Categories: Uncategorized
December 19th, 2012 3:42 pm ET -
Julie Tisdale-Pardi, MA
Our recent blog on Superhero personal protective equipment got us thinking: What about Santa? He certainly faces a number of occupational hazards. Maybe we can help him out. Let’s start with the chimney. Talk about a confined space and what about the cancer risk? Are those pants fire retardant? Santa may want to follow our research on fire fighter boots. Up on the rooftop? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Santa should check out our recent Falls Cost /Safety Pays campaign or our document on preventing falls through skylights.
Fortunately for Santa, Christmas Eve comes only once a year but it’s one long shift for the man with the bag. The elves who toil away during this busy season might want to read our blogs on sleep and shiftwork and maybe the child labor page as well. How many elves work in the North Pole anyway? Is the Workshop now part of a conglomerate with in-house safety and health expertise or is Santa a small business employer? There must be bears at the North Pole right? Either way, he might enjoy our blog How to Avoid Bear Attacks (and other small business concerns).
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Categories: Personal protective equipment
December 17th, 2012 1:27 pm ET -
Jaclyn Krah, MA
sketch by Stephen R Leonard
It’s that time of year again – the time of mall madness and wracking our brains for gift ideas. Those of us reaching for the easy stocking stuffers are perhaps sharing the same idea – DVDs of this summer’s big screen blockbusters. We noticed many were of the superhero variety (The Dark Knight Rises, Avengers, Spiderman) and being the curious types, we couldn’t help but wonder how the superheroes’ clothing etc. keeps them out of harm’s way.
You see, our goal here at NIOSH is to keep heroes (of all varieties) safe so that they can, in turn, do their jobs of keeping the world safe. Not all heroes are equipped with an x-gene healing factor or impermeable skin. Therefore, personal protective equipment (PPE, for those of us who know hero-lingo) plays a vital role in protecting those who protect others.
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Categories: Total Worker Health
December 5th, 2012 8:52 am ET -
L. Casey Chosewood, MD and Constance C. Franklin, MPA
Over the past year, NIOSH and its Total Worker HealthTM Program have been traveling the country sharing the evidence and benefits of comprehensively integrating health protection with health promotion, including workplace programs that encourage physical activity, weight loss and stress management. Recently, we launched an internal NIOSH pilot program to explore the use of sit and stand work stations as part of a workplace health and wellbeing initiative to reduce sedentary work in our workplace.
The pilot program was inspired by emerging research on the impact of sedentary work (Van der Ploe, Chey, et al, 2012) on employee health and by new employer initiatives that aim to decrease sedentary work, such as VHA’s Wellness Program highlighted in a recent NIOSH Science Blog post. A sit-stand workstation allows the user to intermittently sit or stand while working on the computer, participating in a conference call, or performing other work. The customizable workstation allows users to easily transition between a seated and standing work position multiple times throughout the day.
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Our recent blog on Superhero personal protective equipment got us thinking: What about Santa? He certainly faces a number of occupational hazards. Maybe we can help him out. Let’s start with the chimney. Talk about a confined space and what about the cancer risk? Are those pants fire retardant? Santa may want to follow our research on fire fighter boots. Up on the rooftop? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Santa should check out our recent Falls Cost /Safety Pays campaign or our document on preventing falls through skylights.
