New Solutions-A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy最新文献

Municipal Urban Cleaners (MUCs) perform an essential yet hazardous work, but evidence on how to design Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) training that truly reflects their real-world barriers, risks, and learning needs remains limited. This qualitative study, conducted as part of the MUC-Training for Health initiative, explored barriers, occupation-attributed health implications, perceptions, and attitudes toward OHS, and training needs. Ten focus groups were held with 74 MUCs and their supervisors/managers across 5 European countries, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Participants identified substandard working facilities, insufficient or unsuitable equipment, understaffing, inconsistent safety practices, limited knowledge of protective measures, and inaccurate information as major barriers. Both psychosocial and physical risks were frequently emphasized. Across all settings, tailored, practical, and motivating face-to-face training was viewed as essential. Designing effective OHS training requires a nuanced understanding of MUCs' daily realities, occupational risks, and preferences to ensure engagement, accessibility, and relevance.

This review examines key factors, both established and lesser known, driving the resurgence of pneumoconiosis in central Appalachia, the region with the highest disease incidence in the United States. It synthesizes findings from peer-reviewed literature and grey sources, including government reports, focusing on underground coal miners in the region. Four key factors are identified: historical economic trends, geologic conditions, technological changes, and health monitoring participation. The shrinking mining workforce has reduced operational size but increased productivity, raising individual exposure to respirable dust. Extensive mining has depleted accessible coal, forcing operators to mine adjacent rock layers, which increases exposure to toxic silica in dust. To maintain production, risky practices such as slope mining, new cleaning techniques, and powerful mining machines are being adopted, generating higher dust concentrations and smaller particulates, further exacerbating exposure. The presence of quartz-bearing formations also contributes to hazardous conditions. Finally, low participation in health screening programs disrupts disease detection and protective efforts.

Workers in the animal slaughtering and processing industry have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our mixed methods study aimed to describe worker experiences during the pandemic, focusing on workplace health and safety. We surveyed 69 animal slaughtering and processing workers in North Carolina between April 2021 and July 2022 and conducted in-depth interviews with 9 workers between July 2022 and April 2023. Nearly all survey participants reported their employers provided (94%) and required (90%) face masks, but fewer reported engineering or administrative controls. Interviewed participants described production as management's priority, over health and safety; difficulty taking time off when ill; inadequate communication from management; and an overall sense that "we were on our own" in maintaining health and safety at work, especially later during the pandemic. Though unlikely under the current administration, an enforceable Occupational Safety and Health Administration infectious disease standard, including appropriate policies for isolation and paid time off, could help protect worker health.

Housing is a social determinant of health, acting as both a driver and indicator of social inequity. For migrant and seasonal farmworkers, it is difficult to tease apart the interaction between the environmental and social factors related to their housing, in conjunction with extreme poverty, immigration, precarious employment, and linguistic, cultural, and educational factors. The relationship of housing with employment and the transient nature of farmworkers' occupancy add to the complexity. To assess the strengths, weaknesses, and research gaps and to identify areas requiring further investigation, we performed a critical review of the scientific and gray literature on farmworker housing and health. We propose a framework to focus research and suggest housing policy interventions to improve the health and wellbeing of this essential workforce.

In the essay "An Elusive Promise: Protecting US Workers from Excessive Heat," the author (who is also the author of this commentary) addresses the ever-increasing hazard that exposure to excessive heat poses to workers, both internationally and in the United States, and details the history of federal efforts to address the problem, dating back to the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (the "OSH Act") in 1970. Following years of dogged advocacy by the worker safety community, those efforts culminated in August 2024 in the publication in the Federal Register of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings. A few months later, Donald Trump was elected president. This commentary examines whether the proposed rule can survive his presidency.

This study examined occupational exposures and their associations with health outcomes among informal wood furniture workers in Thailand. A cross-sectional survey of 167 workers was conducted using the Healthy i-Work web application. The most common exposures were wood dust (69.46 percent), awkward postures and heavy lifting (64.07 percent), and noise (48.50 percent). Musculoskeletal disorders were the most prevalent health issue (58.68 percent), followed by fatigue, numbness, and hearing and visual problems. Logistic regression analyses revealed that twisting, bending, and/or heavy lifting were strongly associated with musculoskeletal pain (AOR = 9.607, p < .001), exposures to energy and motion with injuries (AOR = 6.967, p = .044), chemical exposures with eye or skin irritation (AOR = 8.484, p = .003), and heat exposure with fatigue (AOR = 3.394, p = .008). Noise and psychosocial exposures were also significant predictors of hearing and stress-related symptoms. These findings highlight the urgent need for occupational safety interventions, ergonomic improvements, and expanded healthcare access for informal workers in Thailand.

The neglect of occupational health and safety within Great Britain spans many decades. There has been limited or no recognition of many occupational diseases partly compounded by a chronically under-funded and under-staffed central and local government inspectorate. Workplace inspections have declined. Little enforcement, prosecution and fines of those breaching laws occur. With its departure from the European Union, Great Britain has further neglected hazards at work and has become even more committed to soft regulation and de facto deregulation under the guise of "better regulation" to support economic growth. The Covid pandemic highlighted many workplace health and safety shortcomings. With few exceptions - notably non-governmental organizations, trade unions and some professional bodies - relatively little appears to have been learnt by government and regulators in terms of policies and practices that will improve worker health and safety post-Covid and avoid similar disasters in future pandemics.