There is uncertainty surrounding law enforcement officers’ exposure to and health effects from opioids encountered while at work protecting the public. Over the past several years, the media have reported instances of opioid exposures and health effects among first responders and other public service workers across the U.S.[i],[ii],[iii],[iv] These reports provide incomplete or uncorroborated information about incidents involving work‐related exposures to drugs among responders. An article from NIOSH researchers entitled “Health effects from unintentional occupational exposure to opioids among law enforcement officers: Two case investigations” published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine seeks to characterize the risk associated with unintentional occupational exposure to drugs. The article summarizes two NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluations (HHEs), discusses prevention of occupational exposure to fentanyl and its analogues, and emphasizes the need to protect responders while research continues. A summary of the article follows.
The following two HHEs were conducted by NIOSH at the request of law enforcement agencies to evaluate incidents involving drugs where officers experienced health effects. [v],[vi],[vii] The objectives of the HHEs were to evaluate the potential exposure to drugs among law enforcement officers and the reported health effects, and to provide recommendations on preventing occupational exposures to drugs among law enforcement officers. We are highlighting these examples of incidents from New Hampshire in 2017 and Virginia in 2018 because they show different situations. Other evaluations of incidents involving first responders with unintentional occupational exposures to drugs, with similar implications for prevention, are available on the NIOSH website.