by James Parks, Sep 11, 2006

Even as the Bush administration refused to recognize the health risks faced by first responders at ground zero, it now is not doing enough to protect nurses and other first responders from a possible flu pandemic that could affect 35 percent of Americans, health experts say.

Even though scientists and health experts have been predicting a global outbreak of a deadly flu virus for years, it took the Bush administration until late last year to finally release a “Pandemic Influenza Plan.” But the plan contains no comprehensive strategy for protecting the health care workers, firefighters, police officers, emergency service workers and other first responders who will be on the front lines of responding to this emergency.

The AFL-CIO has been urging the Bush administration to create comprehensive plans to protect such workers as health care employees in case of an outbreak.

Union health and safety experts are concerned particularly about the Bush administration plans to rely on surgical masks rather than fitted respirators to protect nurses and others who would deal with pandemic flu sufferers.

Surgical masks are not designed to protect the wearer from airborne infections, and relying on them could leave first responders vulnerable to infectious diseases, experts say. Surgical masks are designed to protect patients from being exposed to particles that might come from the person wearing the mask through a sneeze or similar action.

In a letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the AFL-CIO said the agency’s recommendations that workers wear surgical masks are:

…grossly inadequate and fail to recognize the real potential for airborne transmission and exposure and the grave threat that health care workers and first responders will face in the event of a major pandemic. We believe that revising these recommendations to provide health care workers with a high level of protection should be a priority in the government’s pandemic influenza planning activities.

AFSCME, which represents public-sector employees at the state and local levels and health care workers, together with the AFL-CIO, AFT, Communications Workers of America, United American Nurses and the USW International Union, petitioned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for an emergency temporary standard to protect health care workers, emergency responders and others at risk on the job.

Scientists at the International Society for Respiratory Protection conference last month in Toronto confirmed the workers’ concerns about surgical masks.

Peter Paszkiewicz, with the German Berufsgenossenschaftliches Institut fur Arbeitsschutz (BGIA) or Environment Health and Safety Professional Information Center, said when BGIA twice tested respirators and surgical masks to measure which protected best against exposure to infectious respiratory diseases, only two out of 11 surgical masks in 1995 and three out of 16 in 2005 met basic requirements for the lowest level of protection.

Says AFSCME President Gerald McEntee.

Hurricane Katrina exposed the devastation and misery that is created when our government is unprepared for and does not adequately respond to a major disaster. This administration has proposed a pandemic flu plan that would leave health workers, first responders and all Americans woefully unprotected.

The president’s plan dismisses the devastating potential for airborne transmission of pandemic influenza. Its only answer, calling on employers to stockpile surgical masks for health care workers, is akin to sending soldiers to Iraq with a BB gun instead of a firearm.

The union movement’s petition calls on the Bush administration to:

• Require each workplace to develop a pandemic flu exposure plan that determines potential exposure and addresses medical surveillance needs, communications of hazards, training, vaccinations and record keeping.
• Require employers to provide comprehensive protections to health care workers, emergency responders and other essential personnel at high risk of occupational exposure to pandemic influenza.
• Require the mandatory use of ventilation, portable high-efficiency air filtration units and other controls to reduce the amount of infectious particles workers are exposed.
• Require employers to limit employees’ exposure to infectious agents by delaying elective high-hazard procedures or surgery until an individual is deemed not infectious and reducing the number of workers who need to enter patient rooms.
• Require medical removal protection so infected workers won’t suffer loss of pay, benefits or other rights for the duration of their illness.

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