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，制作和 这些产品的分销范围继续扩大。作为回应，公共卫生行动旨在减少接触 通过在公共建筑和学校中替代使用环境更安全的产品，并鼓励发展 经过认证的环保产品标签。虽然这些倡议已经成功地接触到了某些群体 工人和消费者、低薪家政和其他清洁工人，他们不成比例地是移民和 由于知识、意识、成本和可获得性等因素，很大程度上被排除在外。安全和公正 清洁工项目旨在通过记录和减少清洁暴露来解决这种环境健康差距 作为一所大学的一部分，纽约市拉丁裔移民工人社区的家政清洁工中的代理人- 社区伙伴关系。这个项目的基本原理是，曾经的家庭清洁工，作为一个大型和有影响力的 以社区为基础的组织，获得能力和知识，以认识到他们作为工人面临的风险和潜在风险， 这将为建立工人和社区的联合努力奠定基础，同时将a)改善以下条件 作为清洁工人，以及b)在更大的社区中减少接触危险清洁剂 工人们是其中的一部分。与纽约市最大的拉美裔移民社区组织合作， 该项目有30,000名成员，将对拉丁裔家政工人进行调查，了解他们的用途、工作实践、价值观和知识 以及对与使用消费者清洁产品相关的潜在危险和自我报告的健康问题的态度。 然后，该项目将确定并定量评估导致吸入和 皮肤暴露于挥发性有机化合物和季铵化合物，这是两种主要的潜在有毒成分 在拉丁裔移民家政清洁工中，商业清洁剂的比例很高。该项目将测量暴露在 在清洁时以及可能会继续污染家庭环境的残留暴露中 清洁任务完成后。这些调查结果将用于制定和实施一项多层次的战略活动，以 通过地方和国家伙伴关系减少移民社区的风险。嵌入此活动 在工人权利和社会正义的视角下，提供了一种教育人们关于更安全的替代方案的方法 同时推行更广泛的方案和政策举措，以减少风险敞口。

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.