Risk assessment industry driven approach in occupational health and safety.

Introduction: Risk assessment and management in companies plays a significant role in the prevention section of any field. In the field of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS), its inconsistent or incorrect application has a direct impact on the life and health of employees. In some companies, even today, it is not properly implemented and adequate procedures and methods are not used. The article discusses the development of a step-by-step procedure for risk assessment in industrial environments in the area of OHS. Methods: Main parts of the model and its steps present the partial results of a survey conducted on a sample of 500 small and micro enterprises in the field of risk assessment and the systematic procedure developed following the main survey results. The survey covered only enterprises located in the construction, manufacturing, transport and storage and agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors, which is also a significant statistical feature. Within the structure of respondents, statistical features such as: size of enterprise, sector, region by work are identified. Only enterprises with size by number of employees - micro enterprises from 1 to 9 employees and small enterprises from 10 to 49 employees - were included for the survey. Results: New elements of the methods were integrated into the developed systematic procedure, which was subsequently validated in 7 plants of the one company on the same position. The application of the developed model was verified by an expert group consisting of 7 members, an odd number, and the developed checklists and risk register were applied. On the basis of the verification, the model, checklist and risk register were corrected. In addition, the scoring method and the risk matrix were also used, but they did not contain new elements. Discusion: The procedure is still in use today and employees have been trained to use it. On the basis of the developed methodology and the Checklist, the procedure has been transposed into the European OiRA tool and can be used by companies throughout the European Union.

Evaluation of the Level of Psychological Distress in Construction Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Southern Spain.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed a major challenge for construction companies, which were confronted with the need to prevent the enormous negative socio-psychological impact of the pandemic on their employees. The aim of this study was to evaluate the level of psychological distress among construction workers in an advanced phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Andalusia, southern Spain. For this, a cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted using online questionnaires with data on sociodemographic variables and employment situation, COVID-19 pandemic-related data, and Goldberg's General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). A total of 860 questionnaires from all provinces of Andalusia, Spain, were collected between March and May 2022. Descriptive statistical analyses and non-parametric Mann-Whitney U and Chi-squared tests were performed, followed by logistic regression analysis. The incidence of psychological distress was higher among women, individuals under 43 years of age, those with a family income below EUR 1200, participants whose working conditions had been affected by the pandemic, those who had not received adequate means or specific training to protect themselves from infection, those who had experienced symptoms, those who had suffered side effects after vaccination, and those who had been hospitalised. The logistic regression analysis predicted the occurrence of psychological distress in this study by the effect of the pandemic on mental/emotional well-being, the working conditions affected during the pandemic, health-related variables, and the age of the worker. The correctly classified percentage was 75.1%. Assessing psychological distress in construction sectors may allow for the identification of vulnerable groups or even help to reduce the number of errors in daily practice and potential risks of occupational injury or illness.

Assessing the impact of authorisation process as a regulatory tool in the European REACH regulation: A study on improving occupational safety for applying companies.

This study looks into the effectiveness of the authorisation procedure as a regulatory instrument within the framework of the European REACH regulation. It highlights its impact on enhancing occupational safety and health for both applicants and companies utilising the substances. This procedure encompasses manufacturers, importers, and downstream users of substances, as well as representatives of foreign manufacturers who are also eligible to seek authorisation. When applying for authorisation, the ECHA Risk Assessment Committee (RAC) assesses the risks associated with the intended uses of the substance, including the appropriateness and effectiveness of the Occupational Conditions (OCs) and Risk Management Measures (RMMs) described in the application and the risks posed by potential alternatives. If the RAC determines that the OCs/RMMs are inadequate for managing or controlling the risk, or if the measures to protect workers are deemed insufficient, it may recommend additional measures to enhance occupational safety and health or environmental protection. The 398 processed Applications for Authorisation (AfA) that have been submitted to date were examined to determine these recommended measures, categorised as Conditions for use, Monitoring arrangements, and Recommendations for Review Reports. Overall, a significant improvement concerning occupational safety and health seems necessary, as indicated by the large number of measures recommended by the ECHA Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC) and ECHA Committee for Socio-economic Analysis (SEAC) or supplemented by the European Commission. In addition to the proposed measures, a short assessment provided by the committees as to whether the operational conditions and risk management measures are adequate in controlling the risks is also included in the study.

"Caminando Con Riesgo": perceptions of occupational injury, workplace safety and workers rights among Spanish-speaking hospitalized patients.

Introduction: Occupational health disparities are well documented among immigrant populations and occupational injury remains a high cause of morbidity and mortality among immigrant populations. There are several factors that contribute to the high prevalence of work-related injury among this population and those without legal status are more likely to experience abusive labor practices that can lead to injury. While the work-related injuries and experiences of Spanish-speaking workers have been explored previously, there is a paucity of literature documenting injury among hospitalized patients. Additionally, there are few documented hospital-based occupational injury prevention programs and no programs that implement workers rights information. The purpose of this study was to further explore the context of work related injuries primarily experienced by Spanish speaking patients and knowledge of their rights in the workplace. Methods: This was a semi-structured qualitative interview study with Spanish speaking patients admitted to the hospital for work related injuries. The study team member conducting interviews was bilingual and trained in qualitative methodology. An interview guide was utilized for all interviews and was developed with an immigrant workers rights organization and study team expertise, and factors documented in the literature. Participants were asked about the type and context of the injury sustained, access and perceptions of workplace safety, and knowledge of participants rights as workers. All interviews were conducted in Spanish, recorded, transcribed in Spanish and then translated into English. A codebook was developed and refined iteratively and two independent coders coded all English transcripts using Dedoose. Interviews were conducted until thematic saturation was reached and data was analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. Results: A total of eight interviews were completed. All participants reported working in hazardous conditions that resulted in an injury. Participants expressed a relative acceptance that their workplace environment was dangerous and acknowledged that injuries were common, essentially normalizing the risk of injury. There were varying reports of access to and utilization of safety information and equipment and employer engagement in safety was perceived as a facilitator to safety. Most participants did have some familiarity with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspections but were not as familiar with OSHA procedures and their rights as workers. Discussion: We identified several themes related to workplace injury among Spanish speaking patients, many of which raise concerns about access to workplace safety, re-injury and long-term recovery. The context around immigration is particularly important to consider and may lead to unique risk factors for injury, recovery, and re-injury both in the workplace and beyond the workplace, suggesting that perhaps immigration status alone may serve as a predisposition to injury. Thus, it is critical to understand the context around work related injuries in this population considering the tremendous impact of employment on one's health and financial stability. Further research on this topic is warranted, specifically the exploration of multiple intersecting layers of exposure to injury among immigrant populations. Future work should focus on hospital-based strategies for injury prevention and know your rights education tailored to Spanish speaking populations.

Making Our Hospitals a Safe Workplace: Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment at a Tertiary-Level Public Hospital in Eastern India.

BACKGROUND: Hospitals are complex places with a large number of employees, patients, furniture, equipment, etc. Healthcare workers (HCWs), patients, or the general public are vulnerable to injuries and illness due to unseen hazards at the workplace. This study aims to identify the hazards and assess the risks at a hospital to ensure safety for HCWs, patients, and the public and generate awareness about the same. It helps in reducing the financial obligation of the institution due to the treatment of illnesses of staff, absenteeism, and service disruption and slows down manpower turnover. Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (HIRA) helps reduce human errors and promote safe behavior. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to identify and study the hazards in a hospital, assess the risks associated with the hazards, and recommend methods to reduce or eliminate the hazards based on the outcomes of the study. METHODOLOGY: An observational study was conducted at a 1000-bed tertiary-level teaching public sector hospital in eastern India. A checklist was used for direct observation, conducting staff interviews, and document reviews. A risk scoring tool was used, and hazards were ranked as per the risk score. RESULTS: Thirty-eight hazards were identified in the study and classified under the categories of natural, physical, chemical, biological, ergonomic, psychological, and safety. The fire risk and occurrence of cyclones had the highest risk scores. CONCLUSIONS: The study identified hazards through direct observations, record reviews, and staff interviews. These findings can guide the prioritization of areas requiring necessary action in risk reduction, ensuring a safe workplace for healthcare workers (HCWs), patients, and the public. They can also help the institution shift from a reactive approach to a proactive method for HCW safety.

The Safe Home Care Intervention Study: Implementation Methods and Effectiveness Evaluation.

Home care (HC) aides experience numerous safety hazards in clients' homes; many hazards also put clients at risk. We hypothesized that safety coaching led by nurse managers (NMs) during their initial HC needs assessment could prompt clients to improve safety conditions in their homes. Following a 2-arm proof-of-concept intervention study design, intervention NMs used motivational interviewing (MI), facilitated by a safety handbook and video, to coach clients on home safety improvements. Control arm NMs performed intake assessments with no changes to usual practices. Intervention effectiveness was assessed by NMs and aides. Three HC agencies and two elder services contributed 35 intervention and 23 control homes. NMs coached 97% of clients and reported that 94% were engaged; 63% implemented improvements. NMs' and aides' assessments were consistent; homes with clients reported by NMs as resistant to safety changes had higher aides' hazard scores. Client coaching can be effective for improving HC safety.

Contextualizing injury severity from occupational accident reports using an optimized deep learning prediction model.

Background: This study introduced a novel approach for predicting occupational injury severity by leveraging deep learning-based text classification techniques to analyze unstructured narratives. Unlike conventional methods that rely on structured data, our approach recognizes the richness of information within injury narrative descriptions with the aim of extracting valuable insights for improved occupational injury severity assessment. Methods: Natural language processing (NLP) techniques were harnessed to preprocess the occupational injury narratives obtained from the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from January 2015 to June 2023. The methodology involved meticulous preprocessing of textual narratives to standardize text and eliminate noise, followed by the innovative integration of Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) and Global Vector (GloVe) word embeddings for effective text representation. The proposed predictive model adopts a novel Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) architecture and is further refined through model optimization, including random search hyperparameters and in-depth feature importance analysis. The optimized Bi-LSTM model has been compared and validated against other machine learning classifiers which are naïve Bayes, support vector machine, random forest, decision trees, and K-nearest neighbor. Results: The proposed optimized Bi-LSTM models' superior predictability, boasted an accuracy of 0.95 for hospitalization and 0.98 for amputation cases with faster model processing times. Interestingly, the feature importance analysis revealed predictive keywords related to the causal factors of occupational injuries thereby providing valuable insights to enhance model interpretability. Conclusion: Our proposed optimized Bi-LSTM model offers safety and health practitioners an effective tool to empower workplace safety proactive measures, thereby contributing to business productivity and sustainability. This study lays the foundation for further exploration of predictive analytics in the occupational safety and health domain.

An urgent call to address work-related psychosocial hazards and improve worker well-being.

Work-related psychosocial hazards are on the verge of surpassing many other occupational hazards in their contribution to ill-health, injury, disability, direct and indirect costs, and impact on business and national productivity. The risks associated with exposure to psychosocial hazards at work are compounded by the increasing background prevalence of mental health disorders in the working-age population. The extensive and cumulative impacts of these exposures represent an alarming public health problem that merits immediate, increased attention. In this paper, we review the linkage between work-related psychosocial hazards and adverse effects, their economic burden, and interventions to prevent and control these hazards. We identify six crucial societal actions: (1) increase awareness of this critical issue through a comprehensive public campaign; (2) increase etiologic, intervention, and implementation research; (3) initiate or augment surveillance efforts; (4) increase translation of research findings into guidance for employers and workers; (5) increase the number and diversity of professionals skilled in preventing and addressing psychosocial hazards; and (6) develop a national regulatory or consensus standard to prevent and control work-related psychosocial hazards.

[Occupational health policies in older workers: comparative analysis between Spain and Chile]. / Políticas en salud laboral en personas trabajadoras mayores: análisis comparativo entre España y Chile.

OBJECTIVE: To analyze and compare the current Spanish and Chilean regulations regarding occupational risk prevention, regarding the existence of specific indications that protect the occupational health and safety of people over 55 years of age. METHOD: Qualitative study in which a documentary content analysis was carried out using ATLAS/ti. The sample was 88 regulatory documents on occupational risk prevention for Spain and Chile. The guidance of the European Agency for Safety at Work (EU-OSHA) regarding age-critical risks was followed. RESULTS: In global terms, 21.9% of the total Spanish documents analyzed show the explicit presence of considerations on aging, while for Chile this occurs in 9%. Both countries mention indications regarding ergonomic risks and noise. Shift work and psychosocial risks are considered only in Spain, while extreme temperatures, vibrations and geographical altitude appear exclusively in Chilean regulations. Neither country refers to issues inherent to working women (care responsibilities, menopause). CONCLUSIONS: The Spanish regulations present a greater presence of indications on aging compared to the Chilean one. However, development in this area is insufficient in both countries. Chile and Spain have guides of recommendations, which are not mandatory, and their application is voluntary. This suggests that the prevention of occupational risks has a great pending challenge with people over 55 years of age.

Descriptive summary of fatal work-related injuries, Western States, 2011-2017.

Work-related deaths are a persistent occupational health issue that can be prevented. However, prevention opportunities can be hampered by a lack of adequate public health resources. The Western States Occupational Network (WestON) is a network of federal, state, and local occupational health professionals that includes a 19-state region of the United States. To encourage public health collaboration, WestON partners examined work-related fatalities within the region. Fatality counts (numerators) were obtained from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries restricted-access research files for all workers ages ≥15 years and fatally injured in WestON states from 2011 through 2017. Estimates of full-time equivalent hours worked (FTE) (denominators) were retrieved from the BLS Current Population Survey. Annual average fatality rates were calculated as number of fatalities per 100,000 FTE over the study period. Rates were stratified by state, select demographics, industry sector, and event/exposure types. Pearson chi-squared tests and rate ratios with 95% confidence probability limits were used to assess rate differences. All analyses were conducted using SAS v.9.4. From 2011 through 2017, the annual average overall occupational fatality rate for the WestON region was 3.5 fatalities per 100,000 FTE, comparable to the overall U.S. fatality rate. Male workers had a fatality rate almost 10 times higher than female workers in the region. Fatality rates increased with successive age groups. Alaska and New Mexico had significantly higher fatality rates for all racial/ethnic groups compared to respective regional rates. Wyoming, North Dakota, and Montana had the three highest occupational fatality rates among foreign-born workers. Agriculture/forestry/fishing, mining/oil/gas extraction, and transportation/warehousing/utilities were industry sector groups with the three highest fatality rates regionally. Transportation-related incidents were the most frequent event type associated with occupational fatalities for all 19 states. Work-related fatalities are a crosscutting occupational public health priority. This analysis can be an impetus for collaborative multistate initiatives among a dynamic and varied occupational public health network to better meet the needs of a rapidly changing workforce.

Proposal and practicality of an alternative blue-light hazard risk assessment method for high-intensity white-light sources at workplaces.

Objectives. It is prescribed to determine blue-light hazard (BLH) weighted radiances, LB, for an assessment of spotlights with an angular subtense α≥11mrad. The BLH weighted irradiance, EB, can be used alternatively for smaller sources. Appropriate instruments are not common among persons commissioned with risk assessment (RA), and especially LB measurements may be challenging. Therefore, a practical BLH RA approach is proposed that is based on illuminance, Ev, pre-calculated blackbody BLH efficacies of luminous radiation, KB,vPlanck, and solid angle considerations. Methods. The practicality of this method was examined and compared against other RA approaches. Results. To ensure comparability of the applied instruments, measurements were performed close to a radiance standard, showing deviations within the lamp's expanded uncertainties (<4%), whereas the deviations were ±15% for longer distances. Focusing on a complex light-emitting diode (LED) spotlight, all detected values could be converted to LB by means of the RA methods within ±20%. Two field tests with several spotlights yielded maximum permissible exposure durations (MPED) obtained from the different RA approaches that agreed among each other within uncertainties largely below ±30%. Conclusion. The general practicality of the proposed Ev method can be concluded for a workplace BLH RA of white-light sources.

The consequences of ISO 45001: preliminary analysis of cases in Korea.

OBJECTIVES: Using cases in the Korean workplace, this study preliminarily investigated whether ISO 45001-certified and non-certified workplaces differ in 4 aspects of occupational safety and health (OSH) management. METHODS: Data were obtained from the 2021 Survey on the Status of Safety and Health in the Workplace in Korea. This study used a matched-pair analysis of certified and non-certified workplaces. RESULTS: The results suggest that although ISO 45001-certified workplaces have a more safety-friendly internal institutional context than non-certified workplaces, there is no significant difference in the number of injuries and fatalities. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that ISO 45001-certified workplaces do not achieve better OSH performance than non-certified workplaces because ISO 45001 remains in the early stages of expansion, and certification does not require the achievement of OSH performance. A longitudinal analysis is needed to confirm the accurate outcomes of ISO 45001 certification.

Development and Cognitive Testing of Occupational Safety and Health Questions for a Youth Survey: Addressing the Research Needs for a Vulnerable Working Population.

BACKGROUND: While more than 2.5 million U.S. high students worked in 2020, data to assess how work affects this group are sparse. To facilitate such research, a set of occupational safety and health questions for inclusion on the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) and other youth-focused surveys was developed. METHODS: Survey questions about occupational experiences of young workers were adapted from other surveys or created de novo. Key audiences were engaged to define priority topic areas and develop draft questions, which were further refined through cognitive interviews with working youth. RESULTS: Twenty-one resulting questions spanned multiple work-related topics: employment status; health outcomes; psychosocial exposures; and safety climate. Cognitive testing revealed that youth (aged 14-19) had difficulty with temporal concepts. Some difficulties reflected the propensity of youth to engage in multiple, online, and informal jobs. During 3 rounds of interviews, questions were adjusted to better reflect youth employment circumstances and language. Four states added at least 1 work-related question to their 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey questionnaire, and the full set of questions has been disseminated to federal agencies and partners. CONCLUSION: Including tailored questions about employment in surveys of youth will facilitate occupational health surveillance for this group. Analysis of resulting data can help to close knowledge gaps, provide current prevalence data, inform policy, and allow development of focused prevention and intervention strategies to reduce adverse outcomes among young workers.

Políticas en salud laboral en personas trabajadoras mayores: análisis comparativo entre España y Chile / Occupational health policies in older workers: comparative analysis between Spain and Chile

Objetivo Analizar y comparar la normativa vigente española y chilena en materia de prevención de riesgos laborales respecto a la existencia de indicaciones específicas que protejan la seguridad y la salud laboral de las personas trabajadoras mayores de 55 años. Método Estudio cualitativo en el que se realizó un análisis documental de contenido utilizando ATLAS/ti. La muestra fue de 88 documentos normativos en materia de prevención de riesgos laborales de España y Chile. Se siguieron las orientaciones de la Agencia Europea para la Seguridad en el Trabajo (EU-OSHA) respecto a los riesgos críticos para la edad. Resultados En términos globales, el 21,9% de los documentos españoles analizados muestran la presencia explícita de consideraciones sobre el envejecimiento, mientras que para Chile esto sucede en el 9%. Ambos países mencionan indicaciones ante riesgos ergonómicos y ruido. El trabajo en turnos y los riesgos psicosociales solo se consideran en España, mientras que las temperaturas extremas, las vibraciones y la altura geográfica solo en la normativa chilena. Ningún país hace referencia a temas inherentes a las mujeres que trabajan (responsabilidades de cuidado, menopausia). Conclusiones La normativa española presenta mayores indicaciones sobre envejecimiento que la chilena. Sin embargo, el desarrollo es insuficiente en ambos países. Chile y España cuentan con guías de recomendaciones, no obligatorias y de aplicación voluntaria. Esto sugiere que la prevención de riesgos laborales tiene un desafío pendiente con las personas mayores de 55 años. (AU)

Objective To analyze and compare the current Spanish and Chilean regulations regarding occupational risk prevention, regarding the existence of specific indications that protect the occupational health and safety of people over 55 years of age. Method Qualitative study in which a documentary content analysis was carried out using ATLAS/ti. The sample was 88 regulatory documents on occupational risk prevention for Spain and Chile. The guidance of the European Agency for Safety at Work (EU-OSHA) regarding age-critical risks was followed. Results In global terms, 21.9% of the total Spanish documents analyzed show the explicit presence of considerations on aging, while for Chile this occurs in 9%. Both countries mention indications regarding ergonomic risks and noise. Shift work and psychosocial risks are considered only in Spain, while extreme temperatures, vibrations and geographical altitude appear exclusively in Chilean regulations. Neither country refers to issues inherent to working women (care responsibilities, menopause). Conclusions The Spanish regulations present a greater presence of indications on aging compared to the Chilean one. However, development in this area is insufficient in both countries. Chile and Spain have guides of recommendations, which are not mandatory, and their application is voluntary. This suggests that the prevention of occupational risks has a great pending challenge with people over 55 years of age. (AU)

Health status of photovoltaic module production workers in Shanghai / 环境与职业医学

Background Photovoltaic (PV) cells can convert solar energy into electricity and alleviate the dilemma of energy supply shortage. Shanghai's PV module industry is booming, but there are few reports on the health status of the workers and there is an urgent need for health risk assessment. Objective To evaluate the health status of PV module production workers and the association between work and health status, in order to provide a direction for the health management of the workers. Methods Among the PV module production workers who completed prescriptive occupational health examination by a designated medical institution in 2021, 2453 workers with more than one year of working age were selected as the exposure group and 538 newly hired workers as the control group. On the basis of the Technical specifications for occupational health surveillance (GBZ 188−2014), the health examination included physical examination and laboratory examination and information such as sociodemographics, living habits, and disease history. We compared the indicators of pure-tone hearing test, blood routine examination, electrocardiogram (ECG), liver function, and kidney function between the two groups. The blood routine results included erythrocyte-related indicators, leukocyte-related indicators, and platelet-related indicators, and the results of liver function included hepatocyte injury indicators, hepatic secretory function indicators, and hepatic synthesis function indicators. The workers were divided into four groups by quartiles of working age. Trend chi-square test was used to analyze differences in health status between the four working age groups. Multiple logistic regression models were used to evaluate the association between working age and health indicators. Results Among the exposure group workers, 2035 (83.0%) were male and 418 (17.0%) were female. The median (P25, P75) age was 34.0 (30.0, 39.0) years and the median (P25, P75) working age was 6.0 (3.0, 10.0) years. The abnormality rate of blood routine was 61.7%. Among them, the abnormality rates of platelet-related indicators and liver secretory function indicators were 39.8% and 48.1% respectively. The risks of abnormal hepatocyte injury-related indicators, fatty liver, and platelet-related indicator abnormalities among the exposure group were 1.471 (95%CI: 1.060, 2.054), 1.691 (95%CI: 1.208, 2.385), and 7.576 (95%CI: 4.967, 11.994) times higher than those in the control group respectively. The single-factor analysis demonstrated a positively linear trend between working age and hypertension prevalence, electrical audiometry abnormality rate, or liver secretory function indicator abnormality rate. Corrected for gender, age, smoking status, hypertension, etc., the results of logistic analysis showed that quartile working age was positively related to abnormal liver secretion function and abnormal platelet-related indicators respectively (OR=1.047, P=0.005; OR=1.037, P=0.014), and inversely associated with the abnormal rate of renal function (OR=0.953, P=0.044). Conclusion Negative associations between health status and working age are identified in PV module production workers. The target PV module production employees are in younger age, and with the increase of working age, the abnormalities of liver function and platelets may increase. Therefore, the enterprises should extend occupational health work from workplace to workers.

Interprofessional Field Experiences in Occupational Safety and Health.

Field trips are beneficial to students, because they provide experiences outside of the traditional classroom. Incorporating field trips into graduate programs can increase students' exposures to real world experiences so that they can incorporate that knowledge as they complete their program. The purpose of the project was to collect and analyze graduate student feedback on 13 in-person interprofessional field trips focused on occupational safety and health. Data were collected through post-field trip structured discussions. Content analysis was used to determine themes. Five themes emerged from the data: Personal Value, Networking and Meeting, Health and Safety Planning and Policy, Environment, and Logistics and Planning. Field trips are valuable learning experiences for graduate students. The field trips in this study offered concrete experiences in occupational safety and health. Post-field trip, students provided feedback through structured discussions, which allowed for reflective observation. Overall, students found personal value in the field trips, observed health and safety procedures and policies in action, learned about various work environments, and provided input on the logistics and planning of field trips.

Long-term temporal analysis of fatal and severe occupational accidents in Central European forests of the Slovak Republic.

INTRODUCTION: Forestry is one of the most dangerous industries worldwide. Workers handle heavy loads and are exposed to numerous adverse factors of the work environment. This study was focused on analyzing severe and fatal occupational accidents over a long period. METHODS: Data were gathered from occupational safety and health databases of the State Forests of the Slovak Republic, which manages 879,113 ha of forests in Slovakia. Between 2007 and 2021, 210 severe and64 fatal accidents were recorded. The data analyses included contingency tables, Pearson χ2 test, and Cramer's V coefficient to analyze the relationships between studied variables. RESULTS: The mean annual number of fatalities was 14, occurring to workers aged 42 on average. Almost 80% of all fatal accidents were suffered by contractors of harvesting operations, who were 5.23 times more likely to suffer a fatality than company employees. On average, 1.28 severe and0.75 fatal accidents occurred per 1 million m3 of harvested timber. The outcomes of the correlation analysis showed a decreasing trend in incidence in the case of severe accidents. Workers ≤ 30 years or between 51 and 60 years of age were the most vulnerable in the case of fatal accidents. In the case of severe accidents, workers between 51 and 60 were the most vulnerable group. Most fatal accidents were suffered by tree fellers (72.2%) during felling (69.8%), who were in contact with falling trees and tree parts (93.7% share for this material agent). Conclusion and Practical Applications: The presented study identified the most vulnerable worker groups as well as the effects of factors on the occurrence of severe and fatal occupational accidents in forestry. The results will serve in development of occupational safety and health strategies in forest enterprises.

Association Between Occupational Stress and Sleep Quality: A Systematic Review.

Occupational stress and sleep quality are prevalent issues that can impact the physical and mental well-being of adults. An association between occupational stress and sleep quality has been found. However, this association is not entirely the same across different occupational groups. Additionally, variations are present in the research design and instruments employed.This systematic review aims to investigate the association between these two factors and identify gaps and limitations in current research. Articles published between January 1, 2011, and December 31, 2022, were retrieved from the WOS, Scopus, and PubMed databases. Out of 1225 articles, 38 studies met the predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria and were included in the review. In the study, research designs, samples, instruments, and associations between occupational stress and sleep quality were statistically analyzed.These studies encompassed a diverse range of occupations, including both blue-collar and white-collar workers. Cross-sectional study is the most common research method. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was the most frequently utilized tool for assessing sleep quality, while there was a wide variety of measurement tools employed to assess occupational stress. The association between occupational stress and sleep quality consistently demonstrated a negative association, although the specific dimensions varied among studies. Moreover, several other factors were identified to have direct or indirect effects on occupational stress and sleep quality. For future research in this field, we propose four recommendations: (1) Consider utilizing objective measures to assess occupational stress and sleep quality. (2) Employ controlled experiments to further validate the causal relationship between occupational stress and sleep quality. (3) Investigate occupational groups that have received less attention. (4) Take into account the potential influence of other factors on occupational stress and sleep quality.

Augmented reality-enabled human-robot collaboration to balance construction waste sorting efficiency and occupational safety and health.

Construction waste sorting (CWS) is highly recommended as a key step for construction waste management. However, current CWS involves humans' manual hand-picking, which poses significant threats to their occupational safety and health (OSH). Robotic sorting promises to change the situation by adopting modern artificial intelligence and automation technologies. However, in practice, it is usually challenging for robots to do an efficient job (e.g., measured by quickness and accuracy) owing to the difficulties in precisely recognizing compositions of the mixed and heterogeneous waste stream. Leveraging augmented reality (AR) as a communication interface, this research aims to develop a human-robot collaboration (HRC) approach to address the dilemmatic balance between CWS efficiency and OSH. Firstly, a model for human-robot collaborative sorting using AR is established. Then, a prototype for the AR-enable collaborative sorting system is developed and evaluated. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed AR-enabled HRC method can improve the accuracy rate of CWS by 10% and 15% for sorting isolated waste and obscured waste, respectively, when compared to the method without human involvement. Interview results indicate a significant improvement in OSH, especially the reduction of contamination risks and machinery risks. The research lays out a human-robot collaborative paradigm for productive and safe CWS via an immersive and interactive interface like AR.