The Audit at LAMC

Shortly after acquiring LAMC, USMNC conducted a health and safety audit of LAMC$$s plant. The main focus

of the audit was on respirator use. LAMC engaged in a variety of operations that required workers to wear respirators. These operations included welding, cutting, smelting, and casting molten materials; sanding, grinding, crushing, drilling, machining, and sandblasting; and cleaning, spraying, plating, boiling, mixing, and painting various pieces of metals and metal parts that LAMC produced. These activities resulted in all kinds of

fumes, dusts, and mists that could endanger human health and the environment. Gas and vapor contaminants that were present included inert gases such as helium, argon, and neon; acidic gases such as sulfur

dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and hydrogen chloride; and organometallic compounds such as tetraethyl lead and

organic phosphates.

Unfortunately, the audit team found that safety policies and practices at LAMC$$s facility were not up to the

company$$s standards. For example, the team discovered that there was an insufficient number of respirators

at the facility and that maintenance was not being done on them on a regular basis. It appeared that many of

the respirators were not functional. Even more alarming was that many workers routinely took off their respirators. Others refused to wear them under any circumstances. Supervisors did little or nothing to stop them.

Even when the workers wore the respirators, it was not at all clear to the members of the audit team whether

they were wearing the right respirators for the jobs they were doing. The audit team observed that a stack of

respirators of various kinds were kept piled in a corner of the plant, with workers deciding for themselves if

and what kind of respirator they would wear. The audit team concluded that these problems were occurring largely because the plant management did not

have any written policies in place regarding the use of respirators, did not supervise the respirator use, and

failed to provide necessary training. Furthermore, there was no medical surveillance in place to ensure that

workers were not having regular symptoms such as wheezing, coughing, and chronic bronchitis, nor were

workers trained to recognize and address respiratory emergencies.

The safety auditors took the time to interview workers about respirator use. These interviews revealed among

other things that workers felt pressure to do their jobs quickly, and that respirators could interfere with getting

the job done; that they needed to remove their masks to communicate; that they could not wear the masks

comfortably for long periods of time; and that they thought the risks of not wearing masks were minimal. They

also said their supervisors paid them to meet production goals and treated safety concerns as secondary$.$

Overall, the findings of the audit team were very troubling. The final sentence of their report said that USMNC

should consider shutting down the facility for a period to reassess worker safety issues and institute new policies and practices.