M4.1 IMPROVING THE PREVENTION AND CONTROL OF HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCE EXPOSURES: A RANDOMISED CONTROLLED TRIAL IN MANUFACTURING WORKSITES

A. D. LaMontagne^1,2, A. M. Stoddard³, R. A. Youngstrom², M. Lewiton⁴, G. Sorensen^2,5, .¹Centre for the Study of Health & Society, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, Australia; ²Center for Community-Based Research, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA; ³New England Research Institutes, 9 Galen St., Watertown, MA, USA; ⁴Massachusetts Department of Labor & Workforce Development, Division of Occupational Safety, West Newton, MA, USA; ⁵Department of Health and Social Behavior, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

Background: New measures of exposure prevention activity were used to evaluate the effectiveness of a 16 month management focused intervention addressing hazardous substance exposures in manufacturing work settings.

Methods: Exposure prevention efforts were assessed using a previously published rating scheme developed for this study.¹ The rating scheme yields a set of measures of exposure potential and protection which are combined into an overall exposure prevention (EP) summary rating. A randomised, controlled design was used to assess intervention effectiveness. Fifteen large manufacturing worksites (mean of 721 employees) completed the 16 month intervention and follow up assessments (seven intervention and eight control sites). Analyses were conducted on the 107 production processes assessed at both baseline and final.

Results: Patterns of improvement within the intervention condition were consistent with the intervention …