Adam Torres and Mona Shum discuss handling hazards in the workplace.
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Show Notes:
Modernizing how we handle hazards in the workplace is crucial. In this episode, Adam Torres and Mona Shum, Founder & Principal Industrial Hygienist at Aura Health & Safety, explore Mona’s journey and Aura Health & Safety.
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About Mona Shum
As owner of Aura Health and Safety Corporation (aurahealthsafety.com), Her goal is to provide high quality occupational and environmental health services to clients wanting to reduce occupational and environmental health risks in their populations. She is a certified industrial hygienist with 25 years of experience in exposure assessment, indoor air quality investigations, chemical review, and environmental public health.
She is coauthor of over 20 publications and has extensive teaching experience having taught courses at various universities in Canada and the United States. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia where she enjoy teaching Masters students embarking on their careers in the occupational hygiene field.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Mona Shum, and she’s founder and principal over at Industrial Hygienist at AHA.
Aurora health and safety. Mona, welcome to the show. Thanks Adam. I just wanted to say it’s around here and you’re a principal industrial hygienist. There we go. I said that wrong. And then the name of the company is or aura health and safety. Yes. That’s correct. That’s correct. Hey, welcome. I butchered it.
It was a long one. I’ll be, I’ll be upfront and I’ll be honest. You’re the first principal industrial hygienist I’ve had on. Yeah, probably the only one you’ll have on actually. No, I’m in. So just to, just to get us started as we go through. So we got lots of cover. So we’re gonna talk about modernizing how we handle hazards in the workplace.
So we got a lot to talk about here, but just to get us kicked off, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with our mission matters minute. So Mona, a mission matters. Our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s what we do. Mona, what mission matters to you?
Well, oral health and safety. Our mission is actually to prevent occupational disease through a combination of education and consultation. So what I mean by that is really, we’re trying to make sure that everyone goes home. As healthy as they came at the beginning of the day. So, first thing first, Mona, just to get us started, what is industrial hygiene?
What is industrial hygiene? What does an industrial hygienist do? Sure, I get asked that quite often. So, industrial hygiene is actually looking at exposures in the workplace. So we all know about safety. Which is usually to prevent injury. So occupational hygiene is actually the science of recognizing, evaluating and controlling exposures in the workplace that eventually hopefully prevents disease.
So we’re looking at things that maybe have a longer life. Longer timeline than like a like a fall or a cut or something like that in safe in the safety world So industrial hygiene really is about trying to understand what kind of hazards we have exposure hazards We have in the workplace whether they’re chemical whether they’re biological or physical something like noise Or ergonomics, you know, that sort of thing that can cause an injury in the future.
How did you get started in this field? Like, how were you introduced to this originally? Well, I actually have a degree, a bachelor’s in microbiology and immunology. And, and I was looking for something that I could do with that degree. And I was looking around and realized I didn’t want to work in the laboratory exclusively.
You know, I didn’t want to do that looking at. It’s kind of lonely. I must admit, being in a laboratory. I had worked. I had a roommate. You don’t know this. You don’t know this. And why would you Mona? But I had a roommate in college who was microbiology major. And when he would tell me about his experience, and I think at some point counting something on butterfly wings, or I don’t know what he was doing, I forget.
But he would tell me about the days in the lab. It’s for some people, but You know, it is meticulous, I’ll say. It’s interesting. Yeah, and oftentimes you are by yourself. You might collaborate with other people, but essentially there were many long nights in my last year of my bachelor’s. I was doing a thesis program, and I’d be alone until 2 a.
m. in the morning, running my gels or doing whatever I was doing. Yeah. So anyways, I was looking for something where I could utilize science. And maybe have some lab work as well, but that would involve going out in the world a little bit more. And so I, I found this, program sort of in a happenstance way, where I was looking around at the University of British Columbia and I was walking through this parking lot and I saw a flyer on the, on the wet ground because in Vancouver it’s often raining.
That’s where I’m from. And it was wet and soggy but I don’t know what it was about it that made me want to pick it up. So I actually picked it up. Yeah. And it was a soggy piece of like, you know, in those days, it was like people had posters and pamphlets. Yeah. Yeah. They didn’t have internet back then. I won’t say exactly when, but anyways, they didn’t have internet back then.
So that’s how people you know, distributed information about programs and whatnot. And I found this program. It said occupational hygiene program. And I’d like, I was Really intrigued, but said, do you want to be doing, you know, field work? Do you want to be talking to people? Do you want to also do research and do you want to be, you know, had all those things that I, that I was really intrigued about.
And so I actually, in those days, we, I actually went to the faculty and I spoke to them. Like nowadays you can’t do that. You know, you email them or you don’t even email them, you probably go online and do some kind of application. But in those days I actually went to the faculty and I asked them about it.
And I said, what does this all entail? What is this all about? And they were saying, well, we’re trying to prevent occupational disease and we’re trying to do it. You know, before it becomes a problem so it doesn’t burden our healthcare system. You know, so I was really into that and I thought this really matches what I wanted to do.
It brings some of that science that I really wanted to, to have in my career, but it didn’t confine me. To like being lonely in a lab and I’m not saying all labs are like that. I don’t want to, for me, for me it was, it was a career path that that worked well. That’s so interesting. How light, how we can have these changes in life.
Like you picked up a piece of paper on the ground literally, and it took you in a whole nother direction. I’ve had some people that I’ve interviewed that somebody asked them a question or somebody like these little moments in time that can like take us down a path. That, you know, leads to other things.
I love, I love stories like that when it’s a little bit of just kind of almost fate, like, like drawing into it. I mean, I normally don’t pick up garbage, wet garbage off the ground. Like I just really, it’s not a habit. That was my next question. What would you often pick up? I really don’t. So for me to actually.
You don’t look like the type I wouldn’t have expected you to, like I do think there was some kind of like serendipity, fate, whatever you might yeah, in just doing that, like in the, in the rain, I remember distinctly, it was raining. I mean, it’s always raining in Vancouver in the wintertime. So, but I do remember that.
And to this day, it’s, it’s I’m just so thankful that I did it, you know, so, so let’s go a little bit further in the conversation. So, how do you get to the point to where now you’re you know, you’re, you’re thinking about and launching or a health and safety, like, where, where did that part of the entrepreneurship part of it come in line?
Well, I think for me, like I’ve, I’ve had a fairly long career in industry and then in consulting and also in public health. And then I went back into consulting at a larger firm. And I think there was a bit of a downturn back in the early 2010s where the company I was in was in oil and gas.
And, and at that time we had a bit of a downturn with oil and gas, and there were a number of layoffs and things, layoffs that I had to actually engage in. And so I was just really rethinking my career path and where it was going to go. And luckily my husband has had his own company for 30 years, 25, 30 years as well.
So he had already shown me it could be done. You know, this sort of path. And, and then I started to think about it and I said, you know what, it would be really wonderful to be able to be in control of my own career and my own destiny because I felt that when I was in a larger company like that, that I really wasn’t like, there’s so many decisions and so many things that were totally out of my control and not that everything is in my control still.
I mean, I still live in the real world, but you know, I can pick and choose, you know, what I want to do. I can have my own mission. You know, it’s buying. Yeah. It’s my company’s. And so I really love that. And once I embarked upon it, it was very scary. The first time I, like it took me a while to make the decision, but I think it was sort of that last round of layoffs that sort of made me decide, you know what, I’m going to do this.
I’m going to just jump off the deep end and I’m going to do it. And I had such great support from my husband. And, and I also have a business partner as well, who, who was very supportive is very supportive. And so that really helped to have that, You know, that encouragement because it is a scary endeavor.
I’m sure you’ve talked to a bunch of entrepreneurs and it’s, it’s that first making that decision. But then once I made that decision, I just ran with it. And I’m a very goal, goal oriented person. So then once I do set a goal, it’s like, then I, then I just, I try to achieve that. Yeah, but it was so what kind of, so what kind of problems are you helping to solve for your clients?
Like talk, talk to me a little bit more of the challenges that you’re helping solve. Sure. So we look at where, while we’re trying to solve people’s exposure problems. So when they have, let’s say they’re producing something, it’s a plant or it’s a mine or a manufacturing facility or something. Oftentimes they’re producing things that they don’t want to produce, right?
Like in the air, for instance. Yes. Maybe there’s something that’s affecting skin and things like that. They have to handle things. So we’re trying to prevent people from getting sick eventually, right? So how we do that is we go in and we understand what their hazards are. We look at the process. One thing I love about this career is that I learn.
I learn about people’s processes, I learn about people’s jobs, and what they do. I get to talk to people and under, you understand, you get to talk to people, right? So I get to talk to people and interview people and go, what do you do? How does this work? You know, you know, how are you interacting with this, And it’s really fascinating to me to sort of tease that apart.
And I find it like detective work, you know, it’s sort of like that, you know, we’re trying to tease out these you know, where is that exposure coming from? How could you be exposed? And then we try to figure out how much exposure they get by actually sampling the air and sample surfaces and things like that.
And you get them. You get the samples analyzed by a laboratory. So that’s where that kind of laboratory part comes in. So there’s still a little bit of that laboratory work, you know, that we need to interact with, which is really neat. And then afterwards we, we get the results and we kind of compare it to whatever standards are that are available.
And then we say, you know, you’re overexposed or, or you’re okay. And then if they are overexposed, we come up with solutions. So I love the problem solving as well. What can we do? What can some of those solutions look like? I’m curious like what that looks like. Oh sure. So some of it can we, we like to start with this hierarchy of controls.
It’s like an inverted pyramid. And so what we do is like the most effective thing is to try to get rid of the chemical substitute, get, you know, eliminate the hazard altogether. So if you could, let’s say let’s say you’re utilizing Toluene, which is a chemical in the work environment. If you could substitute with something that’s a little bit less toxic for instance then you can actually utilize that.
And then you automatically start to. Bring down your exposures. But then next to elimination or substitution, then you can you can actually do things like ventilation, where you could bring that air away from these people, or you could contain that in a box. So people use lab fume hoods, for instance, to contain that toluene or that chemical, right?
Inside a box. So that air is being drawn out. So those are sort of the engineering controls, which is the next thing. And then there’s things like administrative type controls. So having like work procedures around it, like safe work procedures. Maybe you have to wear gloves, maybe you have to you can only do it for certain periods of the day because you need to have, make sure you don’t have, you know and then you have sort of your last line of defense, which is your personal protective equipment.
So that is like wearing a respirator and things like that, where it’s, you know, it’s not the most comfortable thing, so you don’t want to jump to that immediately and, and forego those other things up top. But, you know, that, that is another line of defense, right? So that’s what we work through when we, when we think about different controls that could work to reduce people’s exposures.
And it’s also working with the workplace, because what’s realistic, too, right? So we have to take that into consideration because if we suggest something and like, Oh, you know, you need to get a 3 million upgrade on your ventilation system, that’ll solve all your problems. And you’re talking to a mom and pop organization.
They’re going to be like, Yeah, okay. Yeah. See ya.
So what can work for them? And we try to find things like low hanging fruit. So what can immediately change right now that could prevent people from being infected? Further exposed, you know, can we do that? And then can we figure out sort of midterm and longer term solutions for them? Like maybe they can start to upgrade their ventilation system over time Like when they start to it starts to break down and things like that.
They can do certain things to to help right? So we try to come up with Strategies really for people. What kind of, what kind of industries are you working in? We work we’re really lucky. We work in a range of industries. So I’d say mining is a big one that we work in, in British Columbia and the Yukon.
And then also we work at the airport and we work for clean energy, like hydroelectric energy. We also work for the film industry, which is really interesting. This is a great question. BC, I don’t know if you know, but Vancouver is like the third largest sort of film and television center behind Hollywood and Georgia, actually, Atlanta, Georgia.
Yeah. So it’s, it’s really neat up here that we get to be involved in that. Competing, competing with Tyler Perry out there in Atlanta, right? That compound they have is amazing. I’ve seen that, I saw that that documentary Maximus. Oh my, I think that’s what it’s called. The Tyler Perry one. I’m like, Oh my gosh, definitely should.
It’s amazing what they did out there. I’m like, wow. So we got Vancouver, we got Tyler Perry, we got Hollywood. I’m in. What’s your vision for this company going forward? Like oral health? Like what, what’s the vision for it? I, I am really trying to embrace technology. The company is trying to do that. And industrial hygienists are not the most, they’re not the earliest adopters, I’m going to say, of technology.
So we as an industry are still using, like, Ethernet connections to connect our equipment to our computers, and CD ROMs. Things come on CD ROMs, you can’t even get a CD ROM player. Hold on, are you serious? Yes, no, I’m pretty serious. You can still buy CD ROMs? I didn’t even know that. There’s old equipment and they’ve been trying to like upgrade it, so at least it’s like memory sticks and things like that, USB sticks.
But it’s essentially pretty old technology that we’ve been slowly improving. Of course. But it’s a fairly small industry, like compared to other, you know. So I think there’s just been slow movement, but like for, for me and my, and my company, we want to start to embrace these things like just simple things.
We’ve been building some apps, for instance, to try to do exposure assessment and risk assessment out in the field more readily. So if we build apps, for instance, that people could use that you could use Adam, you could download our heat stress app and you could figure out in LA right now, is it like a high risk or a moderate risk of heat stress?
And then there’s controls. Those controls are, are tied to what we have as, as regulation in British Columbia. But it’ll give you a good sort of idea of whether you’re in the high or the low sort of risk level. And so we’ve been trying to do more and more of that at Aura. We’ve been building like a, we built a wildfire smoke app, same sort of thing, which tells you like, are you at high risk or moderate risk or low risk exposure to wildfire smoke?
And so here it’s becoming a huge issue. Canada. Yeah. And is that apps? I know you do, of course, B to B. But are these apps kind of almost like a B to C component to like anybody can download them? Or is this still for the business? Anyone can download them so you can download it. So if you go It’s actually we built it for a client, but our client is happy to share because they want to share with the world, which is fantastic and wonderful philosophy.
Yeah, that’s amazing. So yeah, it’s IATSE I A T S E 8 9 1. So if you look up that in your app store or in your Google play, you’ll be able to find three apps. There’s a heat stress app, a wildfire smoke app and a cold stress app, which you probably don’t need in LA, but maybe the, maybe the other two might be useful.
But essentially what we’re trying to do is put these tools, this ability to do risk assessment into more people’s hands because we, We only have a few, there’s like 10, 000 industrial hygienists around the world. There’s just not enough of us to be at every work site to be doing an assessment. So if you could do assessment, if any worker could do assessment, and sort of go to their supervisor and say, hey, you know what?
Hey, there’s heat stress risk here. And what are we doing about that? You know, just asking those questions. So we’re trying to do more of that, and I’m really, I’m, I’m super passionate about that aspect of where our, our company’s going. I want to put more stuff online. We’re doing some online courses.
We want to be able to like give people those tools, because I teach at the University of British Columbia. I’m an adjunct professor there, and I teach to 10 to 12 master’s students every year, right? And that’s 10 to 12 people, right, that I’m teaching. Can we bring that? So I think it’s important to be able to share that knowledge to more people around Canada, around the world, and distribute that knowledge and do it more efficiently.
So I believe online, you know, is the way to go. With some in person training, perhaps, too, where, you know, you have to like come in and actually do some hands on. But essentially, if we can do that. You know, if we can do that on a larger scale, I mean, that’s so exciting to me. That is exciting. And when I look at it, it’s also just and I like, like you coming on a program like this to educate people on what’s going on and otherwise, because other than maybe some niches, people don’t even know.
So, and now, and now that you have the apps, things. And as you continue to build the platform and that component of it and empower others, like even just to attract others to the field to like it, you’re creating a whole nother ecosystem is the way I see it. Yeah, I’m so excited. Like I was just at this International Occupational Hygiene Association conference in Dublin.
And my colleague and I Elizabeth Liu from Exponent, she she and I presented this work that they’re doing with the Department of Defense down there. And I’m allowed to talk about it because we actually did speak about it at this conference. It’s okay. So so she’s doing some really interesting work with wearables.
So, you know, wearable watches, chest straps sweat monitors, things like that. And they were doing it for the military purposes but I was thinking, Can’t we use it for occupational populations, because we have the same issues. So I work with wildland firefighters, I’ve been doing that for several years.
That’s a perfect population. So we’ve begun to have those conversations with wildland firefighters and saying, you know, are you interested in this type of technology to detect things like heat stress risk? Because you could do it through heart rate. That’s one method of doing, like looking at heat stress risk.
Can we look at fatigue? And there are certain, you know, body battery sort of algorithms and things like that that people have out there. And then can we look at dehydration and what kind of hydration needs that individual people might need? Because your needs might be different from mine, Adam.
You know, it might be, I, I sweat way more salt than you or something like that. And then I need to have different electrolytes. So if we can have more individualized controls, That brings hygiene to this other level because it used to be, we just measured the air and the environment out here and put in like wide you know general, general controls for everyone, you know, same control for everyone, right?
But in this case with wearables, you can have individualized controls, which would be really fascinating. So I’m, I’m super excited by this aspect of like of wearables. Embracing technology. So, oh, that’s amazing. It’s fun. And it’s fun to see how this is going to all evolve like with wearables apps.
Otherwise, from CD roms to wearables that I had to bring it up. I had to bring it up. Had to do it like this is interesting. And when you think about things like just on the on the world event, like whether it’s Climate change or just in general, like other things that are happening, like this is in line and I think it all kind of follows in this narrative of safety really and what we want to do next.
Yeah, no, I, I know that a lot of people are afraid of it. This is new, right? And, and I think we have to go in eyes wide open. Like we have to know what the limitations of these devices are and everything, right? Like, but, you know I was at the doctor yesterday. They, they said something about efficacy of whatever treatment they’re going to give me.
And they said, you know what, this one treatment it’s, it’s, you know, bulletproof. It’s really good. It’s wonderful, but people don’t do it. They don’t comply, right? And then, and if you do this other one it’s, it may, may not be great for people with, you know, a severe issue or anything like that, but for mild and moderate issues, you know, this one works great because people use it.
People do it, right? Wow. And so this is the same thing. So maybe these apps aren’t as like having a hygienist come out there and actually do the heat stress assessment for you. Probably you get a higher quality of heat stress risk assessment, but if you can put more in. Screening ability into the hands of more people, you’ll be affecting the population at a larger level like I can.
Like I said, I only teach 10 to 12 people at a time in person for a whole semester, right? And it’s me taking that time and them sitting there to do this. So I can only do so much that way. But if I could do it this other way. and it can affect more people. And I just, I’m super just passionate about that idea of bringing it to more people.
It’s amazing. Well, Mona, this has been so much fun having you on the show today and learning more about what you’re doing over at Aura Health and Safety. If somebody is watching or listening to this and they want to follow up, continue the conversation, get more info, how do they do that? You can visit our website at www.
aurahealth. ca. AuraHealthSafety. com, and it’s A U R A HealthSafety. com. Awesome. And for everybody watching or listening to this, we’ll put those links in the show notes, so you can just click on the links and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with us and you haven’t done it yet, Hit that subscribe or follow button because this is a daily show and each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new entrepreneurs, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Mona again, thank you so much for coming on the show and it’s been, it’s been a blast. Thank you very much, Adam.