DOLE urges companies to double check lead levels in workplaces

Labor secretary Rosalinda Baldoz on Friday urged companies to have their employees tested for lead levels in their blood, following the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s certification of the Occupational Safety and Health Center (OSHC). “As a certified body for testing blood lead levels, the OSHC provides quality blood level testing for heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium, and mercury," said Baldoz in a statement released Friday. OSHC executive director Ma. Teresa Cocueco had recently released a report about an employee who had worked for more than a decade in a semi-conductor company, had complained of fatigue which — it was later proven — had been caused by anemia. The former employee’s condition, Cocueco said in the report, was due to the elevated levels of lead in her blood. Cocueco explained that lead exposure in the workplace can also lead to anemia, nervous system dysfunction, kidney problems, hypertension, decreased fertility and miscarriages. “In such cases, it is not just the workers who get sick. They can also expose their families to lead," she said, adding that children who get exposed to low levels of lead may develop learning disabilities and short attention spans. Cocueco said that lead-caused conditions can be prevented by proper engineering controls, the right personal protective equipment, and administrative controls such as the close monitoring of workers’ lead levels and rotating their tasks in order to lessen their exposure to lead. The OSHC received their certification under the Lead and Multi-Element Proficiency Program (LAMP), a voluntary program that assures the quality of multi-element analyses in whole blood. Over 100 laboratories, including 30 international labs, are under LAMP. The US Center of Disease Control also gives laboratories under the LAMP analytical guidelines, technical training, and consultations to ensure accuracy in their measurements, said Cocueco. — BC/MRT/VS, GMA News