During Women’s History Month, NIOSH will highlight several female researchers and their contributions to NIOSH and America’s workers. Christine M. Branche, Ph.D., is the Director of the NIOSH Office of Construction Safety and Health. Dr. Branche began her career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1996 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. In 2007, Dr. Branche joined NIOSH.

They say that those who forget history are forced to repeat it. But when it comes to workplace and environmental disasters, that’s not exactly true. Because while the politicians and their corporate supporters are doing the forgetting, it is the workers, the environment and surrounding communities that ultimately pay the price when the inevitable — and preventable — tragedies come home to roost.

As many Americans continue to worry that the Supreme Court ruling on unions could change workplace safety laws for the worse, there remains a more general threat to workplace safety which U.S. businesses should be focused on. Despite a gradual decrease over the past 13 years, the workplace fatality rate per 100,000 people in the U.S. is still significantly higher than in most E.U. countries.

The company whose bus plunged into an Alabama ravine early yesterday morning, killing the driver and injuring at least three dozen passengers, has been in four crashes during the past two years, according to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) records. In Tuesday’s incident involving First Class Tours Inc., a bus carrying members of a Texas high school band returning from a music festival at Disney World left the road and descended into a steep ravine near Loxley.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has interviewed the only survivor of Tuesday’s helicopter crash into New York City’s East River – the pilot. The Airbus Helicopter plunged into the river and rolled inverted during an autorotation, killing five passengers and injuring the pilot.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) – the government agency that conducts research and makes recommendations for preventing work-related injuries and illnesses – has rolled out some tools to enhance the safety of those working in nanotechnology. This relatively new science has exploded in popularity in recent years, as scientists and engineers find more and more uses for engineered nanomaterials, which may be stronger and more lightweight and offer increased control of light spectrum and greater chemical reactivity than their larger-scale counterparts of the same composition.

Traffic safety measures ranging from seat belt and drunk driving enforcement to design standards for cars and trucks “averted a public health disaster” by preventing about 5.8 million deaths in the U.S. from 1968 through 2015, according to a new study. The analysis found that without federal and state policies, traffic deaths annually would “likely have been in the hundreds of thousands rather than tens of thousands” in recent years.

One momentary decision in a hazardous workplace forever changed the lives of a worker who suffered grievous injuries and the co-worker whose actions inadvertently led to that injury. It also led to more than a quarter million dollars in fines against the company that employed them.

Nearly three years ago, President Barack Obama responded to long-standing concerns that workers exposed to toxic chemicals at the country’s nuclear weapons labs were not receiving proper compensation. Obama created an advisory board to be composed of scientists, doctors and worker advocates. Their recommendations have led to significant changes, including the repeal of a rule that made it more difficult for workers who’d been injured in the last two decades to get compensation.