The Safe and Just Cleaners

Source: Outreach materials developed for the Hurricane Sandy training project with Latino immigrant laborers.

The Safe and Just Cleaners/Limpieza Sana y Justa Project will document exposures to cleaning agents among the Latina immigrant domestic cleaners in NYC, both at work and at home. In collaboration with Make the Road NY, a survey will be conducted with Latina domestic workers about work practices, values, knowledge and attitudes about potential hazards and self-reported health problems associated with consumer cleaning product use. Exposure samples of volatile organic and quaternary ammonium compounds will be collected. Additionally, a public health campaign will inform Latino domestic cleaners and their communities about safer alternatives. This work will lay the basis for a joint effort that will simultaneously improve conditions for cleaning workers and reduce exposure to hazardous cleaning agents in the larger community of which the workers are a part.

This 5 year project, funded by a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, is a collaboration between the Barry Commoner Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, and Make the Road New York. Partners also include the National Domestic Worker Alliance, the BlueGreen Alliance and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.

Steven B. Markowitz, MD, DrPh

Project Director

Tel: (718) 670-4184 / Fax: (718) 670-4167 / Email: smarkowitz@qc.cuny.edu

Steven Markowitz, M.D. is a physician specializing in occupational and environmental medicine. Dr. Markowitz is currently Director of the Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment and Professor of Environmental Sciences at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY). He is a faculty member of the CUNY School of Public Health and Adjunct Professor of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he was on the full- time faculty from 1986 to 1998. He received his undergraduate education at Yale University and his medical degree and doctorate in epidemiology from Columbia University. Dr. Markowitz is board-certified in occupational and environmental medicine and internal medicine.

Dr. Markowitz currently directs the Worker Health Protection Program, a medical screening program for former Department of Energy workers who built the nuclear weapon arsenal of the United States. This program is co-sponsored by the United Steelworkers International Union and the Atomic Trades & Labor Council. This program conducts the largest early lung cancer detection project in occupational health in the country through the application of low-dose helical CAT scanning. To date, over 13,000 workers who were exposed to asbestos, uranium, and other lung carcinogens have been screened for lung cancer in this program.

Dr. Markowitz previously directed the Queens College World Trade Center Health Program , which monitored the health of over 2,000 WTC workers and provided treatment services to WTC workers with 9/11-related health conditions.

Dr. Markowitz' research interests center on occupational and environmental disease surveillance; occupational cancer; asbestos-related diseases; and the burden and costs of occupational diseases and injuries. Dr. Markowitz is Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. He is Associate Editor with William Rom MD of a major textbook, Environmental and Occupational Medicine, (4nd Edition, Lippincott William and Wilkens, New York, 2007, 1884 pp.). Dr. Markowitz is on the Board of Scientific Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Toxicology Program; the World Trade Center Scientific and Technical Advisory Board of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; and the Oversight Committee for the Occupational Health Clinics, New York State Department of Health.