Congratulations to AnnMarie Walton, assistant professor, and her entire team who received an award for her UNC Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center/CDC application entitled: “Surface Contamination and PPE Use in Inpatient Oncology: The Impact of COVID-19.” This award was funded for a 10-month period with a project start date of August 1, 2021.

Antineoplastic drugs (ADs), used to treat cancer patients, are hazardous and put health care workers at risk. The most common route of exposure for workers is dermal, and ADs have been documented on many work surfaces in a multitude of studies, presenting opportunities for long-term low-level exposure risk. There is no safe level of surface contamination; any exposure to ADs is unacceptable. Several papers suggest, but do not confirm, that the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and a workplace safety climate (WSC) that supports safety may reduce surface contamination. However, the effect of PPE use and WSC on surface contamination is difficult to test since changes to PPE use and WSC are usually incremental. Now interim guidelines on PPE use by the Oncology Nursing Society and public awareness during the COVID-19 pandemic may have changed PPE use and improved WSC dramatically. We hypothesize that PPE use increased and WSC improved during COVID-19 and surface contamination decreased compared to pre-COVID-19 measurements. We are uniquely positioned to explore this hypothesis since we already have data on PPE use, WSC, and surface contamination from the same two inpatient oncology units pre-COVID-19 (2018). We will also examine the relationship among PPE use, WSC, and surface contamination. Our study addresses issues relevant to advancing Total Worker Health such as control of hazards and exposures, organization of work, and built environment supports. Findings from this study will support future intervention research focused on minimizing occupational exposure to ADs for health care workers.