4 days ago · OEM is an international peer reviewed journal that publishes high quality research relating to the full range of chemical, physical, ergonomic, biological and psychosocial hazards in the workplace and to environmental contaminants and their health effects.

Time for action Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is now the fourth leading cause of death worldwide and, by all reasonable projections, its incidence will increase. The worldwide burden of COPD morbidity and mortality is already large, and will become staggering in this century. In this issue of the journal, Meldrum et al describe the impact of COPD on the UK.1 In their poignant ...

Objectives To investigate employment in an occupation or industry and specific occupational exposures in relation to ovarian cancer risk. Methods In a population-based case–control study conducted in Montreal, Canada (2011–2016), lifetime occupational histories were collected for 491 cases of ovarian cancer and 897 controls. An industrial hygienist coded the occupation and industry of each ...

In this recent issue, new and interesting results regarding the effects of occupational exposure on carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) are presented.1 The data were from a nationwide cohort study that included more than two million persons born in Denmark (the largest study conducted on CTS) and used a job-exposure matrix to evaluate occupational exposures. The large size of the database was well ...

Introduction. Shift work is an essential element of modern labour which has been used increasingly in a broad variety of occupational settings in recent years.1 From an economic point of view, shift work is fundamental to ensure cost efficiency by operating machinery continuously in numerous industries.2 Furthermore, public, and private services (eg, healthcare and law enforcement) rely ...

Methods A quasi-Poisson regression model coupled with a distributed lag non-linear model was employed, using OHCA and meteorological data between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2019. Reference temperature was chosen to be the temperature of minimum risk (21.4°C). Heatwaves were defined as daily average temperatures at or above a heat threshold (90th, 95th, 98th, 99th percentile of the yearly ...

Objectives While most individuals physically injured at work will make a complete medical recovery, a portion of workers will experience persistent pain following their injury. This study estimated persistent pain prevalence and its association with health and return-to-work outcomes 18 months following the incidence of a disabling work-related injury. Methods We studied 1131 workers disabled ...

2023 was the hottest year on record; 2024 is set to be even hotter. The rise in climate change-driven occupational heat stress is putting the health and livelihoods of workers at grave risk.1 2 The number of workers suffering the consequences of excessive heat is alarming. An International Labor Organization (ILO) report in 2024 has shown that at least 71% of the global working population are ...

From 1 July 2024, Australia has banned the use, supply and manufacture of engineered stone, also known as artificial stone, which is made from crystalline silica-containing aggregates bonded with a polymer resin. Engineered stone is defined as an artificial product containing at least 1% crystalline silica on a weight basis. This far-reaching policy …

The diesters of 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid (phthalic acid), commonly known as phthalates, are a group of man-made chemicals with a wide spectrum of industrial applications (fig 1, table 1). High molecular weight phthalates (for example, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate [DEHP], di-isononyl phthalate [DiNP], di-n-octyl phthalate [DnOP]), are primarily used as plasticizers in the manufacture of ...