Articles Tagged with ''occupational illness''

Occupational hazards are broadly defined as “a risk accepted as a consequence of a specific profession,” and in many instances, the construction and industrial sectors top the list of dangerous professions. While strides have been made in the realm of worker safety over the past several decades, many underlying risks still remain prevalent in the workplace.

Nearly three years ago, President Barack Obama responded to long-standing concerns that workers exposed to toxic chemicals at the country’s nuclear weapons labs were not receiving proper compensation. Obama created an advisory board to be composed of scientists, doctors and worker advocates. Their recommendations have led to significant changes, including the repeal of a rule that made it more difficult for workers who’d been injured in the last two decades to get compensation.

NIOSH researchers, in partnership with staff from a network of federally funded black lung clinics in Virginia, have reported the largest cluster of severe black lung disease ever described in the scientific literature, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Jasmine worked at a prison in central California that provided long-term housing and services for minimum, medium, and maximum custody inmates. She was 34 years old and had worked at the prison for six years. Jasmine was a correctional officer, and her job duties included security checks, patrolling the facility, and occasionally grid searches and digging for contraband in the soil.

In a startling new report released by the CDC, researchers identified 204–389 deaths among adults that occurred annually between 1999 and 2016 that could be attributable to occupational exposures -- and were therefore potentially preventable. The fatality figures cited represent an estimated 11-21 percent of all adult asthma deaths.

After five years in development, a new standard that provides a framework for improving employee safety, reducing workplace risks and creating better, safer working conditions, all over the world has been approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, which was developed with support from the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), is a voluntary consensus standard intended to help combat the global toll of work-related fatalities, which currently number about 7,600 a year.

The Trump administration’s refusal to fulfill a provision of OSHA’s injury and illness tracking rule has resulted in a lawsuit by Public Citizen. The advocacy group filed the suit Friday in federal court against OSHA and the U.S. Department of Labor, claiming that an exemption the agency cited in its denial of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request does not apply.