NRASP Membership Luncheon - February 2021 - Engineering Controls and Worker Safety and Health During a Pandemic - Jennifer Topmiller, CDC/NIOSH

Description:  The presentation will cover some of the CDC guidance for businesses and manufacturers to assist workplaces with maintaining healthy operations during the pandemic. Engineering controls should be used in combination with other prevention measures to slow the spread of COVID-19.  

About Our Speaker:  Jennifer Topmiller is a Team Leader in the Engineering and Physical Hazards Branch (EPHB) of the Division of Field Studies and Engineering (DFSE), NIOSH.  She has both a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kentucky and over thirty years of experience working as a research engineer and research supervisor at NIOSH.  Ms. Topmiller has been a project officer/co-project officer for several large engineering control projects.  These include a study of the potential for disease transmission in commercial aircraft cabins, a study of emissions from mail handling equipment, and a project to control dust emissions from woodworking machinery. 

Ms. Topmiller is currently serving in a deployment to the NIOSH COVID-19 response on the Essential Workers Team in the Vaccine Task Force.  This position stems from her place as the co-coordinator of the NIOSH Manufacturing Sector Program and co-chair of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) Manufacturing Sector Council. In the COVID response, she is helping to connect employers and workers in the Manufacturing sector with needed CDC information on workplace safety and vaccines.  

Ms. Topmiller is a member of the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienist’s (ACGIH) Industrial Ventilation Committee.  This committee publishes and regularly updates the ACGIH Industrial Ventilation Manual, an industry standard in industrial ventilation. 

As a way to give back to local community restaurants, current paid NRASP Members that register through Wild Apricot and attend the Virtual Zoom meeting will receive a gift card to a local F-M area restaurant.