After a 30-year sleep, workplace safety is undergoing a great transformation. All workplaces and nearly all workplace hazards will be impacted. This is a really hot issue. Approximately 75 percent of all women workers will become pregnant sometime during their working careers. Although the statistic varies, about half of the U.S. workforce is made up of women. The health of more than one-half of all newborns in the U.S. may be impacted by workplace exposures.
Unfortunately, protective controls for U.S. pregnant workers are stalled in decades old concepts. Risk assessments for pregnant worker = unborn child = children must eventually occur. When spoon-fed, occupational safety pros see the light but are fearful or uncertain how to act. In face of uncertainty they do little or nothing -- piecemeal at best.