More employers are renting high-end, expensive atmospheric monitoring equipment to reduce capital spending costs, according to instrument vendors exhibiting here at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Expo in Salt Lake City.

Here are emerging EHS issues in 2015 being discussed at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Expo being held this week in Salt Lake City. How many of them are you currently involved with?

A study of injured U.S. aluminum industry workers in 2002-2004 established a positive correlation between the Body Mass Index (BMI) and traumatic work injuries, according to a presentation held Monday at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Expo.

EHS pros often lack a good understanding of what makes for a good occupational physician, especially since corporate occ med departments started to be outsourced decades ago, according to Peter Greaney of Workcare, Inc. speaking Monday at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Expo in Salt Lake City.

A study of French railroad workers was cited at a session Monday of the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Expo in Salt Lake City, a session looking to increase EHS professionals’ understanding of occupational medicine issues.

Employees seldom seek assistance through company-funded EAPs, according to an occupational health specialist speaking at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Expo on Monday in Salt Lake City.

Ashley Alewelt, CSP, Caterpillar, gave a presentation Monday morning at the 2015 AIHce urging EHS professionals to go beyond developing technical competencies. According to Alewelt, pros often go to technical trainings and read scientific books, but forget to build their leadership strengths.

On Monday morning at the AIHce, Brendan Moriarty, CIH, CSP, Chubb Insurance, discussed in a workshop the significant potential for an injury to a younger worker. According to NIOSH, an estimated 200,000 young workers are injured on the job in the U.S. every year. About 70,000 are injured seriously enough to go to the emergency room.

Many vendors at the AIHce exhibition hall are rolling out new gas detection equipment this week at the meeting in Salt Lake City. Technology is driving many innovations, with cloud-based software and storage handling the management of gas detection programs, and wireless gas detection enabling enterprise-wide closed-loop exposure monitoring and analysis.

Monday afternoon at the 2015 AIHce in Salt Lake City features the annual Jeffrey S. Lee Lecture, this year given by Garrett Brown, titled, “Two Decades Spent Helping Workers Protect Their Own Health and Safety in a Pitiless, Globalized Economy.”