Accident patterns and prevention measures for occupational injuries in the Philippine food and beverage manufacturing industry.

BACKGROUND: The manufacturing industry is one of the catalysts for the Philippines. However, this sector is one of the most dangerous industries in the Philippines considering the frequency of occupational injuries. OBJECTIVE: To determine the primary and root causes of recorded accidents, demographics of the person involved, and solutions to prevent the recurrence of certain accidents. METHODS: This study analyzed 185 occupational injury cases in a food and beverage manufacturing company in the Philippines from January to December 2018. A comprehensive classification system was established to examine and code each case in terms of age, gender, working shift, employee type, tenure, department, category, activity during the accident, root cause of injury, injury classification, direct cause of injury, type of injury, part of body injured, agent of injury, and location of the accident. Cramer's V analysis and Phi coefficient analyses were employed on the subject cases to determine the significant factors and the corresponding extent of significance. RESULTS: The results showed that the majority of the occupational injuries were caused by stepping on, striking against, or stuck by objects (77 cases, 41.6%), caught in between (34 cases, 18.4%), fall (34 cases, 18.4%), and exposure or contact with extreme temperatures (24 cases, 13%). Interestingly, female workers who had accidents were more likely due to inadequate hazard information or lack of procedures whereas male workers were more likely due to failure to secure. The prevention measures such as passive safeguards and personal protective equipment, pictograms, and regular safety audits were derived from the results of these analyses. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first comprehensive analysis of occupational injuries in the food and beverage industry in the Philippines. The findings can be applied to positively influence the effectiveness of prevention and rehabilitation programs mitigating workplace injuries and illnesses.

iPSCORE: A Resource of 222 iPSC Lines Enabling Functional Characterization of Genetic Variation across a Variety of Cell Types.

Large-scale collections of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) could serve as powerful model systems for examining how genetic variation affects biology and disease. Here we describe the iPSCORE resource: a collection of systematically derived and characterized iPSC lines from 222 ethnically diverse individuals that allows for both familial and association-based genetic studies. iPSCORE lines are pluripotent with high genomic integrity (no or low numbers of somatic copy-number variants) as determined using high-throughput RNA-sequencing and genotyping arrays, respectively. Using iPSCs from a family of individuals, we show that iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes demonstrate gene expression patterns that cluster by genetic background, and can be used to examine variants associated with physiological and disease phenotypes. The iPSCORE collection contains representative individuals for risk and non-risk alleles for 95% of SNPs associated with human phenotypes through genome-wide association studies. Our study demonstrates the utility of iPSCORE for examining how genetic variants influence molecular and physiological traits in iPSCs and derived cell lines.