Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX and Tesla is a seriously strange and driven guy. That can be a good thing in some circumstances and even amusing if it’s your next door neighbor or crazy uncle. But when you own a major car company, it can mean workers getting hurt or killed. Last May we wrote about a report chronicling Tesla’s poor safety record.

Two-thirds of theater technicians and actors have experienced head impacts related to working in theater environments, according to a survey study in the March Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Apparently, though, the old adage, “the show must go on” is adhered to by theatre folk. Despite the fact that many of these injuries cause concussion symptoms, theater personnel usually continue their work onstage or backstage, according to the study by Jeffrey A. Russell, PhD, and Brooke M. Daniell, MEd, of Ohio University, Athens.

Longer-term prescribing of opioids causes substantially longer duration of temporary disability among workers with work-related low back injuries, according to a new study from the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI). Temporary disability is time that workers spend away from work recovering from their work-related injuries.

Jim manages a manufacturing plant that makes office furniture using plywood and other engineered wood products. Their worksite takes worker safety seriously, and is interested to know if the rate of severe injuries they are experiencing is high compared to injuries occurring at other office furniture manufacturing plants.

Falls are one of the most common causes of death for ironworkers. But they also risk injuries from steel beam or reinforced concrete wall collapses, "struck-by" injuries from falling or swinging objects, and contact with live electrical lines. That’s a good bit of risk for an average $45,000 salary.

Patients older than 18 years of age who suffered falls from ladders over a five and a half year period were identified for a study. Of 27,155 trauma patients, 340 (1.3%) had suffered falls from ladders. The average age was 55 years, with a male predominance of 89.3%. Average fall height was 9.8 ft. Increasing age was associated with a decrease in the mean fall height, an increase in the mean Injury Severity Score, and higher likelihood of hospital admission.

Analysis of data from three surveillance systems showed that in 2011, work-related ladder fall injuries (LFIs) resulted in 113 fatalities, an estimated 15,460 nonfatal injuries that involved more than one day away from work, and an estimated 34,000 nonfatal injuries treated in emergency departments. Workers who are male, Hispanic, older, self-employed, work in smaller establishments, and work doing construction and extraction or installation, maintenance, and repair experience higher LFI rates.

A rating system helped predict which solutions construction workers would use to prevent musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), according to a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri that was funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The study appeared in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

The American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA®) is asking its 8,500 members to contact their US Senators and urge them to oppose the passage of H.J.Res.83, which would use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to permanently overturn OSHA's final rule, which clarifies that an employer is obligated to establish and maintain accurate records of work-related injuries and illnesses throughout a five-year record retention timeframe.

Visit any emergency department in the United States and you may find individuals who were injured or who became ill on the job. In 2013 alone, an estimated 2.7 million workers received treatment in emergency departments for nonfatal work-related injuries and illnesses.