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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.

Revisions to the standard that guides implementation of safety and health management systems - ANSI/ASSP Z10.0-2019 – have been approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Safety and health management systems set an operational foundation by ensuring that critical processes are integrated, which helps organizations reduce injuries, save lives and maximize financial performance.

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.

Under pressure from worker safety advocates, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has decided to return to a policy of including the names of deceased workers in its investigative reports. The CSB, an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical incidents, has included names of fatally injured workers in its reports since 2014. The agency changed its policy in June with the release of two reports on fatal incidents.

A new study suggests employee safety could be improved through use of Virtual Reality (VR) in Health and Safety training, such as fire evacuation drills. The Human Factors Research Group at the University of Nottingham in the U.K. developed an immersive VR system to stimulate participants' perception of temperature, and senses of smell, sight and hearing to explore how they behaved during two health and safety training scenarios.

The legalization of recreational and medical marijuana in more and more states is posing a quandary for employers. Traditional methods of drug testing can determine if someone has tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the marijuana ingredient that causes a “high” - in their system, but not when they ingested it. THC can be found for weeks in the blood and urine of regular users.