BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
AB 2272 (Thurmond) - Occupational safety and health standards:
plume
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|Version: August 1, 2016 |Policy Vote: L. & I.R. 4 - 1 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: Yes |
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|Hearing Date: August 1, 2016 |Consultant: Robert Ingenito |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: AB 2272 would require the Occupational Safety and
Health Standards Board, by June 1, 2018, to adopt standards and
require training and education to protect health care personnel
and patients from exposure to vaporized human tissue.
Fiscal
Impact: The Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) indicates
that costs associated with the Occupational Safety and Health
Standards Board's development of standards requiring a health
facility to evacuate or remove plume, as specified, would be
within the scope of existing workload, and thus absorbable.
However, DIR's Division of Occupational Safety and Health would
incur unknown enforcement costs once the standards have been
developed.
AB 2272 (Thurmond) Page 1 of
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Background: Current law establishes the Occupational Safety and Health
Standards Board (Board), within DIR, as the standards-setting
agency for the Division of Occupational Safety and Health
(DOSH). The Board promulgates and enforces occupational safety
and health standards for the state including standards dealing
with toxic materials and harmful physical agents. Additionally,
current law stipulates that in promulgating standards dealing
with toxic materials or harmful physical agents, the Board shall
adopt standards to prevent employees from suffering adverse
health effects even if these employees have regular exposure to
a regulated hazard.
Proposed Law:
This bill would, among other things, do all of the following:
Require the Board, by June 1, 2018, to adopt standards
to protect health care personnel and patients from plume
(see below) exposure through the use of plume scavenging
systems.
Mandate that in developing these standards, the Board
will consider the most effective preexisting plume-related
standards including those at the federal level. The Board
may also consider input from health facilities, physicians,
registered nurses, affected health care personnel, labor
and specialty organizations representing affected
registered nurses and health care personnel, and other
stakeholders.
Specify the Board to include as part of the standards a
requirement for employers to provide training and
education, as specified, to all health care workers that
will participate in procedures that involve the creation of
a plume.
Define "plume" as vaporized human tissue or noxious
airborne contaminants generated as byproducts of the use of
energy-based devices, electrosurgical devices,
electrocautery devices, or mechanical tools during
surgical, diagnostic, or therapeutic procedures. These
AB 2272 (Thurmond) Page 2 of
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plume-generating devices are also defined.
Define devices that remove plume from the air as "plume
scavenging systems" that include smoke evacuators, laser
plume evacuators, plume scavengers, and local exhaust
ventilators that capture and neutralize at least 95 percent
of plume at the site of origin before plume can make ocular
contact or contact with the respiratory tract of health
care personnel or patients.
Staff
Comments: The heat-generated (thermal) destruction of human
tissue via cutting during therapeutic removal and burning
(cauterization) is commonplace in a wide range of medical
procedures. When human tissue is destroyed in this way, a smoke
byproduct or "plume" is created. The plume can contain toxic
gases and vapors such as benzene, hydrogen cyanide, and
formaldehyde, biological aerosols (a suspension of living
bacteria, viral particles or fungal spores), and viruses and
blood fragments containing blood-borne pathogens, including
multi-resistant strains. Surgical plume is also known to
contain mutagenic (cancer producing) particles. At high
concentrations, plume can also cause ocular and upper
respiratory tract irritation in health care personnel. Under
this bill, California would be the first state to create a
standard related to plume exposure and removal.
Any local government costs resulting from the mandate in this
measure are not state-reimbursable because the mandate only
involves the definition of a crime or the penalty for conviction
of a crime.
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