloan:

I did. I landed the plane on time. I made sure I got in the soundbites, and when I was prepping for it the facilitator prior to the live interview was telling me, "Now, here's how it's going to work, Larry, you're all going to have a very short amount of time and you're going to hear me whispering in your ear if you're running a little over to wrap things up." And so, I was very pleased that she never had a whisper to me. I got my messages in very quickly, got in and got out, if you will.

Jill James:

You did a great job. That's excellent. So, if people go to the website, are they able to see your interview?

Larry Sloan:

I believe the interview is on AIHA TV, and we can certainly follow up with the link later. I don't think it's on our web page, but we hope to do another interview with the Weather Channel this summer when we open up the app for all types of workers.

Jill James:

Yeah. In the show notes for this episode, we can absolutely put a link to the AIHA's website information on the heat stress app. That would be great. If your team wants to share your interview on the Weather Channel, that'd be cool too. We can do that as well. So, in terms of other things that you're working on right now, or emphasis areas, especially since you're at the top of year three of your strategic plan, is there anything else that's coming up that you're really focused on, or interested in, or that you're hearing from members that needs to be addressed?

Larry Sloan:

Yeah. So I think I'd like to focus on the second domain, which is advancing the profession. And again, this is the first year of the newest strategic plan, so it's '25, '26 and '27. And so, under the domain advancing the profession, this is where we talk about a variety of initiatives that are really focused on the industrial hygienists. Several years ago, we launched a program called Defining the Science. It was one of the first of the four initiatives. And Defining the Science is all about taking a role in developing what we'll call a national research agenda that consists of topics that are provided and supplied by our members on how we should be advancing the study of industrial hygiene. What research topics need to be conducted to further advance an understanding of one nuance or another within the profession? So, we have been publishing iterations of this research agenda over the last several years and promoting this agenda to government agencies that conduct research like NIOSH and EPA and NIH, and also promoting the agenda to academics around the country. You might be a PhD doctoral student or a professor, and you're in search of a new topic, and maybe you don't know where to turn. And so, this research agenda is a great repository of information for those that are seeking out research ideas. And one of the ideas, quite frankly, that was submitted by one of our volunteer groups, namely the Thermal Stress Working Group, this was several years ago, was, "Hey, AIHA should develop a heat stress app." So, that's one idea that actually was submitted through our portal that we actually decided to pursue and fund, and here we are three years later ready to release version two.

Jill James:

Wow, fantastic.

Larry Sloan:

Another idea that came out of Defining the Science was for AIHA to basically launch a kind of a sequel to a study that NIOSH conducted some 10 years ago on state of the profession. What are employers saying about hiring trends in the next three to five years? We had gone back to NIOSH several years ago and we said, "Hey, you're going to do a version two of this survey. It was a wonderful survey, it was very comprehensive in nature." And unfortunately they said, "We just don't have the bandwidth, we don't have the funding. AIHA, why don't you take it over?" And so, we thought, "Well, we don't have that kind of level of funding, so is there a way for us to simplify this survey and do it in house?" And that's exactly what we did. We relied upon a small group of our volunteers to look at the original list of questions that NIOSH had conducted back in, I think it was 2012, and we launched it last year, and we had the participation by some of our allied associations in the safety space, and we left it open for four to five months, and then we just published a report on the findings from the State of the Profession Survey, and we can drop that link in the box as well.

Jill James:

I would love that. I know there's people that are going to absolutely want to read that. Are there any key findings that you recall? I'm not expecting that... Yes, go ahead if you know some.

Larry Sloan:

Well, I think we had around 1100 folks that completed the entire survey, so not too bad. And so, the bottom line is that a majority of the employers are hiring new occupational health and safety professionals in the next three years [inaudible 00:35:09]-

Jill James:

Are not? Is that what you said?

Larry Sloan:

They are. They are hiring new professionals, in the order of one, two, three, depending upon the size of the company. And what's interesting is that we'd seen quite a bit of outsourcing of occupational health and safety talent, but those companies that took the time to respond to the survey said that they were going to retain their in-house occupational health and safety professionals. As opposed to eliminating those positions and going to an outside consultant they're going to stay the course and maintain those internal positions, which I thought was good information.

Jill James:

Yeah. It is.

Larry Sloan:

Well, that's just one little data point. And then we talked a little bit about the kind of information that occupational health and safety professionals need. And this is a recurring theme, but there's always a need for our members that might be new to the profession to understand the principles of how you conduct an occupational risk assessment. And so, that led us to several other initiatives within the advancing the profession domain. And the next one I'll talk about is something called Improving Exposure Judgment. And IEJ has to do with the use of IH statistics. So, when you collect data from a similarly exposed group of workers, how do you take that data and come up with the right assessment to protect those workers appropriately? If you have a TLV, or some other sort of an occupational exposure limit, and you collect data against that limit, how do you know that you're within that limit all the time, or most of the time, or only part of the time? So, the use of IH Statistics helps you very quickly assess the quality of that data and whether or not you should be providing additional protections to that particular group of workers or not. And so, there's a lot of misunderstanding about the use of statistics and people think it's complicated and difficult to use, it takes a lot of time. None of the above. And so, we work with an outside firm to come up with a communications campaign to help the IH practitioner understand how to use IH statistics very simply. And so, we've developed a nine-hour webinar course that's completely free. We have access to the free tools, and so we guide the practitioner through the Improving Exposure Judgment program so they feel more comfortable in using the tools at their disposal.

Jill James:

What a great resource. My gosh, you guys are doing so much important, fantastic work for the profession.

Larry Sloan:

And then the third one I'll mention very briefly is something called Principles of Good Practice. And Principles of Good Practice takes basically a lot of the publications that we've developed over the years in guidance documents, and it develops a, I'll call it a compendium of better practices.

Jill James:

Okay.

Larry Sloan:

And so, what the plan here is over the next several years is to develop a series of appendices broken down by rubric. And so the first version or edition of Principles of Good Practice that we published a couple years ago was on airborne chemical exposure. What are better practices that you can employ in the workplace to protect workers against airborne chemical exposure? We then released the version two just last December that focuses on now respiratory protection. And so, as we move through time, we're going to be developing additional iterations of this Principles of Good Practice that are going to allow the industrial hygienist to basically pull what are called better-in-class practices, so they can apply these to their workplace, whether they're working for an employer or they're a consultant. So, this is a very important element of how we can help the practitioner go beyond regulatory compliance. And then I'll say the last initiative that wraps all this into one, if you will, convenient program, is something called the Continuous Improvement Plan. And the Continuous Improvement Plan builds upon Principles of Good Practice. It builds upon survey work that we have done over the last several years, and it's going to develop a roadmap again, broken down by rubric. And we're going to start with, again, airborne chemical exposure, so that we're going to get the practitioner from step zero where they are today, to say step five, and it's going to be a series of educational materials and awareness training to help the practitioner move along this continuum of really doing more to protect the worker. Going beyond the OSHA PEL or the NIOSH REL, and making sure that you're following, whether it's a TLV, or using occupational exposure banning if a TLV doesn't exist, doing more to protect the worker in the workplace to the best of your ability.

Jill James:

And Larry, did you also, one of the topic areas, did you also pick up on something with Total Worker Health and working with NIOSH, or what's going on with that?

Larry Sloan:

Yes. AIHA has been a formal affiliate of the NIOSH Total Worker Health Program for about six years now, six or seven years. And we have a Total Worker Health advisory group, so that's one of those national level volunteer groups. And we work very closely with NIOSH to develop resources to help the IH practitioner understand what is Total Worker Health, how do they dial into it, and how do they communicate with allied professionals, whether they may be safety professionals, that might be occupational physicians or nurses in the workplace, it might be human resources, it might be senior level management? How do we communicate as practitioners with these allied professionals to advance the principles of Total Worker Health? There is a great resource that NIOSH published several years ago. It's the principles or paradigms of Total Worker Health, and there's dozens of different elements to Total Worker Health. What we are doing as an association is we are identifying amongst those dozens and dozens of elements, where does industrial hygiene fit in, and what is our role in advancing those elements? And I think that's a resource that we're in the process of updating, but it's going to be a great primer for our membership to understand how they support Total Worker Health on a day-to-day basis.

Jill James:

It certainly is, and it's just so vitally important and so wonderful that the professions are coming together to address the whole of employee. Yeah. You said you're not an industrial hygienist. I think you sound like one, Larry. And I know that it's obvious you get to lean into and use your MBA, but what about your chemical engineering degree? Does this feel like a little bit of home some days? Do you feel like you-

Larry Sloan:

Yeah, I think that when I was being considered as a candidate for this job, I think they liked the fact that I had a technical background, plus the association management experience. I've got many peers in this profession, and I do call the nonprofit sector, after working 25 years as a nonprofit professional, it is my home. And my friend I had dinner with back in 2000 who explained me what a trade association is, she and I were in engineering school together. And so, my chemical engineering degree definitely benefits my level of understanding of what industrial hygienists do, day in and day out. And so, I think the fact that I've got that technical background helps me understand a lot of the nuances of what they do. And when I look at these technical guidance documents, I'll scan papers here and there, or I'll be sitting in on volunteer group phone calls, and I do understand a lot of what they're talking about because of that engineering background, so that helps a lot.

Jill James:

Yeah, beautiful. So, when you think about... Many of us in our careers, I don't know about you, but it's true for me, sometimes we rejigger the what's my why and what gets me excited to do this work, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. What's motivating you currently?

Larry Sloan:

Well, I think it's the ultimate mission of the association. We literally are protecting people and saving lives. And when I look at all the things that we do as a society, the education and the services and the community building and the online platform and the mentoring and the government relations, it's a whole basket of services that then provide benefits to the profession. But what gets me most excited is the fact that we are in this continuum of working towards the elimination of global workplace injury and illness and death, and that's asymptotic vision, right? We're never going to get there.

Jill James:

Yes.

Larry Sloan:

But every little thing we do, like developing the heat stress app, or the development of these Advancing the Profession initiatives that we discussed earlier, or creating a new white paper on the perils of child labor, any one of these things is moving us along that continuum toward generating awareness and understanding of all the various hazards in the workplace. And as we know, there's all these different types of hazards. One of the newest hazards that we started to embrace under the Total Worker Health umbrella was psychosocial stress. And that's where we address the non-physical, non-chemical, less conventional workplace stress, which is a critical element to one's overall health and well-being. And so, what I'm delighted by is over the last nine years we've made all these changes and advancements in programs and services and created new things, but we're also developing very strong partnerships with dozens of organizations. Literally 50, 60 different organizations we have played in the sandbox with over the last nine years that I've been around, jointly authoring an article, working on a guidance document, co-hosting a webinar, presenting at their meeting, they're presenting at our meeting, the list goes on and on, where we're working together towards this pursuit of the elimination of workplace injury, illness, and death.

Jill James:

It's a great career, and I'm so grateful for the work that the organization is doing and for your contribution, Larry, it's fantastic. So, as we wrap our time today, is there anything that you'd like to share with the audience, and or anything you'd like to share about how to get involved, or how to become a member?

Larry Sloan:

Well, I'll answer the second question first. If anybody's interested in becoming a national member, they simply go to www.aiha.org and there is a membership page, there's a Join button. It's very, very simple. If you're already a member and you want to check out any one or more of our volunteer groups, there's a Get Involved page, and you can learn more about all the different committees that we offer, technical, professional development, et cetera. I'll just conclude here by saying that we are one of 45 plus national associations that are part of a global federation called IOHA. And IOHA is managed by an association management company in South Africa, but we are a member of their board of directors and IOHA sponsors... Every three years they have global meetings around the world, and I was fortunate to be able to attend and speak at the global conference last year in Dublin, Ireland. It was a great experience for me. And IOHA has developed this initiative that we at AIHA are a part of, and I'm very excited about. And it's really about this, let's go back to the beginning, how do we communicate the value of the profession? And so, this initiative is going to help us better articulate, not just to a US audience, but to a global audience, the importance of investing in workplace health and safety programs, and the importance of looking at that hierarchy of controls and investing in those engineering controls, and not just going down to the PPE, but really going up that ladder, if you will, and investing in systems that better protect your workers. And I think that if we can do a better job of articulating the business case for why we do what we do every single day, and putting it into terms that business leaders understand. And I'm not necessarily talking about the multinational companies, because I think they get it. It's smaller companies that might be suppliers to the multinational companies. Or maybe they're distributors or logistics companies that support the multinational companies downstream. We've got to help the smaller businesses understand the business case for investing in worker health and safety, and I think that is a long tail activity, and I'm really delighted that IOHA's taking the lead in telling that narrative. So, I'll end with that because that's really exciting.

Jill James:

That is the holy grail. That is wonderful. That is exciting, and thank you for doing that work.

Larry Sloan:

Yeah, you're welcome. Really, all of the activities that we've talked about over the past 50 minutes makes me feel good about what I do, and I sleep very well at night knowing we're doing good work.

Jill James:

You certainly are. And I really, truly appreciate you coming on the podcast, thank you so much.

Larry Sloan:

It's been my pleasure. Thank you.

Jill James:

And thank you for spending your time listening today, and more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. May our employees and those we influence know that our profession cares deeply about human well-being, which is the core of our practice. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. Or if you prefer, you can read the transcript and listen at Hsi.com. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes, it really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer, and until next time, thanks for listening.