On Wednesday, March 13th, the Chesapeake Chapter of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) will present the 2013 Chesapeake Educational Seminar on Current Topics in Safety, Health, & Environmental Issues in collaboration with the American Society of Safety Engineers Chesapeake Chapter and the Johns Hopkins Education Research Center for Occupational Safety and Health. The full-day conference will take place in Laurel, Maryland, at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory at the Kossiakoff Center.
Beginning at 8:00 am and opening for registration an hour prior, the event will commence with a keynote talk on Safety Initiatives from the Deputy Director of NIOSH Office of Construction Safety. The rest of the seminar will include technical sessions on topics such as Hazardous Materials, Microbiological Aspects of Infection Control, Prevention Thru Design, Nanotechnology Hazards, Cave-In / Collapse Rescue, Tree Safety, and Risk Analysis, as well as a number of vendors, networking opportunities, and meals. To finish the day, Bruce Lippy, the Director of Safety and Health Research at the Center for Construction Research and Training, will speak on Climate Change Impacts on Industrial Hygiene Practice.
About Keith Pillich: Currently working with Vlado Engineering and Industrial Hygiene, Keith Pillich continues more than a decade in the health and safety industry. He holds membership in several professional organizations, including the AIHA.
Raising a child with special needs can be daunting, even for the best-prepared parents. The resources necessary to meet a child’s special needs go beyond the physical and medical. Parents of children with special needs should be sure to seek support from three major areas:
• Education and training: Besides learning about how a child’s condition is likely to affect growth and development, parents should seek resources that outline any special training they might need to support their child’s development. In some cases, this may involve working with someone trained professionally in certain skills.
• Assistance programs: Federal, state, and local governments offer financial and medical assistance for children with disabilities. Laws at every level prohibit discrimination and ensure the rights of children. Nonprofit groups often offer support programs for children with specific conditions.
• Support groups: Building a network of parents going through similar experiences is invaluable. Sharing tips, triumphs, and frustrations is an important part of staying positive and finding workable solutions.
About Keith Pillich
An industrial hygienist and family man, Keith Pillich is the father of a child with special needs child. To help other families and children with special needs, Pillich supports the Cerebral Palsy Association, Aspire for Children of Cerebral Palsy, and the Buffalo Women and Children’s Hospital.
As a contract safety consultant for the oil and gas industry, Keith Pillich works to keep employees and the environment safe from potential fires and other disasters. The growing need for oil puts a strain on oil refineries, a large portion of which are more than 25 years old in the U.S. Older refineries often lack the infrastructure and safety measures that are necessary to prevent injury and structural damage in the event of a disaster due to fire or corrosion. Keith Pillich and other safety contractors perform quality control assessments to ensure companies put in the time and money needed to maintain optimal refinery function while minimizing the risk of accidents.
Oil is a flammable substance, and if crude is released or leaked during a specific part of the refining process, fire is a real concern. Part of Keith Pillich’s job is to ensure that facilities have the proper equipment and procedures in place to contain and extinguish fires efficiently.
Corrosion is another risk factor for oil processing plants. Many of the substances in oil are corrosive, and they cause damage to pipes over time that leads to equipment failure. A company’s regulatory policies should include checks for corrosion and the necessary procedures to replace equipment that could cause failure or damage in the facility. Although not all accidents are preventable, quality assurance checks combined with proper safety equipment and action plans can save many lives.
There have been a number of recent news stories from England about parents with children who suffer from cerebral palsy, raising funds and traveling to St. Louis for a procedure that has the potential to dramatically change their lives.
The team in St. Louis performs a surgery called selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR). Doctors use electrical stimulation on the nerves along the lower portions of a child’s spinal column to determine which nerve endings are causing the spasticity. Those nerves are then partially cut. This severs ties from the nerves to the muscles and allows for the normal nerve endings to control the child’s muscles, resulting in better balance and a more natural position of their limbs. In many cases, the child is able to walk unassisted after their muscles have been given the chance to strengthen.
While it is not a cure-all for people who have cerebral palsy, it can improve the quality of life for many qualifying patients. For parents whose children have special needs, the operation performed at St. Louis Children’s Hospital can offer hope for the future. Please visit their website for more information and contact your doctor to discuss this treatment further.
Keith Pillich, an Occupational Health and Safety Engineer, contributes to Aspire of Western New York and is the father of a child with special needs.
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