It’s February, which means that Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and love is in the air. At the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), we like to use this time of year as an opportunity to show our appreciation for the personal protective equipment (PPE) that keeps the people we love safe.
In this spirit, NIOSH recently set a goal to improve the safety and health of fire fighters by reducing their exposure to harmful contaminants due to unclean or inadequately cleaned PPE.
A coalition of advocacy groups have filed a complaint (PDF) with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia over OSHA’s rollback of a provision in its final electronic injury and illness reporting rule, which was issued during the partial government shutdown. Public Citizen, along with the American Public Health Association and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists said in the suit that OSHA “failed to provide a reasoned explanation” for its decision to reverse a requirement that certain businesses electronically submit workplace injury and illness records to OSHA.
Companies with 250 or more employees will not be required to electronically submit information from OSHA Form 300 (Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) and OSHA Form 301, under the final rule issued yesterday by OSHA.
That Obama-era provision was eliminated after an unusually speedy review of the rule by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Female nurses who administer antineoplastic drugs – medications used to treat cancer – don’t always wear protective clothing, according to a new NIOSH study published online in the American Journal of Nursing, accompanied by a video abstract. This is one of the first studies to explore the use of antineoplastic drugs and personal protective equipment among non-pregnant and pregnant female nurses.
A new report says that “systemic failures” in the U.S. food safety system have led to a sharp increase in recalls of contaminated foods since 2013.
How Safe is Our Food?, from U.S. Public Interest Research Groups’ (PIRG) Education Fund, found that many types of food recalls have increased since the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in 2011.
Despite being shut down during the partial federal government shutdown, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) last week approved OSHA’s final Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses rule. What are the details? The public doesn’t know and will not know until the rule can be published in the Federal Register, which is closed for business during the shutdown.
The E. coli outbreak in the U.S. linked to romaine lettuce appears to be over. That’s the judgement of the CDC, which has issued a final update on the case, which resulted in 62 people in 16 states becoming ill from eating contaminated lettuce. Twenty-five people of them were hospitalized, including two people who developed a type of kidney failure called hemolytic uremic syndrome.
A new report by EUROGIP presents an analysis of the extent to which occupational cancers are recognised in nine European countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. It also looks at the schemes for identifying occupational cancers, especially via monitoring the health of people exposed to carcinogens in the course of their working careers.
With a growing number of states legalizing marijuana, causing a rapid increase in the cannabis industry workforce, increasing attention is being given to the health and safety of those involved in the cultivation and distribution of the substance in its various forms. One potentially serious health risk is from occupational exposure to mold.
What is going on at the North Pole? Several elves in the toy making department have reported congestion, cough and shortness of breath. While it is cold and flu season, all of the elves have had their flu shots and the issues seem to be contained to the elves working in the toy shop. A handful of elves also report sore throats, burning eyes and fatigue.
