OAI has been a recipient of the Hazardous Materials Worker Health and Safety Training grant, funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) since 1995. During the past 12 years, OAI has leveraged this grant to provide the 40 Hour HAZWOPER course and related safety courses to over 20,000 workers across the country through the delivery of 1,260 courses, generating over 315,000 training contact hours.
The year 2001 marked the beginning of OAI’s stewardship of a statewide initiative to create collaborative training partnerships with multiple agencies within the Commonwealth of Kentucky – a first for that state. The goal of providing consistent content and uniformly high-quality worker health and safety training, including emergency responders, has been a resounding success.
This is evidenced by OAI’s ability, as a third party entity, to overcome traditional inter-agency barriers and successfully bring together the Fire Marshall, Fire Department, Homeland Security, Emergency Management, Police Department, Governor's Office, the Drug Enforcement Authority, Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection and the Kentucky Hospital Association to address common training needs and shared resources.
OAI is a Kentucky state-recognized training provider, offering Technician-level Hazardous Materials and Train the Trainer courses. Since 2001 OAI has trained more than 6,000 workers, First Responders, and emergency medical personnel in Kentucky, 75 of whom are certified as trainers.
In May and August 2005, OAI conducted three 40-Hour General Site Worker courses for 48 Kentucky Department of Environment Protection (KDEP) employees housed in Frankfort, Bowling Green and Hazard, Kentucky. Reviews of course evaluations reported consistently high ratings from course participants.
The following worker safety training courses within or related to OSHA 29 CFR 1910 (such as EPA, DOT, NRC and DEA standards) have been provided to workers who handle or who are exposed to hazardous materials in Kentucky during the past two years:
• 24-Hour Limited Site Worker
• 40-Hour General Site Worker
• Site Worker Refresher
• Emergency Response Awareness
• Emergency Response Refresher
• Emergency Response Basic Operations
• Emergency Response Operations Refresher
• Emergency Response Technician
• Methamphetamine Technician
• Methamphetamine Awareness
• Methamphetamine Technician Refresher
• Radiological Monitoring
• 24-Hour Mold Remediation
• Confined Space
• Lock-out Tag-out
OAI recently released its updated 40-hour HAZWOPER curriculum in February 2007. The curriculum package includes a newly published color student manual, multiple accompanying PowerPoint presentations, a revamped instructor manual with detailed lesson plans, course materials and new hands-on activities.
The modular format of the instructional materials allows trainers to select components and customize the program to ensure the highest relevance to the worker safety issues of the audience being taught. Similarly, scenarios selected when teaching industrial workers will be different from those selected for first responders. For example, this course customized for the DEP personnel will emphasize occupational exposure rates and will utilize real life scenarios useful for Air Quality staff, Water staff and Waste staff such as air sampling for airborne hazards, water sampling and Brownfield site dust sampling. Additionally, the OAI trainer website provides a forum for trainer feedback and interaction. The forum offers a system for continuous improvements, additions, and updates to the course materials.
These materials were developed and peer-reviewed by over 20 subject matter experts nationwide, including Certified Industrial Hygienists, University Professors, Curriculum Development Specialists, Hazardous Material Response Specialists, and First Responders among others.