Noise damage to hearing health is a health risk, which is associated with both civilian and military occupations as well as certain leisure activities. Occupational noise damage to hearing must date from the Bronze Age, when man first began to fashion metals some five thousand years ago. The rapid growth of industrialisation over the past two centuries has produced what might be termed as the current civilian epidemic of occupational noise induced hearing loss. This series seeks to address points relevant to current knowledge of the subject. The volume should prove useful to members of the many disciplines that have an interest in this subject.

This book consists of nine chapters written by internationally known and respected research workers. Lennart Levi presents a psychosocial framework for understanding sickness and health in the workplace. James Campbell Quick, Debra Nelson and Jonathan Quick give an account of their research with executives in industry and the US Air Force. Tores Theorell focusses his research on the increasing demands on workers and the reducing control they have over their working lives. Johannes Siegrist is also concerned with imbalance - in this case between effort and reward at work. Susan Cartwright and Sheila Penchal report on the effects of the increase of mergers and acquisitions in the 1990's. Howard Khan's focus is the stress of working for clearing banks, merchant banks and foreign owned banks in London and New York. Sandra Fielden and Lyn Davidson present evidence of the sources of stress of women in managerial positions. Cheryl Traver's analysis of the rising costs of teacher stress is very relevant for policy makers and mangers. Michiel Kompier and Tage Kristensen make recommendations for planning and implementing stress management strategies in the workplace.

This book evaluates the risks to human health and the environment posed by exposure to chrysotile asbestos. Also referred to as white asbestos, chrysotile is a naturally occurring fibrous hydrated magnesium silicate mineral having many commercial applications. Chrysotile is released to the environment from industrial sources. In addition, natural weathering of serpentine rock results in emissions to air and water. Although the health risks associated with mixed exposures to the main commercial forms of asbestos (crocidolite, amosite, and chrysotile) are well known, the evaluation was undertaken in response to the continuing widespread production and use of chrysotile following the International Labour Organisation's recommendation to discontinue the use of crocidolite asbestos, and taking into consideration that amosite is virtually no longer exploited. The asbestos cement industry is singled out as by far the largest current global user of chrysotile fibres. Main applications include the production of corrugated sheets, flat sheets and building boards, slates, moulded goods, including low-pressure pipes, and high-pressure water pipes.Chrysotile is also used, in much smaller quantities, in the manufacturing of friction products, gaskets, and asbestos paper.

This is a no-nonsense, practical book for helping organizations rid their workplaces of drug abuse and its serious and costly consequences. The book draws upon the collective experiences of hundreds of organizations that have said "no more, not here" and have grown stronger as a result. The path to a drug-free working environment is straight but narrow. The Drug-Free Workplace:
How to Get There and Stay There delineates the path, always with a view toward avoiding missteps that can lead to trouble.
Bringing a workplace back to safety and profitability is a collaborative and multi-disciplinary effort. Participation necessarily involves professionals from security, safety, human resources, and health. Central to the effort is an enlightened management. Every specialist and manager committed to developing and maintaining a drug-free workplace will find in the pages of this book a wealth of sensible, meaningful information.
A drug-free workplace program cuts costs, increases productivity, reduces loss and wastage, avoids accidents, and literally saves careers, families, and lives. Much is at stake, making the drug-free program deserving of thoughtful deliberation, considerable planning, and careful implementation. Preliminary to the process is understanding the key tasks. All of the tasks are spelled out in this book.

Offers organizations a clear course to enact drug policiesTeaches the ramifications of testing and investigating drug use and abuseAddresses liability issues to keep buisness owners, security managers, and their companies out of court

Hazards of the Job explores the roots of modern environmentalism in the early-twentieth-century United States. It was in the workplace of this era, argues Christopher Sellers, that our contemporary understanding of environmental health dangers first took shape. At the crossroads where medicine and science met business, labor, and the state, industrial hygiene became a crucible for molding midcentury notions of corporate interest and professional disinterest as well as environmental concepts of the 'normal' and the 'natural.' The evolution of industrial hygiene illuminates how powerfully battles over knowledge and objectivity could reverberate in American society: new ways of establishing cause and effect begat new predicaments in medicine, law, economics, politics, and ethics, even as they enhanced the potential for environmental control. From the 1910s through the 1930s, as Sellers shows, industrial hygiene investigators fashioned a professional culture that gained the confidence of corporations, unions, and a broader public. As the hygienists moved beyond the workplace, this microenvironment prefigured their understanding of the environment at large. Transforming themselves into linchpins of science-based production and modern consumerism, they also laid the groundwork for many controversies to come. |This biological history of the workplace traces how a science of occupational and environmental health and the roots of modern environmentalism evolved at the crossroads where medicine and science meet business, labor, and the state.

Global competitive pressures and a relentless drive for productivity and profitability improvement are features of virtually all modern organisations. Staying in front requires a faster and smarter performance each year, with continuous improvement in all commercial activities a constant requirement for business success. Yet employees, who ultimately turn business plans into profit reality, are themselves under more pressure than ever before. Social, domestic and economic responsibilities place growing and conflicting demands on limited time. Physical ill health and damaged wellbeing are frequently the largely invisible result, with huge competitive and financial implications for the companies who employ these workers. Health has moved from welfare to a wealth issue. The effective management of employee health and wellbeing is therefore set to become a point of differentiation for companies who need to go on delighting their customers and shareholders alike.

This book is a guide through "dangerous waters". It is written to help you understand the real commercial benefits of improving employee wellbeing and how, if this area is neglected it can, despite all the information systems, all the forecasting skills and all the business acumen, sink the organisation. In addition, the authors assert that it is companies who recognise and proactively manage these very real threats in order to improve employee health and wellbeing, who will unleash the enormous potential for increased productivity, profitability and creativity that lies within each one of their employees. Dangerous Waters provides:

• A practical guide for managers in gaining an understanding the extent and true cost of current employee ill health
• Clear guidelines on building towards a strategy for corporate health and therefore corporate wealth improvement
• An integrated approach to the management of attendance, quality, innovation and customer service

Provides authoritative guidelines for the establishment or improvement of national programmes for poison control. Addressed to policy-makers and the administrators of specialized facilities, the book responds to the need for comprehensive advice on the most rationale and effective ways to manage the greatly increased number of poisoned patients seen throughout the world. Strategies for the prevention of poisoning are also described. The guidelines draw on the practical experiences of numerous well-established poison centres in different parts of the world. Although recommended lines of action have universal relevance, the book gives particular attention to the situation in developing countries, where a basic infrastructure for the care of poisoned patients is often absent and special problems arise from the lack of adequate communications, transportation, drugs, and support services. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the role and functions of a poison information centre as a crucial component of any national programme for poison control. The book has nine chapters presented in two parts. Part one provides an overview of the policy issues surrounding decisions to introduce measures, including specialized facilities, for the prevention and management of poisoning. Arguing that a poison information centre should be available in every country, part one also describes the benefits of such centres, outlines their principal functions, and suggests various options for their logical and cost-effective operation. Against this background, part two provides detailed technical advice on how to organize and operate the various facilities and services that make up a comprehensive system for poisoncontrol. Separate chapters describe the functions and requirements of information services, clinical services, and analytical toxicological and other laboratory services, and discuss the importance of toxicovigilance as a strategy for prevention. Subsequent chapters explain how to deal with major emergencies involving toxic chemicals, and outline solutions to the problem, encountered in most developing countries, of obtaining essential antidotes. Part two concludes with advice on the design and content of forms for collecting, storing, and reporting data, followed by a detailed list of the main literature required in a poisons information centre. Additional practical information is provided in a series of annexes, which describe a computer software system for the management of poisons data, reproduce several model record and reporting forms, and classify a large number of antidotes and related agents according to their proven effectiveness and urgency of availability. ..." For those involved in improving safety, this book is a bible... It is very difficult to be critical of this outstanding work ... an essential reference for all those involved in the use and handling of chemicals. For regulators and those concerned with government policy issues, it should be compulsory reading..." - Chemistry and Industry

In the definitive history of a twentieth-century public health disaster, Alan Derickson recounts how for decades after methods of prevention were known hundreds of thousands of American miners suffered and died from black lung, a respiratory illness caused by the inhalation of coal mine dust. The combined failure of government, medicine, and industry to halt the spread of this disease -- and even to acknowledge its existence -- resulted in a national tragedy, the effects of which are still being felt.

The book begins in the late nineteenth century, when the disorders brought on by exposure to coal mine dust were first identified as components of a debilitating and distinctive illness. For several decades thereafter, coal miners' dust disease was accepted, in both lay and professional circles, as a major industrial disease. Derickson describes how after the turn of the century medical professionals and industry representatives worked to discredit and supplant knowledge about black lung, with such success that the ceased to be recognized. Many authorities maintained that breathing coal mine dust was actually beneficial to health.

Derickson shows that activists ultimately forced society to overcome its complacency about this deadly and preventable disease. He chronicles the growth of an unprecedented movement -- from the turn-of-the-century miners' union, to the social medicine activists in the mid-twentieth century, and the black lung insurgents of the late sixties -- which eventually won landmark protections and compensation with the enactment: of the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act in 1969.

An extraordinary work of scholarship, Black Lung exposes the enormous human cost ofproducing the energy source responsible for making the United States the world's preeminent industrial nation.

Rapid Guide to Hazardous Air Pollutants Howard J. Beim, Jennifer Spero, and Louis Theodore Concise and easy to use, Rapid Guide to Hazardous Air Pollutants brings together a wealth of hard-to-gather information in one compact pocket guide. The Rapid Guide offers--in alphabetical order--detailed profiles of all 189 elements and compounds determined to be hazardous air pollutants by the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act. The profile for each pollutant includes:
* fundamental identification data (CAS number, molecular formula, formula weight, synonyms)
* uses (primarily in the manufacture of chemicals and as a component in the manufacturing process)
* physical properties (such as boiling point, density, vapor pressures, color)
* chemical properties (such as air/water reactivity, reactivity with skin or metal, flash point, heat of combustion)
* health risks, including toxic exposure guidelines, toxicity data, and acute and chronic risks
* hazard risks--the substance's potential for accidents, fires, explosions, corrosion, and chemical incompatibility
* exposure routes tracking the activities, environment, sources, and occupations that tend to lead to exposure
* regulatory status, listing the primary laws and citations of regulated chemicals
* important additional information on symptoms, first aid, firefighting methods, protective equipment, and safe storage
Based on the latest available data, Rapid Guide to Hazardous Air Pollutants is a valuable resource for industrial hygienists, emergency response personnel, health and safety managers, environmental and chemical engineers, scientists, chemical manufacturers, and students in environmental programs. Whatever the questions are regarding the handling, storage, transportation, or regulation of substances that endanger air quality, this Rapid Guide is the first place to turn for answers.

In the early twentieth century, a group of women workers hired to apply luminous paint to watch faces and instrument dials found themselves among the first victims of radium poisoning. Claudia Clark's book tells the compelling story of these women, who at first had no idea that the tedious task of dialpainting was any different from the other factory jobs available to them. But after repeated exposure to the radium-laced paint, they began to develop mysterious, often fatal illnesses that they traced to conditions in the workplace. Their fight to have their symptoms recognized as an industrial disease represents an important chapter in the history of modern health and labor policy. Clark's account emphasizes the social and political factors that influenced the responses of the workers, managers, government officials, medical specialists, and legal authorities involved in the case. She enriches the story by exploring contemporary disputes over workplace control, government intervention, and industry-backed medical research. Finally, in appraising the dialpainters' campaign to secure compensation and prevention of further incidents--efforts launched with the help of the reform-minded, middle-class women of the Consumers' League--Clark is able to evaluate the achievements and shortcomings of the industrial health movement as a whole.

Transport affects everyone--it enables access to social activities, employment, leisure, goods and services. But with traffic levels estimated to nearly double by the year 2025, there is cause for concern. Strategies to reduce the harmful effects of motor vehicles such as emission controls are welcome, but are likely to be outweighed by the projected increases in motor traffic over the next 25 years.

Without a fundamental shift in policy away from the care to other forms of transport, it is inevitable that the transport sector will continue to impose large and growing costs on human health and the environment.

This BMA report serves to highlight the many ways in which transport policy affects health, considering not the more obvious effects such as accidents and pollution but also other consequences of transport policy such as the decline of public transport services, particularly in rural areas, the lowering of the quality of life of inner-city residents and the associated lack of physical activity leading to unhealthy lifestyles.

As well as making recommendations and suggesting some possible solutions, this report aims to promote a broader debate of transport policy and health, which will highlight to the medical profession, public and government the many adverse effects that certain transport policies may have on our health and environment.

This report will be of interest to all member of the public and is essential reading for students, policy makers, town planners, environmental health experts, doctors and other health care professionals.

II exposure to health and safety hazards in the workplace can be prevented. But only if the systems for initiating and monitoring controls are as carefully planned and implemented as the controls themselves. For proof of this, look no further than the participants in OSHA's Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP). Meeting the VPP requirements and following guidance provided by OSHA's onsite evaluations, VPP members maintain comprehensive, practical, verifiable safety systems involving employees and managers at all levels. The results have been spectacular--members routinely report lost time injury rates of 50 to 80 percent below industry averages. These remarkable voluntary programs were developed and managed by Margaret Richardson for OSHA. Now Richardson uses her experience with VPP Star sites and clients pursuing excellence to take you beyond the VPP requirements to levels achieved by the best of the best. is the first how-to guide to establishing effective management systems for achieving excellence in worker protection from workplace hazards-a chance to benchmark the industry leaders from the comfort of your favorite chair. is based on OSHA guidelines for managing worker safety and health and on Richardson's considerable hands-on experience with OSHA and Department of Energy Star sites, as well as client worksites in some of the largest firms in the world. Step-by-step, the book shows you how to Achieve a closed safety management loop with clearly established policies, goals, objectives, assignments, and accountability procedures Ensure total worker involvement by fostering a "safety culture" where employees feel ownership of the safety/health program Identify and control hazards with a"hazard inventory" plus other reports, investigation techniques, and analyses to pinpoint all kinds of problems--even those that often elude controls Train all levels of employees, from workers and supervisors to middle and top managers, to understand their crucial roles in the program Better safety management up-front means fewer on-site accidens and work-related illnesses plus improved employee morale, more efficient operations, and better public relations. If you are responsible for creating, teaching, managing, or monitoring sophisticated safety systems, or if you serve on a safety committee overseeing safety systems, provides the information you need to do the job right.

An affordable textbook suitable for undergraduates and of value to all engineers involved in safety. If you are looking for formal training in the techniques of safety analysis, this is the book for you. It shows how safety assurance is actually performed by industry. The basic techniques described are of interest to the public, local authorities and those concerned with the safety of the process and related industries.

Evaluates the carcinogenic risk to humans posed by occupational exposures to wood dust and formaldehyde. A number of occupational situations that involve exposure to wood dust also entail exposure to formaldehyde, as in plywood and particle board manufacture, during furniture and cabinet-making, and during parquet floor sanding and varnishing. The carcinogenic risks of wood dust are evaluated in the first monograph. The highest occupational exposures were noted to occur in wood furniture and cabinet manufacture, especially during machine sanding and similar operations, in the finishing departments of plywood and particle-board mills, and in the workroom air of sawmills and planer mills near chippers, saws, and planers. Citing findings from several recent well-designed case-control studies, the monograph concludes that occupational exposure to wood dust is causally related to adenocarcinoma of the nasal cavities and paranasal sinuses. The evaluation further concluded that the excess risk of cancer is attributable to wood dust per se, rather than to other exposures in the workplace. Wood dust was classified as carcinogenic to humans. Cancer risk associated with occupational exposure to formaldehyde is assessed in the second monograph. The assessment draws on findings from several cohort and case-control investigations of the relationship between exposure to formaldehyde and cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, and respiratory tract. Citing inconsistencies in the reported results, the monograph concludes that these epidemiological studies can do no more than suggest a causal role of occupational exposure to formaldehyde in carcinoma of the nasal cavities and paranasal sinuses. The review found no evidence of excess risk for oropharyngeal, laryngeal or lung cancer among exposed workers. Several studies in which formaldehyde was administered to rats by inhalation showed evidence of carcinogenicity. Similar studies in hamsters showed no evidence of carcinogenicity, and studies in mice either showed no effect or were inadequate for evaluation. In rats administered formaldehyde in drinking-water, increased incidences were seen of forestomach papillomas in one study and of leukaemias and gastrointestinal tract tumours in another; two other studies gave negative results. Formaldehyde was classified as probably carcinogenic to humans.

This book treats 'the accident' as a multifaceted phenomenon, resulting from complex interactions between physical, biological, psychological, cultural and social factors. Addressing safety with holistic vision, it combines two complementary approaches: the reductionist, to study the factors in detail, and the systemic, to understand how they interrelate. It includes 33 concepts that provide a clear and logical understand of every factor involved in any activity or situation regarding safety. The author developed concepts and methods to boost safety performance. Organizational field, adherence and administrative game explain why things happen or not happen in the organizations. The aggressive function integrates value analysis and risk analysis. An individual adopts a safe or unsafe behavior the same way he decides to buy a product or another. Safety is a function placed at the same importance as its sisters, productivity, quality, environmental preservation and human development. Risk is a process variable and as such one can control it. Presents a set of 33 concepts that provide a clear and logical understanding of every factor involved in any activity or situation regarding safety Discusses risk as a variable associated with any activity, and that it can be controlled similarly to any process variable, such as temperature or pressure Uses the concepts of value analysis and value engineering when thinking about safety Provides directions on how to integrate the safety function into the mission of any organization, and into other vital functions of the organizations Addresses safety with a holistic vision, as it's central element

Emergency Incident Risk Management: A Safety & Health Perspective
Jonathan D. Kipp, Murrey E. Loflin
While risk management techniques have been successfully used to reduce the potential for physical harm to the public, these proven methods, strangely enough, have not been applied to one of the most hazardous environments of all—fire fighting operations. The result is that more than 100,000 injuries occur to fire fighters each year. Emergency Incident Risk Management shows fire chiefs, fire officers, safety officers, and risk managers—for the first time anywhere—how to develop and implement a comprehensive risk management program that can sharply reduce on-the-job fatalities, injuries, and harmful exposures while minimizing property and equipment damage. Expanding on the information presented in the National Fire Protection Association 1500 Handbook, this thorough guide covers every phase of effective risk management—from assigning roles and preplanning, through all the steps in a solid risk management plan, to handling actual emergency incidents. With the help of illuminating examples, Emergency Incident Risk Management demonstrates how to:

• analyze accident, injury, and illness data
• identify and evaluate risk
• establish risk management priorities
• formulate and implement sound risk control measures
• monitor and fine-tune the risk management program
• incorporate risk management into an incident management system
• use and maintain proper personal protective equipment

Human Error Reduction and Safety Management Dan Petersen Now in an expanded and updated Third Edition, Human Error Reduction and Safety Management illustrates how managers, by controlling the physical and psychological situations under which workers operate, can modify employees’ behavior in such a way as to reduce error, accidents, and consequently on-the-job injuries and illnesses. While retaining the previous editions’ focus on the role of line management in maximizing safety in the workplace, the book also details the role that upper and middle management must play in implementing programs that can reduce system-caused human error. The Third Edition contains a wealth of new, updated, and expanded information that incorporates Dan Petersen’s comprehensive knowledge and innovative theories, including

• A revised model of accident causation that exemplifies the processes and procedures of today’s safety technology
• Expanded treatment of the managerial sources of error
• A new chapter on the ways in which the "culture" of an organization determines what methods will and will not succeed
• A discussion of ergonomics — how design causes error and cumulative trauma disorders
• Insight into how to reduce psychological overload on the job
• New material on risk assessment techniques

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, many US private employers enacted foetal protection policies that barred women - that is, women who had not been surgically sterilised - from working in jobs that might expose foetuses to toxins. This text analyses these policies and the ambiguous responses to them by federal and state courts, legislatures, administrative agencies, litigants and interest groups. It poses provocative questions about the implicit links between social welfare concerns and paternalism in the workplace: are women workers or wombs? Placing the foetal protection controversy within the larger societal debate about gender roles, this text argues that government decision-makers confuse sex, which is based solely on biological characteristics, with gender, which is based on societal conceptions. It contends that the debate about foetal protection policies brought this ambiguity into stark relief, and that the response of policy-makers was rooted in assumptions about gender roles. Judges, legislators and regulators used gender as a proxy, it argues, to sidestep the question of whether the foetal protection policies could be justified by the biological differences between men and women. The foetal protection controversy highlights several intersecting issues concerning women's roles in the workplace. Samuels discusses the effect on governmental policies of the ongoing controversy over abortion rights and the debates between egalitarian and relational feminists about the treatment of women at work. This study details the pattern of gender politics in the United States and demonstrates the broader ramifications of gender bias in the workplace.

The Conditions of Work Digest on preventing stress at work is essential reading for policy-makers in government agencies, employers' and workers' organizations, health professionals, trainers, consultants, managers and workers' representatives concerned with this complex and challenging problem.

This book explains the hazards associated with electricity in its many forms, including electromagnetic radiation. It describes methods of reducing risks to health and to the environment, giving rules and codes of practice to be followed. Guidelines are also given for the use of electrical equipment in specialised environments (such as locations subject to explosive gases and flammable dusts), the guarding of machine tools and the control of earth currents. Human safety and care for the environment are of increasing concern and the broad scope of the book makes it essential reading for those involved in engineering and technology at all levels; no specialised knowledge of electro-technology is presumed. It is a reference book for personnel responsible for their company's safety policy and for municipal authorities (particularly in Commonwealth countries) and other bodies concerned with technical training, industrial development and planning.

The first comprehensive guide to all surface and dermal sampling methods. Written by one of the nation's foremost sampling experts, this authoritative guide offers an integrated approach that combines surface and dermal sampling methods with air and biological monitoring techniques.

"It goes a long way in mapping out the agenda for health and safety professionals in this most dangerous and populous industry." Annals of Occupational Hygiene, Derby, United Kingdom Changes in working practices and conditions in the construction industry over the past decade have meant that the competent authorities, health and safety committees, management or employers' and workers' organizations, in particular, should take a fresh look at such aspects as the safety of workplaces, health hazards, and construction equipment and machinery. This code of practice takes account of new areas in the sector which require improved health and safety practices and other protective measures.

Evaluates the risks to human health and the environment posed by two partially halogenated chlorofluorocarbons: dichlorofluoromethane (HCFC 21) and chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC 22). These two methane derivatives were selected for evaluation because of their potential use as substitutes for those fully halogenated chlorofluorocarbons that are being phased out as a result of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. The evaluation is intended to assist industry in its urgent search for acceptable substitute chemicals, most notably for use as refrigerants, as propellants in aerosols, and as blowing agents for the production of polystyrene. While data on human toxicity are thoroughly reviewed, the greatest challenge is to find the most accurate models for predicting levels of release to the environment and estimating the potential of these chemicals to deplete the ozone layer.

As the production and use of mineral and syunthetic fibres is rapidly expanding, it is vital that safe working practices should be introduced. The working document for, and report of, a meeting of experts set up by the ILO to study the question are contained in this book, which discusses man-made mineral fibres, natural mineral fibres other than asbestos, and synthetic organic fibres. The meeting defined certain preventive measures based on adopting safe working methods, controlling the working environment and the exposure of workers to mineral and synthetic fibres, and monitoring the health of workers.