The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has dismissed industry challenges to OSHA’s new silica dust exposure standard, ruling that the agency’s decision to lower permissible worker exposure from 250 micrograms to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air over an average of eight hours was reasonable.
Although miners with evidence of black lung on their chest X-rays are eligible to request a job transfer, few do so, according to a recent study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
Black lung disease refers to a group of lung diseases caused by breathing in coal mine dust. The disease can cause severe problems like shortness of breath, and can even be fatal, but limiting exposure to coal mine dust can prevent it.
A former OSHA inspector who worked at the 9/11 Ground Zero site, now diagnosed with a terminal 9/11 illness, is battling with the Labor Department for his workers’ compensation benefit, according to an article in the New York Daily News.
In modern society, occupational asthma is the most frequently occurring work-related respiratory disease. Occupational asthma is defined as a form of asthma that is generally caused by immunological sensitisation to a (specific) agent inhaled at work. A large – and growing – number of causative agents have been identified.
Adults with asthma are at increased risk for pneumococcal disease, yet according to a new CDC study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, just 54 percent of adults with work-related asthma—asthma triggered by an exposure at work—have been vaccinated against the infection.
A new compilation of articles published in the November issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, describes an effort led by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to develop and evaluate clinical decision support (CDS) designed to assist primary care clinicians’ with care of their working patients using CDS tools in electronic health records.
Hexavalent chromium [Cr(VI)] is usually produced by an industrial process. Cr(VI) is known to cause cancer. In addition, it targets the respiratory system, kidneys, liver, skin and eyes. Chromium metal is added to alloy steel to increase hardenability and corrosion resistance.
What is systematic review?
There are many different types of occupational safety and health questions and a variety of scientific methods to answer them. Systematic review is one method for comprehensively reviewing a body of scientific literature. It is an explicit and transparent process to identify, select, synthesize, and critically appraise the scientific literature relevant to a specific question.
After multiple delays, OSHA has finally announced that employers who are required to keep OSHA injury and illness records must send summary information in to the agency by December 15, fifteen days after the deadline announced last June, when the agency proposed to delay the reporting deadline from July 1 to December 1.
‘Workplaces are not merely spaces where people work – they are spaces where people live their lives. Anything which would be prohibited on grounds of consumer health or environmental protection should also be prohibited in workplaces.’ These were the words with which Laurent Vogel, a researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), closed the ‘Work and Cancer’ conference organised by the ETUI in November in Brussels.
