Debra Coyle McFadden 2021 Eula Bingham Awardee OHS Section APHA October 2021 @markdcatlin

Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago

2021 Eula Bingham Awardee: Debra Coyle McFadden
Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association, October 27, 2021
Debra Coyle McFadden is the executive director of the NJ Work Environment Council (WEC). McFadden has twenty years of experience in public policy and has trained thousands of workers, union representatives, and community members on environmental health and occupational safety and health.
In response to COVID-19, McFadden and the WEC team jumped into action. In March 2020 McFadden reached out to colleagues at Rutgers University LEARN to partner on a webinar titled, COVID-19: Protecting and Educating Workers, that featured state/federal officials discussing COVID-19 and the latest actions by the government. After the success of the initial webinar, McFadden realized the critical need for this type of ongoing education. This led to the creation of the Saving Lives, Protecting Workers weekly webinar series which ran from March 2020 through April 2021. The hour-long webinars provided the latest COVID-19 information and provided a space to hear from frontline workers, union representatives and community members. In total, McFadden and team developed and produced 46 webinars with more than 100 presenters and 4,710 participants in attendance. The series continues on an as-needed basis.
McFadden also contributed to two national and one state COVID-19 reports emphasizing the urgency of COVID-19 worker protections. In addition, she worked with allies in the Protect New Jersey Workers Coalition, which WEC is a member, to advocate for COVID-19 worker protections. This advocacy led to Gov. Phil Murphy signing a worker protection Executive Order that included COVID-19 worker training funds. This was one of the strongest worker rights EOs to be issued in the country.
Under McFadden’s leadership, WEC has trained more than 450 participants on COVID-19 awareness and prevention in the workplace and has fielded more than 170 technical assistance requests. In January 2021, WEC received the National Healthy Schools Hero Award from the Healthy Schools Network for its COVID-19 work.

Eula Bingham Award for Excellence in OHS Education and Training
Dr. Eula Bingham (1929-2020) was known for putting OSHA on the map and shaping the field of occupational health and safety and toxicology. During her tenure, the Agency focused on adopting strong standards for an employee’s right-to-know. This included not just work with OSHA, but collaboration with other Federal Agencies and policy stakeholders. She was an out-spoken and unwavering voice of worker’s rights, women’s rights, environmental health, and social justice. Throughout her career, she worked with state legislators, labor unions, grassroots organizations, and consumers to implement safety regulations at all levels of government. This award recognizes individuals’ innovation and commitment to OHS training and education.

Debra Coyle McFadden 2021 Eula Bingham Awardee OHS Section APHA October 2021

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$Skin Cancer Hazard to Oil Refinery Workers in the 1940s, Standard Oil, 1954 This clip is from the 1954 film, Medical Service for Industry, produced by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The 26-minute film describes the corporations approach to company-provided medical services for employees in its hundreds of locations around the world. This clip shows the research and action after the company learned that some petroleum oils, from their new fluid catalytic cracking process, caused cancer when applied to the skin of mice. In this clip, Standard Oil ends by explaining that measures for minimizing worker exposure to carcinogenic oils have been implemented. However, that was not the end of this story. The following is taken from the 1974 article Oil Refineries by Rick Engler in the HEALTH/PAC Bulletin published by the Health Policy Advisory Center No. 61 November/December 1974 and available at http://www.healthpacbulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/1974-Nov-Dec-61.pdf . Rick Engler is a past Board member of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (2015 – 2020) and founder and past Director of the New Jersey Work Environment Council (WEC). Catalytic cracking found its first application during World War II in the manufacture of aviation gasoline. In 1942 Standard Oil (New Jersey) built the first commercial fluid catalytic cracker (FCC). That same year, scientists found that samples of some high boiling catalytically cracked oils caused cancer when applied to the skin of mice. In 1947, scientists in the Medical Department of Jersey Standard Oil concluded that .. . a potential cancer hazard existed where man came in contact with these oils. And in 1951 Standard reported that measures for minimizing worker exposure to carcinogenic oils, such as better personal hygiene practices, keeping units closed and painting pipelines containing these oils had been instituted. While it is unclear to what extent carcinogen exposure was really minimized at Jersey refineries, it is certain that other oil companies did little or nothing to prevent contact with such potentially hazardous hydrocarbons. The American Petroleum Institute (API), the industrys trade association, funded a study in 1949 at the University of Cincinnatis Kettering Laboratory to find out the cancer-causing potential of intermediate and finished petroleum products. To do this, the Kettering researchers experimented with mice and surveyed company medical departments to find whether cancer was a problem afflicting refinery workers. Mice rapidly developed cancer from some fractions, confirming the results of previous research by Standard. The primary carcinogenic agents in these oils were found to be certain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). In 1950 the Committee sponsored an epidemiological study to determine the number of workers who had developed cancer. However, most oil companies refused and/or were unable to cooperate with the study. In 1956, the Medical Advisory Committee ended the survey, concluding that there was . . . no evidence of occupational cancer within the population surveyed. The conclusion also reflected the fact that, whereas it may take 20 or even 30 years after exposure for cancer to be detected, the study ended in 1956, ten years or so after the widespread use of catalytic cracking began. But the scientists who had worked on the project remained concerned. Despite their healthy suspicion that certain hydrocarbons were likely to produce cancer, their abiding faith in the good intentions of industry resulted in their falsely assuming that .. . high engineering standards and good housekeeping, with respect to this modern automatic equipment has, in general, restricted the contacts of workmen with these products. But had the scientists spoken to oil workers, their suspicions would have been heightened. They would, for example, have discovered that cat crackers were not, as the industry had claimed, totally closed systems. Pumps and other equipment leaked oil mists and vapors during normal operation. They also would have discovered that during maintenance shutdown, workers enter vessels and clean pipelines where sludges or residues containing potent carcinogens remain. Today, Oil refinery workers are still exposed to several well-established carcinogens and working in this industry has been classified as probable cancer-causing to humans. The entire 1954 film, Medical Service for Industry, can be viewed and downloaded from the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s wonderful collection of historic films at https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-8600095A-vid .$

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