The goal of project DUSTI is to develop an intervention that will improve adoption of dust control technology in the drywall finishing sector of the construction industry. This exploratory project, which builds upon previous work of the principal investigators, incorporates elements from two well-established theoretical frameworks: Diffusion of Innovation Model and Health Belief Model. While the proposed exploratory project will develop and validate the intervention in this specific industry sector, the research has, as its ultimate aim, a transformative increase in the adoption of engineering control technologies among construction firms, industry-wide. Therefore, the intervention model design will incorporate factors applicable to generalized construction industry firms.

Respiratory disease among construction workers in general, and plasterers and wall finishers in particular, is a major public health concern. Workers in these trades suffer from disproportionately high rates of respiratory disease and disability. Drywall finishing operations have been associated with worker over-exposure to dust that contains known particulate respiratory health hazards, such as silica, talc, mica, and calcite. Despite the existence of effective engineering controls, such as ventilated sanders and low-dust drywall compound, worker exposures persist. Previous studies by the principal investigators identified key barriers to dust control technology adoption by the drywall finishing industry. Ventilated drywall sanding tools were found to be highly effective in reducing dust; however the industry usage rate was found to be very low. Interviews of firm owners and workers, and a laboratory tool comparison study, identified barriers that pertained to tool impacts to productivity, impacts to work quality, and worker perception of benefits and risk. Further, previous work examined construction industry characteristics that influence adoption of new technologies and identified strategies for enhanced innovation diffusion. The proposed work would translate these previous findings into an intervention strategy to improve drywall finishing firm dust-control adoption.

Young-Corbett's work on Construction Silica Control is noted in a recent OSHA publication. View the publication

The objective of project CONTROL is to document engineering control technology usage trends in four trade sectors of the construction industry: masonry, concrete, asphalt roofing, and welding. These survey studies will employ methods previously developed by the principal investigator in a study of engineering control usage in the drywall finishing sector. Owners of firms associated with trade groups and worker representatives of unions will be interviewed by telephone. In addition to usage rates of available engineering control technology, the interviews will identify barriers to technology adoption and worker and firm owner perceptions of benefits and risks. These results will be used in future research endeavors to design and implement interventions to increase the diffusion of engineering control technology within the construction industry.

This exploratory project applies an innovative technology, wearable computing, to the improvement of occupational health hazard exposure monitoring. By combining unobtrusive sensors and processors with everyday garments and equipment, wearable computing holds the promise of providing heightened awareness and individual feedback regarding environmental risks and the individual's physiological response to those risks, while minimizing or eliminating bulky sensing/warning equipment that could impede normal work activities.

The specific initial application of the technology, the subject of this R21 project, is to create a prototype for monitoring the occupational exposure to carbon monoxide (CO) of construction workers. The device would simultaneously monitor air concentration of CO and blood carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) saturation and provide multimodal warnings to workers in the event of overexposure. In contrast to the current state-of-the-art technology, our proposed system would not only give immediate warnings about acute danger but would also provide data-logging features to facilitate the study of chronic exposures and their impact on long-term health outcomes and psychomotor skill decrement and its impact on occupational accident causation.

While the proposed exploratory project, to establish proof-of-concept, will employ existing sensor technology in the development of a wearable product redesign, the long-range goal of the researchers is to springboard from this pilot prototype to the development of wearable computing applications to improve the monitoring of other airborne chemical exposures.
See research poster on this project, here

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