Articles Tagged with ''occupational exposure''

OSHA has cited a Florida construction company after one of its employees died from heat exposure while working at a residential site in Jacksonville. Middleburg-based Southeastern Subcontractors Inc. failed to protect its workers from the dangerous hazards of working outdoors in extreme heat, according to OSHA, which issued the one serious citation for exposing employees to heat-related injuries, and one other-than-serious violation for failing to report a workplace fatality to OSHA within 8 hours of its occurrence.

Occupational hazards are broadly defined as “a risk accepted as a consequence of a specific profession,” and in many instances, the construction and industrial sectors top the list of dangerous professions. While strides have been made in the realm of worker safety over the past several decades, many underlying risks still remain prevalent in the workplace.

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.

NIOSH researchers, in partnership with staff from a network of federally funded black lung clinics in Virginia, have reported the largest cluster of severe black lung disease ever described in the scientific literature, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).