Environmental Health and Safety

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The National Hearing Conservation Association (NHCA) has announced the members of its 2014 Executive Council. “The new NHCA Executive Council represents the diversity of our membership and reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the practice of hearing loss prevention,” said NHCA incoming President Beth Cooper.

A study from the University of Sydney finds that lower back pain (LBP) is a significant cause of work-related disability. It affected 26 percent of the global population in 2010, and varied considerably with age, gender and region.

The Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP) has launched Safety Salary Source, a new reporting tool that allows users to view survey data on safety, health and environmental (SH&E) practitioners' salaries in new detail.

Cleaning up a site in preparation for a tour by potential investors has resulted in a $2,359,000 for Olivet Management LLC, a real estate development and management company that owns the former Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center in Dover Plains, N.Y.

OSHA has developed Safe Patient Handling: Preventing Musculoskeletal Disorders in Nursing Homes, a new brochure that addresses the prevention of musculoskeletal disorders among nursing home and residential care workers.

In support of its alliance with OSHA, AIHA has developed a new “QuickTips” sheet to provide OHS professionals with information on safe patient handling and mobility.

Welding fumes are composed of metals and most fumes contain a small percentage of manganese. There is a concern by workers, employers, and health professionals about potential neurological effects associated with exposure to manganese in welding fumes. NIOSH has been conducting research and reviewing the published scientific literature to assess this problem.

The traditional occupational safety and health programs of the twentieth century were designed, by and large, to prevent work-related injury, illness, and death in workplaces where hazards usually were recognizable and predictable. In the twenty-first century, scientists and decision-makers have had to develop additional skills and strategies to address another type of hazard: the risks that emergency responders face in the line of duty from unpredictable, uncontrolled conditions encountered in large-scale disasters.

In the largest, most comprehensive, nationwide study to examine the prevalence of allergies from early childhood to old age, scientists from the National Institutes of Health report that allergy prevalence is the same across different regions of the United States, except in children 5 years and younger.

For some time now, wristbands in various colors have been worn to show the wearer’s embrace of certain causes, like the fight against cancer or the need to end cruelty to animals. A new wristband could help scientists determine the potential disease risks of exposure to substances like pesticides. The project was reported recently in the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) journal Environmental Science & Technology.