Don’t assume there is no need to prepare for working safely in the cold this year, because of the moderate temperatures in much of the country so far. According to the National Weather Service , the long-range weather forecast predicts chillier temperatures than average in January and February in the Southern Plains and the Southeast.

Latinos are the largest minority group in the U.S., and statistics show that only Mexico has a higher number of Latinos. Latinos now comprise 17% of the population, a figure expected to grow to 31% by 2060, according the U.S. Census Bureau. This increase will have significant demographic and business implications.

In 1981, a worker at the Maxwell House coffee factory in Houston died from what was reported at the time to be "bronchial asthma." She was 46, a mother of three. In 1982, another worker at the plant died — from the same thing.

Although survival rates for people who suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital are extremely low in most places, emergency physicians propose three interventions to improve survival rates and functional outcomes in any community and urge additional federal funding for cardiac resuscitation research in an editorial published online last Wednesday in Annals of Emergency Medicine (“IOM Says Times to Act to Improve Cardiac Arrest Survival … Here’s How”).

Thick smog continued to engulf China’s largest cities on December 26, 2015, just a day after authorities canceled more than 200 flights from Beijing due to limited visibility. Children and elderly were also warned to avoid outdoor activities as officials raised the air pollution alert in Beijing to orange, the second-highest on the city’s four-grade scale, on Christmas.

Until December, 2015, the Chinese government had never issued a "red alert" for severe smog levels in any of its cities. But in December it issued two of them, closing schools, stalling freeways, and leading some environmental policy experts to believe that, with respect to air pollution, the recent alarms may represent a national turning point.

A report published by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that inhalation of nanomaterials is the exposure route that provides the most significant health effects to consumers and others.

Falls, broken bones, and death. These were the hazards faced by Force Corp. employees as they performed a roofing job on July 7, 2015, at 2-4 Johnson St. in North Andover. An OSHA inspector driving by the work site saw three employees on a roof exposed to falls of up to 18 feet without fall protection.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has imposed a $40 million civil penalty and a series of performance requirements to automaker BMW North America for a series of violations of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act and NHTSA regulations.