Safe and Just Cleaners: Reducing exposure to toxic cleaning chemical products among low wage immigrant Latino Community members

最近的研究记录了常见清洁化学品对健康的影响，包括皮肤和呼吸道刺激和哮喘，以及潜在的生殖影响和乳腺癌。尽管如此，这些产品的生产和销售仍在继续扩大。作为回应，公共卫生行动旨在通过在公共建筑物和学校中替代使用对环境更安全的产品，并鼓励开发经认证的对环境更安全的产品标签，减少接触。虽然这些举措成功地覆盖了某些工人和消费者群体，但由于知识、意识、成本和可获得性等因素，低工资的家政工人和其他清洁工人（移民和拉丁美洲人不成比例）在很大程度上被排除在外。安全和公正的清洁工项目旨在通过记录和减少纽约市拉丁美洲移民工人社区的家政清洁工人接触清洁剂来解决这种环境健康差异，作为大学-社区伙伴关系的一部分。该项目的基本原理是，一旦家庭清洁工作为一个大型和有影响力的社区组织的一部分，获得了认识到他们作为工人的暴露和潜在风险的能力和知识，这将为建立一个工人-社区联合努力奠定基础，同时a）改善他们作为清洁工人的条件，和B）在工人所属的较大社区中减少对危险清洁剂的暴露。该项目与纽约市最大的拉丁美洲移民社区组织合作，拥有30，000名成员，该项目将调查拉丁美洲家庭佣工对消费者清洁产品使用相关的潜在危害和自我报告的健康问题的使用，工作实践，价值观，知识和态度。然后，该项目将确定和定量评估导致拉丁美洲移民家庭清洁工人吸入和皮肤接触挥发性有机化合物和季铵化合物的接触水平和条件，这是商业清洁剂的两种主要和潜在的有毒成分。该项目将测量清洁时的暴露量以及即使在清洁任务完成后仍可能继续污染家庭环境的残留暴露量。这些调查结果将用于制定和实施一项多层次的战略运动，通过地方和国家伙伴关系减少移民社区的接触。将这一运动纳入工人权利和社会正义的视角，提供了一种教育人们了解更安全替代品的方法，同时采取更广泛的方案和政策举措，以减少接触。

Recent research has documented the health impacts of common cleaning chemicals, including skin and respiratory irritation and asthma, as well as potential reproductive effects and breast cancer. Nonetheless, the production and distribution of these products continues to expand. In response public health actions have aimed to reduce exposures through substituting use of environmentally safer products in public buildings and schools and encouraging development of certified environmentally safer product labels. While these initiatives have been successful at reaching certain groups of workers and consumers, low wage domestic and other cleaning workers, who are disproportionately immigrant and Latino, have been largely left out due to factors including knowledge, awareness, cost and accessibility. The Safe and Just Cleaners Project aims to address this environmental health disparity by documenting and reducing exposures to cleaning agents among domestic cleaning workers in the Latino immigrant worker community in NYC, as part of a University- Community partnership. The rationale for this project is that once domestic cleaners, as part of a large and influential community-based organization, gain capacity and knowledge to recognize their exposures and potential risks as workers, this will lay the basis for building a joint worker-community effort that will simultaneously a) improve conditions for themselves as cleaning workers, and b) reduce exposure to hazardous cleaning agents in the larger community of which the workers are a part. Working collaboratively with the largest Latino immigrant community-based organization in NYC, with 30,000 members, the project will survey Latino domestic workers about their use, work practices, values, knowledge and attitudes about potential hazards and self-reported health problems associated with consumer cleaning product use. The project will then identify and quantitatively evaluate the exposure levels and conditions that result in inhalation and dermal exposures to volatile organic and quaternary ammonium compounds, two major and potentially toxic components of commercial cleaning agents, among Latino immigrant domestic cleaning workers. The project will measure exposures both at the time of cleaning as well as residual exposures that might continue to contaminate home environments even after cleaning tasks are complete. These findings will be used to develop and implement a multilevel strategic campaign to reduce exposures among immigrant communities through local and national partnerships. Embedding this campaign within a workers’ rights and social justice perspective provides an approach that educates people about safer alternatives while simultaneously pursuing broader programmatic and policy initiatives to reduce exposures.