This paper, as its title indicates, is intended to provide you with a brief overview of the American Society of Safety Engineer's (ASSE) efforts regarding worker safety and mold in the workplace. The activities range from one-time seminar conference calls to long-term commitments regarding tracking legislation and standards development. As these activities are continuing to progress and evolve, this paper presents the snapshot of the status of these activities and events, as of March 2004. During the June 2004 Professional Development Conference in Las Vegas, it is the intent to not only present this material, but also provide the audience with an update of events and activities since this paper was submitted.
While it may not seem to be required to provide this information, given the presentation venue, it is necessary to establish the baseline from which the ASSE activities regarding mold are presented. ASSE is a global non-profit organization with over 30,000 members; 150 chapters, 8 regions, 56 sections, 64 student sections; and 13 practice specialties. ASSE members are a diverse group and ASSE needs to provide support and services to a wide range of safety, health, and environmental (SH&E) professionals - from 30+ year veterans to students, from US plant-based staff to corporate leaders of global companies. ASSE's mold activities and resources need to balance needs of its entire range of membership; hence some of the materials may be too rudimentary for some and beyond the needs of others.
ASSE is dedicated to advancing the safety, health, and environmental (SH&E) profession and the technical, scientific, managerial, and ethical knowledge and skills of SH&E professionals. ASSE is actively involved with standards development, with representatives on nearly 40 standard development committees. ASSE is developing and maintaining almost 100 safety, health, and environmental voluntary national consensus standards and is the Secretariat for 9 ANSI standard development committees and canvass projects, including being appointed Secretariat for the ANSI Z690 canvass project, Guidelines for Mold and Fungi Control and Remediation for Worker Protection in Indoor Work Environments. More details on this project can be found later in this paper. In addition to the Z690 project, ASSE's Governmental Affairs and Policy staff tracks state legislation and develops responses when pertinent to the SH&E profession. However, at this time, ASSE's legislation tracking efforts are focused on title protection and do not necessarily include all of the local legislation that may impact practicing SH&E professionals.
Mold and the indoor working environment cannot readily be separated. Molds are naturally occurring living organisms that are everywhere; mold is ubiquitous. SH&E professionals are responding to mold-related issues NOW. Work is being performed in the absence of a universally accepted standard from a cognizant authority. ASSE identified a need for guidelines for the execution of such work, which focus on the protection of workers and the need to prevent any increase in risk to building occupants during the performance of such work.
