Environmental Health Practice: Statistically Based Performance Measurement

Enander, Richard T.; Gagnon, Ronald N.; Hanumara, R. Choudary; Park, Eugene; Armstrong, Thomas J.; Gute, David M.

doi:10.2105/ajph.2006.088021

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…(21,22) A side-by-side comparison of a 25-item audit tool in 11 businesses found that owners were able to correctly identify only 22% of unsafe working conditions when compared to research staff. (23) Thus, while it may be possible to ensure consistent application of a safety assessment tool by safety professionals, it is less likely that owners of auto collision repair businesses can reliably employ such a tool.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Workplace Safety and Health Programs, Practices, and Conditions in Auto Collision Repair Businesses

Brosseau

Bejan

Parker

et al. 2014

Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene

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This article describes the results of a pre-intervention safety assessment conducted in 49 auto collision repair businesses and owners' commitments to specific improvements. A 92-item standardized audit tool employed interviews, record reviews, and observations to assess safety and health programs, training, and workplace conditions. Owners were asked to improve at least one-third of incorrect, deficient, or missing (not in compliance with regulations or not meeting best practice) items, of which a majority were critical or highly important for ensuring workplace safety. Two-thirds of all items were present, with the highest fraction related to electrical safety, machine safety, and lockout/tagout. One-half of shops did not have written safety programs and had not conducted recent training. Many had deficiencies in respiratory protection programs and practices. Thirteen businesses with a current or past relationship with a safety consultant had a significantly higher fraction of correct items, in particular related to safety programs, up-to-date training, paint booth and mixing room conditions, electrical safety, and respiratory protection. Owners selected an average of 58% of recommended improvements; they were most likely to select items related to employee Right-to-Know training, emergency exits, fire extinguishers, and respiratory protection. They were least likely to say they would improve written safety programs, stop routine spraying outside the booth, or provide adequate fire protection for spray areas outside the booth. These baseline results suggest that it may be possible to bring about workplace improvements using targeted assistance from occupational health and safety professionals.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Workplace Safety and Health Programs, Practices, and Conditions in Auto Collision Repair Businesses

Brosseau

Bejan

Parker

et al. 2014

Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene

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“…Indeed, exploratory work for a risk-based approach was undertaken by EPA Region 3 in The Mid-Atlantic States' MTBE Pilot Project which developed "a GIS application and a site ranking software tool that can be used by EPA or states to consider relative potential risk when prioritizing UST facility inspections or Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) site corrective action oversight" 8 ; additional relevant information and data also exists. 9 Regarding study limitations, some bias in the results may exist, as the timeframe for the study bracketed the 2005 Energy Act requirements. Observed performance improvements, however, were believed to be largely attributable to ERP-related activities as data trends could not be explained solely by the targeted inspections of neglected facilities conducted pursuant to the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 (i.e., the Act required facilities that had not been inspected since December 22, 1998, to undergo an onsite inspection by August 8, 2007, and subsequently once every three years thereafter).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Rhode Island ERP collects binary (yes/no), count and descriptive data submitted in the form of self-certification checklist responses and Return-to-Compliance (RTC) plans. (9) Field data are also collected during the course of independent baseline and postintervention facility audits conducted by agency staff. For each registered UST system, operators were required to complete and submit a Compliance Certification Checklist and Certification Statement (and, if required, an RTC form) to DEM by June 30, 2005.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Drinking Water Supply Chemical Contamination: Risks from Underground Storage Tanks

Enander

Hanumara²,

Kobayashi³

et al. 2012

Risk Analysis

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Drinking water supplies are at risk of contamination from a variety of physical, chemical, and biological sources. Ranked among these threats are hazardous material releases from leaking or improperly managed underground storage tanks located at municipal, commercial, and industrial facilities. To reduce human health and environmental risks associated with the subsurface storage of hazardous materials, government agencies have taken a variety of legislative and regulatory actions--which date back more than 25 years and include the establishment of rigorous equipment/technology/operational requirements and facility-by-facility inspection and enforcement programs. Given a history of more than 470,000 underground storage tank releases nationwide, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to report that 7,300 new leaks were found in federal fiscal year 2008, while nearly 103,000 old leaks remain to be cleaned up. In this article, we report on an alternate evidence-based intervention approach for reducing potential releases from the storage of petroleum products (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, heating/fuel oil, and waste oil) in underground tanks at commercial facilities located in Rhode Island. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether a new regulatory model can be used as a cost-effective alternative to traditional facility-by-facility inspection and enforcement programs for underground storage tanks. We conclude that the alternative model, using an emphasis on technical assistance tools, can produce measurable improvements in compliance performance, is a cost-effective adjunct to traditional facility-by-facility inspection and enforcement programs, and has the potential to allow regulatory agencies to decrease their frequency of inspections among low risk facilities without sacrificing compliance performance or increasing public health risks.

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“…The test statistic (Z i ) for each variable is defined as follows: (1) where P i1 and P i 2 are sample proportions of compliance based on sample sizes of n 1 and n 2 in the preintervention and postintervention settings, respectively; k is the number of variables; is calculated in accordance with equation 2; and Z s are asymptotically normal and correlated: (2) Thus, the global test statistic (T ) is: (3) where: (4) and Σ is the correlation matrix of Z s. The test statistic T has approximately a standardized normal distribution under the null hypothesis, and the correlation between Z i and Z j is estimated as:…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a previous study, Enander et al 1 evaluated the compliance of the Rhode Island automotive refinishing industry sector with state and federal environmental, health, and safety regulations. Baseline and postintervention data were collected on 24 performance indicator variables at 82 randomly sampled facilities.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of the Global Test Statistic as a Performance Measurement in a Reananlysis of Environmental Health Data

Dymova

Hanumara²,

Enander³

et al. 2009

Am J Public Health

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Performance measurement is increasingly viewed as an essential component of environmental and public health protection programs. In characterizing program performance over time, investigators often observe multiple changes resulting from a single intervention across a range of categories. Although a variety of statistical tools allow evaluation of data one variable at a time, the global test statistic is uniquely suited for analyses of categories or groups of interrelated variables. Here we demonstrate how the global test statistic can be applied to environmental and occupational health data for the purpose of making overall statements on the success of targeted intervention strategies.

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Environmental Health Practice: Statistically Based Performance Measurement

Abstract: Our findings suggest that the new self-certification approach to environmental and worker protection is effective and can be used as an adjunct to further enhance state and federal enforcement programs.

Cited by 7 publications

References 4 publications

Workplace Safety and Health Programs, Practices, and Conditions in Auto Collision Repair Businesses

Workplace Safety and Health Programs, Practices, and Conditions in Auto Collision Repair Businesses

Reducing Drinking Water Supply Chemical Contamination: Risks from Underground Storage Tanks

Use of the Global Test Statistic as a Performance Measurement in a Reananlysis of Environmental Health Data

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