***TRANSCRIPT BEGIN***
(0:02) VO: The following is a presentation of the University of Minnesota
Ethereal, ambient background music.
(0:16) VO: With more than 20 years of experience, the Midwest Consortium for Hazardous Waste Worker training at the University of Minnesota provides hands-on HAZMAT training and continuing education for professionals in the field. We provide training for a wide variety of students as well as health and safety professionals; including engineers, industrial hygienists, firefighters, and paramedics
(0:35) LOIS HARRISON: We just get a wide gamut of students, and we don’t presume that they have any background in hazardous materials before they come to our courses.
(0:43) VO: Lois Harrison is a continuing education specialist who has coordinated the Hazardous Materials Training program since 2002.
(0:48) LOIS HARRISON: Pretty much anybody who has anything to do with environmental issues, this is a very, very good, very well structured course for any – really any discipline in environmental health. The three programs that we really offer are kind of three legs of a stool. We have the hazardous materials training, so we have like our 40-hour courses and our 8-hour hazardous materials courses, then we do emergency response courses where we do similarly a 40 hour course, an 8 hour refresher… So we’re doing a lot more courses for people who work in health care facilities; on hospital decontamination, mold remediation, incident command – those are areas that are kind of high demand.
(1:30) INSTRUCTOR (ED): The skill here is to show you that it is difficult – wearing a mask…
(1:31) VO: To meet the needs of groups, companies, and community workshops, we offer in-person, custom-fit training at our site or yours – Instructed by a variety of experienced specialists and professionals.
(1:41) LOIS HARRISON: We are really fortunate to have – and it’s been intentional to have – instructors in a variety of disciplines. We have fire chiefs, we have industrial hygienists from private industry, we have public health safety specialists, we have people that work at the Metropolitan Airports Commission, we have chemists – part of what our philosophy is with this program is really, more interdisciplinary work is better; and the more that we can get instructors that come from a variety of perspectives, the better the students are going to benefit from what we have to offer with the course
(2:15) VO: Enrollment in the University of Minnesota’s Hazardous Waste Worker training program is open to anyone. For more information or to register for courses, visit hazmat.umn.edu or call 612-624-2345.
***TRANSCRIPT END***