Environmental Health and Safety

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You’ll soon be able to calculate how much particulate matter you’re inhaling with the Conscious Clothing system, a wearable breathing analysis tool that uses groove strips, stretchy, conductive strips of knitted silver material wrapped around the ribcage, to measure breath volume, and collects and transmits data in real time, via Bluetooth, to any Bluetooth-capable device.

Final rules related to employment-based wellness programs have been published, representing the last step in implementing the Affordable Care Act. Assistant Secretary of Labor Phyllis C. Borzi answered three frequently-asked questions about the rules:

Construction workers in Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee learned about the dangers of working in summer heat at a one-hour safety stand-down today conducted by OSHA, employers and trade associations.

The third day of AIHce 2013 featured a General Session address by L. Casey Chosewood, MD, Senior Medical Officer for Total Worker Health™, NIOSH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

After 34 years as Executive Director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), safety activist Joel Shufro is retiring. Shufro has headed up the organization for most of its 31-year history, growing it into a membership encompassing approximately 200 local unions and 300 individuals.

The13th Annual Upton Sinclair Memorial Lecture for Outstanding EHS Investigative Reporting at AIHce was entitled, “Breaking the Silence: The Importance of Public Records for Worker Safety at Sensient Flavors,” presented by Tony Cook, an Indianapolis Star reporter who covered the investigation of the Sensient plant where federal health officials found a third of the plant’s roughly 100 production workers had experienced abnormally restrictive lung function.

Occupational exposures facing modern workers are more challenging than ever before – and require more from safety professionals.That point was made by L. Casey Chosewood, MD, of NIOSH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the third day General Session at AIHce 2013.

The short answer, according to agency chief Dr. David Michaels, who was asked the question in a Q&A session Tuesday morning, is NO.  Dr. Michaels was emphatic on that point. “We have too much on our plate now,” he said.

Dr. L. Casey Chooswood, MD’s presentation at the Wednesday morning kick off session was an introduction to one of NIOSH’s prized projects, in line with NIOSH boss Dr. John Howard’s vision for the future, namely Total Worker Health™. What is it?