The U.S. Chemical Safety Board reverses a controversial accident investigation report policy, the “five second rule” gets debunked and a safety and health management standard is revised. These were among the top articles featured on ISHN.com this week.

Millions of patients are harmed each year due to unsafe health care worldwide, resulting in 2.6 million deaths annually in low-and middle-income countries alone. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), most of these deaths are avoidable. The personal, social and economic impact of patient harm leads to losses of trillions of U.S. dollars worldwide.

Several incidents in which law enforcement officers suddenly experienced health problems after being exposed to opioids and other drugs while on the job sent up an alarm among first responders nationwide. With the opioid epidemic in the U.S. showing few signs of abating, agencies turned to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for help in preventing such exposures going forward.

Taking one daily pill that combined medications to treat high blood pressure and high cholesterol lowered heart disease risk among underserved patients is better than taking several separate medications to treat these risk factors, according to new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the American Heart Association (AHA).

Two recent studies by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) are shedding light on how to prevent work-related asthma by controlling exposure to hazardous substances. Work-related asthma can occur when workplace exposure to a hazardous substance triggers symptoms in someone with asthma or causes new asthma to occur in someone who doesn’t already have it.

A new injury has emerged in this, the digital era: “selfie wrist.” There is no shortage of enthusiastic selfie takers these days, especially among young people, who repeatedly aim their cell phones at themselves in order to visually document their activities, friends and special locations they visit.

Turns out bacteria may transfer to candy that has fallen on the floor no matter how fast you pick it up. Rutgers researchers have disproven the widely accepted notion that it’s okay to scoop up food and eat it within a “safe” five-second window. Donald Schaffner, professor and extension specialist in food science, found that moisture, type of surface and contact time all contribute to cross-contamination.

“If we don’t take action now, these families in Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, Alabama, Colorado, North Dakota and New Mexico will begin receiving health care termination notices at the end of October. Without congressional action to keep this from happening, they will spend their holiday season worrying about whether or not they will have to choose between their life-saving medications and putting food on the table."

Carbon monoxide (CO) is a highly toxic, lighter than air gas which is most often found in an area surrounding a combustion source (e.g., a furnace, boiler or space heater) where there is insufficient oxygen to allow for complete combustion of fuel in use. Deemed the “silent killer” because it is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and non-irritating, carbon monoxide is virtually impossible to detect without testing.

Many of the products targeted to children, such as toddler formulas, caffeinated beverages and even plant-based/non-dairy drinks like rice and oat milk are NOT on the list of recommended beverages for kids just released by leading medical and nutrition organizations. What did make the list for the birth-to-five-year-old set: breast milk, infant formula, water, and plain milk.