It’s the most wonderful time of the year…unless you're an airline pilot, flying over a home bedazzled with holiday laser lighting that's pointing up at the sky. If that happens, you and your passengers could be in serious danger, because you could be distracted or temporarily blinded by the residential laser-light display. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which says it receives reports of such incidents each year from pilots.

More bicyclists die on U.S. roadways in crashes with motor vehicles than the deaths resulting in railroad, marine or aviation accidents¹, according the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which has taken up the subject of bicycle safety for the first time in 47 years. The 806 bicyclists who died in crashes in 2017 got the NTSB’s attention; so did the fact that bikes are increasingly being used a means of transportation.

A steelworker in Gary, Indiana is recovering from injuries sustained last week in a workplace incident at Gary Works, a sprawling steel mill along Lake Michigan. News sources say the man, a maintenance technician, was working on a blast furnace when the incident occurred, leaving him with multiple serious injuries

Nearly 1 in 5 adolescents aged 12-18 years, and 1 in 4 young adults aged 19-34 years, are living with prediabetes, according to a new CDC studyexternal icon published in JAMAexternal icon Pediatrics. Prediabetes is a health condition in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as type 2 diabetes.

After increasing steadily from 2005 - 2015, workplace suicides in the U.S. hit a new record high in 2016 – 291 – according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A total of 1,719 male and female workers committed suicide on the job between 2003 and 2007. Those numbers only takes into account suicides that occur at work. Among occupational groups, male employees of construction and mining companies had the highest suicide rate: 53.2 deaths per 100,000 in 2015, up from 43.6 in 2012.

After more than two decades years of legal wrangling, OSHA has finally collected $412,000 in penalties assessed to a New Jersey construction company for safety violations – plus interest. The action comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in July found Altor Inc. and its president Vasilios Saites in contempt for failing to pay the fines. Even that decision – which followed litigation that included multiple hearings before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) and the Court of Appeals – was followed by subsequent briefings and negotiations before the case came to a close.

Twenty-three percent of middle and high school students in the U.S. – a total of 6.2 million youth – have used a tobacco product in the past 30 days, according to the The National Youth Tobacco Survey results released yesterday. Why that matters: Most long-term tobacco product use begins during adolescence – and tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in this country and many others.

Workplace violence was a common theme in some of the workplace incidents that killed or injured employees in the U.S. There were also incidents involving machinery, a fall and a struck-by fatality. Here are some of the occupational safety news stories of the week:

Crane operators take note: OSHA will not accept crane operator certifications or re-certifications issued by Crane Institute Certification (CIC) after December 2 because CIC is not compliant with OSHA’s operator certification requirement, according to a temporary enforcement policy announced this week by the agency.

The sinking of a fishing vessel off Portland, Maine last year sounds very much like a scene from the Hollywood movie, “A Perfect Storm," starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. Fortunately, the real-life crew survived, unlike their cinematic counterparts – although their rescue was not without some tense moments. In both cases, however, a major factor in the calamity which endangered crew members was the captain’s decision not to return directly to port despite extreme weather conditions.