Suchergebnisse

Abstract

Objectives
The legalization of the production, sale, and possession of cannabis in Washington State in 2012 not only created the framework for a new legal industry, but also for a new regulated labor sector. In addition to typical occupational health and safety hazards associated with chemical and physical exposures, the transition from an illicit to a regulated workplace, the inconsistency between state and federal law, and the production of a unique psychoactive commodity crop that maintains value in the illicit marketplace creates a unique work environment with workplace concerns that are political, economic, and social in nature.


Methods
We conducted a combination of semistructured key informant interviews targeted toward employers, focus groups that engaged employees, and an online survey with cannabis business owners and employees to identify concerns relating to worker health and safety.


Results
In addition to physical and chemical hazards related to their workplace, workers described health concerns that were a result of social, economic, and political forces facing the transitioning cannabis industry and resulting from an inconsistency between state and federal law. Important themes that emerged from these data included the legal and regulatory environment that the cannabis industry faces, cannabis as an agricultural good, crime, gender, cannabis consumption in the workplace, changing worker demographics, and emerging technologies in this rapidly evolving industry.


Conclusions
The unique sociopolitical challenges for occupational health and safety that we identified among cannabis workers in Washington State are especially relevant as other states and nations follow the example of Washington State in legalizing the widespread commercial cultivation, sale, and use of cannabis. As other states and nations legalize, it will be important for employers, public health practitioners, and regulators to recognize how transitioning from an illicit to a legal marketplace impacts worker health. Further, understanding the challenges that result in transitioning a cannabis workforce may be extrapolated in the future to better understand how transitioning other goods and services from an unregulated to a regulated marketplace may impact worker health.

Abstract
Driven by climate change, wildfires are increasing in frequency, duration, and intensity across the Western United States. Outdoor workers are being exposed to increasing wildfire-related particulate matter and smoke. Recognizing this emerging risk, Washington adopted an emergency rule and is presently engaged in creating a permanent rule to protect outdoor workers from wildfire smoke exposure. While there are growing bodies of literature on the exposure to and health effects of wildfire smoke in the general public and wildland firefighters, there is a gap in knowledge about wildfire smoke exposure among outdoor workers generally and construction workers specifically—a large category of outdoor workers in Washington totaling 200,000 people. Several data sources were linked in this study—including state-collected employment data and national ambient air quality data—to gain insight into the risk of PM2.5 exposure among construction workers and evaluate the impacts of different air quality thresholds that would have triggered a new Washington emergency wildfire smoke rule aimed at protecting workers from high PM2.5 exposure. Results indicate the number of poor air quality days has increased in August and September in recent years. Over the last decade, these months with the greatest potential for particulate matter exposure coincided with an annual peak in construction employment that was typically 9.4–42.7% larger across Washington counties (one county was 75.8%). Lastly, the 'encouraged' threshold of the Washington emergency rule (20.5 μg m−3) would have resulted in 5.5 times more days subject to the wildfire rule on average across all Washington counties compared to its 'required' threshold (55.5 μg m−3), and in 2020, the rule could have created demand for 1.35 million N-95 filtering facepiece respirators among construction workers. These results have important implications for both employers and policy makers as rules are developed. The potential policy implications of wildfire smoke exposure, exposure control strategies, and data gaps that would improve understanding of construction worker exposure to wildfire smoke are also discussed.