Health and Safety in the Workplace

In 1970, Congress passed the Occupational and Safety Health Act to ensure worker and workplace safety. Their goal was to make sure employers provide their workers a place of employment free from recognized hazards to safety and health, including exposure to toxic chemicals. The act created the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as the research institution for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a division of the U.S. Department of Labor, also created by the 1970 act.

On the topic of occupational cancer, NIOSH lists six factors that may contribute to a person’s risk of developing cancer: personal characteristics such as age, sex, and race; family history of cancer; diet and personal habits; presence of certain medical conditions or treatments; exposure to cancer-causing agents in the environment; and exposure to cancer-causing agents in the workplace. One entry on the NIOSH science blog reports, “…it has been estimated that 3-6% of all cancers worldwide are caused by exposures to carcinogens in the workplace” (par 4).

NIOSH provides a carcinogen list of substances they consider to be potential occupational carcinogens (page was last reviewed by NIOSH in 2012). Also useful for workers is the NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards, which informs workers, employers, and occupational health professionals about workplace chemicals and their hazards. The guide includes an “Index of Chemical Names, Synonyms and Trade Names” (pages reviewed by NIOSH in 2018).

Gathering Participants’ Workplace Information

Soon after our survey period began, we were encouraged by Public Health – Muskegon County to ask participants about their workplaces, and to include people who had worked in the White Lake area although they had not lived in the area. Thirty-six non-residents responded to general outreach about this project, and they are included in a separate column in the White Lake Area Workplaces table that will appear below.

We added a question about workplaces to our survey in 2010, and participants shared information about their workplaces throughout Muskegon County, Michigan, and other states as far away as Alaska, California, and Texas. We decided this was too much information for us to handle, so in February 2011, while we were changing our survey to include smoking, we restricted workplace information to White Lake area workplaces.

At the suggestion of our Muskegon County epidemiologist we added the question, “What things do you think could have contributed to this person’s chance of getting cancer?” This provided an opportunity for participants to mention work environments of concern outside of the White Lake area without naming every place the person with cancer had worked. We did not delete the important information about out-of-area workplaces that had already been gathered prior to February 2011. This was supplemented with out-of-area workplace information from obituaries of some deceased participants.

Of the 1,051 participants (1,015 of whom were residents), 706 (670 residents and 36 non-residents) were reported to have worked at White Lake area workplaces, reporting a range of one to six workplaces per participant. The year of hire ranged from 1922 to 2013. The workplaces included all business entities: for example, self-employed individuals, seasonal farm workers, schools, churches, grocery stores, restaurants, medical offices, retail stores, recreational establishments, public service employers, as well as local construction and manufacturing businesses. Approximately 389 White Lake area workplaces were mentioned by participants.

Many of the workplaces named were no longer in business when the survey was conducted in 2009-2013, and some had changed ownership or moved to new locations. I met with Jack Lipka, curator of the Montague Museum, and learned valuable information about the names, locations, and years of operation of workplaces of the White Lake area’s past in an attempt to be as accurate as possible in counting and classifying the workplaces.

I can only provide basic data about participants’ workplaces, as I do not have information about the total number of employees at each workplace during the time periods that our participants had worked there. Other confounding factors include the variability in the length of time each participant worked for an establishment and the ages of the participants while working there. Participants were asked for their job description for each workplace, but their descriptions varied greatly in the amount of detail offered. Several spoke about their exposures to specific toxic substances in the workplace, with trichloroethylene leading the list.

In order to present the workplace information, I needed to categorize workplaces into groups according to business types.

Classification System for Workplace Information

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy. The NAICS does not deal with workplace safety, such as possible workplace exposures to carcinogens, yet it was useful for this cancer mapping project in attempting to categorize the workplaces of our participants.

The NAICS classifies workplaces using a two- to six-digit hierarchical system offering five levels of detail, beginning with two-digit workplace “Sectors,” three-digit workplace “Subsectors,” and four-digit “Industry Group” descriptions. For the tables described below, I used only the first two levels of detail provided by the NAICS (the two-digit Sectors and three-digit Subsectors), although I frequently studied the more detailed levels to determine an appropriate subsector assignment for each workplace and I occasionally clarified the Subsector descriptions with language from the Industry Group level.

Some industries, especially within the manufacturing sector, had more than one NAICS code or their codes changed over time. I searched multiple sources to try to ascertain the most accurate NAICS code to apply to each local industry. Codes can change over time as industries change their operations. Some participants may have worked for an industry during earlier years while it was classified with a different code.

Participants’ White Lake Area Workplaces

The workplace information is summarized in two tables: White Lake Area Workplaces summarizes the information on participants’ workplaces within the area, and Out-of-Area Workplaces summarizes information that became known about workplaces at which participants had worked outside of the White Lake area.

Column 1 of the White Lake Area Workplaces table below lists the 17 Sectors (2-digit numbers) and their associated Subsectors (3-digit numbers) and Descriptions of the industry categories for White Lake area workplaces reported by participants. Columns 2 and 3 hold the number of participants (residents, plus non-residents who chose to participate in this project) that had worked in the White Lake area within each subsector.

Workers were counted only once for each subsector (such as “333-Machinery Manufacturing”), even if they had worked at two or more workplaces within the same subsector. When a participant worked in two or more subsectors (for example, “331-Primary Metal Manufacturing” and “333-Machinery Manufacturing”) within a sector (such as “31-33 Manufacturing”), that participant’s workplaces were counted once for each subsector. Therefore, a participant might be counted more than once in the total for a sector (in the shaded areas) if they had worked in two or more of the subsectors under that sector.

Thus, the totals in the “White Lake Area Residents” column below represent 670 residents, but counts them as 1031 workers within the 17 workplace sectors listed.

White Lake Area Workplaces of 670 White Lake area residents and 36 non-residents.

Participants’ Out-of-Area Workplaces

Although the final version of our survey focused only on workplaces in the White Lake area, we had obtained out-of-area workplace information from 537 participants who were White Lake area residents. Many of these out-of-area workplaces were within Muskegon County while others were in other counties in Michigan or in other states.

Column 1 of the Out-of-Area Workplaces table lists the 17 Sectors (2-digit numbers), Subsectors (3-digit numbers) and Descriptions of the industry categories for Out-of-Area workplaces reported by participants. Column 2 holds the number of participants that had lived in the White Lake area and had worked at an out-of-area workplace within each subsector, with the totals of the subsectors displayed in the shaded area of the associated sector.

The same procedures applied as for the White Lake Area Workers table above. Workers were counted only once for each subsector, even if they had worked at two or more workplaces within the same subsector. When a participant worked in two or more subsectors within a sector, that participant’s workplaces were counted once for each subsector. Therefore, a participant might be counted more than once in the total for a sector (in the shaded areas) if they had worked in two or more of the subsectors under that sector.

Thus, the totals in the “Participants having worked in each Subsector…” column below represent 537 residents, but counts them as 676 workers within the 17 workplace sectors listed.

Out-of-Area workplaces of 537 White Lake Area residents.  (676 workplaces)