Two officials with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) spoke this week about the agency’s latest guidance and priorities for “protecting workers within the cannabis industry” in the growing number of state-legal markets.
One official called for better tracking and reporting of negative health outcomes after recounting what she described as “the first fatality from occupational asthma in the U.S. cannabis industry”—a Massachusetts worker for the multi-state operator Trulieve who collapsed at work and died in 2022.
The Tuesday webinar featured two OSHA representatives: Yasmine Daniels, an industrial hygienist with the agency, and Virginia Weaver, a doctor and medical officer. Daniels began by giving an overview of OSHA’s federal and state guidelines and how those apply to cannabis, while Weaver spoke to the 2022 asthma death and how to better prevent such incidents.
“The most important thing is involvement from the industry to train workers and managers to identify and report symptoms of occupational allergy,” Weaver said at the online event hosted by the Board of Certified Safety Professionals, an organization that certifies safety practitioners. “Workers who develop a runny nose, rhinitis, congestion, eye or throat irritation, skin rash or hives—or, even more importantly, if it’s already progressed to
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