To mark International Women’s Day this past March 8, which focused on “violence against women,” the International Labour Organization is highlighting the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace – an often subtle but disturbing form of aggression.

Letter sent to the Honorable Tom Petri, United States House of Representatives by Allan K. Fleeger, CIH, CSP, president of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). RE: HR632 – Voluntary Protection Program

The unsafe workplace costs a lot of money. The financial magnitude of expenses incurred in operating an unsafe workplace must be understood. This examination of the true costs associated with poor safety uncovers how far they extend beyond simply counting the cost of safety glasses or wages paid to the safety department.

Last month, Assistant Secretary of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Dr. David Michaels held an OSHA Employees All-Hands Meeting. OSHA employees who were not able to attend the meeting in person were able to participate through the web.

Let’s be clear, there is no such thing as a safe workplace. Sure we can slap each other on the back and brag to one another about the four years without a recordable injury and we can tell ourselves that we have achieved a Utopian risk-free workplace but the reality is, there is always some probability that a worker will be harmed in the course of doing his or her job.

According to the fiscal year 2013 Congressional Budget Justification for OSHA, the agency will be more transparent in divulging information to the next-of-kin of workplace fatality victims. OSHA has long been criticized by activists such as Alabama’s Ron Hayes, whose son was killed in a grain silo, of frustrating victims’ families by leaving them out of the information loop.

A new study, funded by the Canadian Cancer Society, will examine the human and economic impact of workplace exposure to 44 known or suspected carcinogens and their links to 27 types of cancer. The study's main goals are to quantify - for the first time - how serious the problem is in Canada by estimating the number of new cancer cases and cancer deaths that can be attributed to workplace factors, and also to weigh the economic impact.

Workplace health promotion programs have the potential to reduce average worker health costs by 18 percent — and even more for older workers, reports a study in the January Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

Chinese workplace safety and health officials last month hosted the first U.S.-China Workplace Safety and Health Dialogue in Beijing. The historic conference brought together officials from China’s State Administration of Work Safety to exchange ideas and information about protecting workers on both sides of the Pacific. Dr. Michaels presented an overview of workplace safety and health standards and compliance assistance in the United States.

It’s often said that hard work never hurt anybody. It’s a cliché with which occupational health folks and thousands of injured workers would undoubtedly disagree. And while tragic and often preventable physical injuries may be the easiest to see and document, other work-related health risks are much harder to pick up on. One such risk is depression.