Categories: At-risk populations, Stress
January 28th, 2013 2:19 pm ET -
J. Paul Leigh, Ph.D. and Juan Du, Ph.D.
If workers earning low wages didn’t have enough stressors in their lives, they can now add hypertension to the list. Our new research finds that low wages are a risk factor for hypertension among working people. The research was recently published in the European Journal of Public Health, “Are Low Wages Risk Factors for Hypertension?”, and was partially funded by NIOSH.
Whereas low Socio-economic status (SES) has been linked to hypertension, the reasons why are unclear. This is the first study to examine wages, the largest component of income (one part of SES), as a risk factor for hypertension. Why is this important? Wages are an indicator of job quality and may be linked to feelings of self worth. Low wages can also create financial stress for families that find themselves short of funds to pay for rent, electricity, heat, and gas for their cars. Additionally, there are steps policy makers can take to adjust wages. For example, governments can raise minimum wages, make it easier for unions to organize, and increase the pay of low-wage government workers.
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Categories: Exposure, Health care, Personal protective equipment
January 15th, 2013 9:42 am ET -
William G. Lindsley, PhD
A sneeze in progress. Need we say more? Cover your mouth!
As we enter another influenza season, one question continues to vex medical and public health professionals: How do you stop people from catching the flu? The best way to prevent the flu is by getting an influenza vaccine every year. However, in the event of a large-scale influenza outbreak of a new virus strain or a pandemic, when influenza vaccine may not be promptly available, we will see tremendous demands on the health care system and its workers. Thus, it’s critical to understand how influenza is transmitted from person to person so that we can determine the best ways to protect health care workers while still enabling them to do their jobs.
The typical incubation period for influenza is 1-4 days (average: 2 days). Adults shed influenza virus from the day before symptoms begin through 5-10 days after illness onset. However, the amount of virus shed, and presumably infectivity, decreases rapidly by 3-5 days after onset in an experimental human infection model. Young children also might shed virus several days before illness onset, and children can be infectious for 10 or more days after onset of symptoms. Severely immunocompromised persons can shed virus for weeks or months.
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Categories: Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, Construction, Emergency response, Oil and gas, Outdoor work, Transportation, Vehicle safety
January 10th, 2013 12:18 pm ET -
Jim Helmkamp, PhD, MS
Trabajador jalando un tronco en una pequeña operación forestal.
Durante los últimos treinta años, los vehículos todo-terreno (VTT) se han vuelto cada vez más populares a nivel recreativo y se han convertido en una herramienta importante en el trabajo. Con unos 11 millones en uso en el 2010, tanto en actividades laborales como recreativas, los VTT se han vuelto un medio de transporte común.
Los VTT se empezaron a fabricar a fines de la década de 1960 como vehículos para el traslado del campo a la ciudad, en áreas aisladas y montañosas de Japón. Se comenzaron a usar en los Estados Unidos a principios de los años ochenta para la agricultura. Los VTT tienen muchas
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Categories: Uncategorized
January 8th, 2013 9:07 am ET -
Blog Coordinator
The ringing in of a new year brings not only resolutions but the inevitable recap of the past year including the obligatory lists: Top 10 News Stories, Top 10 Weather Events, even Top Ten Celebrity Mug Shots. We decided to add our own list—The Top 12 NIOSH Science Blogs of 2012. The list shows the vast array of topics covered by NIOSH. Of note this year, the third and eleventh most viewed blogs were written by external partners. We hope you find the Top 12 fascinating and encourage you to make a New Year’s Resolution to send us (using the comment section below) your suggestions for a blog topic in 2013.
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