Illnesses and Injuries

Medical Programs. Large chemical plants have at least one hill-time physician who is at the plant five days a week and on call at all other times. Smaller plants either have part-time physicians or take injured employees to a nearby hospital or clinic by arrangement with the company compensation-insurance carrier. When part-time physicians or outside medical services are used, there is Httle opportunity for medical personnel to become familiar with plant operations or to assist in improving the health aspects of plant work. Therefore, it is essential that chemical-ha2ards manuals and procedures, which highlight symptoms and methods of treatment, be developed. A hill-time industrial physician should devote a substantial amount of time to becoming familiar with the plant, its processes, and the materials employed. Such education enables the physician to be better prepared to treat injuries and illnesses and to advise on preventive measures. 

Although the electrolytic process industries are confronted with a wide range of ha2ards, their safety record has been excellent. The U.S. Bureau of Labor has reported lost work days (injuries and illnesses) per 100 hill-time workers for the year 1990 (140). 

Occupational Injuries and Illnesses in the United States hy Industry, 1990, bulletin 2399 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C., Apr. 1992. General Reference... 

Technical language and jargon are useful as professional shorthand, but they are barriers to successful communication with the public. Use simple, nontechnical language and vivid, concrete images that communicate on a personal level. Avoid distant, abstract, unfeeling language about deaths, injuries, and illnesses. 

Methods to help reduee worker injury and illness... 

To determine which jobs you should analyze first, review your injury and illness reports such as the OSHA 200 log, your medical case histories, your first-aid cases, and workers compensation claims. First, you should conduct a JHA for jobs with the highest rates of disabling injuries and illnesses. Do not forget jobs in which you have had close calls or near hits. You should give these incidents a high priority. Analyses of new jobs and jobs in which changes have been made in processes and procedures should be the next priority. 

Maintain reeords of oeeupational injuries and illnesses and post an annual summary report. 

Employers who use eontraetors to perform work in and around proeesses that involve highly hazardous ehemieals have to establish a sereening proeess so that they hire and use only eontraetors who aeeomplish the desired job tasks without eompromising the safety and health of any employees at a faeility. For eontraetors whose safety performanee on the job is not known to the hiring employer, the employer must obtain information on injury and illness rates and experienee and should obtain... 

The OSHA incidence rate is based on cases per 100 worker years. A worker year is assumed to contain 2000 hours (50 work weeks/year X 40 hours/week). The OSHA incidence rate is therefore based on 200,000 hours of worker exposure to a hazard. The OSHA incidence rate is calculated from the number of occupational injuries and illnesses and the total number of employee hours worked during the applicable period. The following equation is used ... 

Number of injuries and illnesses X 200,000 Total hours worked by all employees during period covered. 

An incidence rate can also be based on lost workdays instead of injuries and illnesses. For this case... 

The OSHA incidence rate provides information on all types of work-related injuries and illnesses, including fatalities. This provides a better representation of worker accidents than systems based on fatalities alone. For instance, a plant might experience many small accidents with resulting injuries but no fatalities. On the other hand, fatality data cannot be extracted from the OSHA incidence rate without additional information. 

I never would have survived my debilitating injury and illness without the gracious help of fine physicians. I look forward to one day passing on to others some of the wisdom, compassion and medical interventions that have been so helpful to me. Hopefully I can help others with chemical and electromagnetic sensitivities to overcome their fears and to strengthen their bodies so that their tolerance can be increased. 

CFR 1904, Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses. Effective January 1, 2002 The US OSHA website for recordkeeping revisions is http //www.osha.gov/recordkeeping/index.html... 

OSHA Recordable Cases— Work-related deaths, injuries and illnesses (other than minor injuries requiring only first aid treatment) which involve medical treatment, loss of consciousness, restriction of work or motion, or transfer to another job. 

The 1993 Annual Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 110 cases of dermatitis attributed to calcium hydroxide (and other calcium oxides) exposure the skin disorders resulted in a median of 9 days away from work, with 27% having more than 20 days away from work. ... 

Overall, chemical bums comprised 0.6% of total occupational injuries and illnesses resulting in lost work time and chemicals and chemical products accounted for 1.6 % of such injuries or illnesses [17]. The incidence of chemical bums (not specified as to eye and/or skin) was 0.8 per 10,000 full-time workers. The incidence rate for the Chemicals and Chemical Products industry segment was 2.1 per 10,000 fulltime workers. 

Islam, S.S., Doyle, E.J., VeUUa, A., Martin, C.J., Ducatman, A.M. Epidemiology of compensable work-related ocular injuries and illnesses incidence and risk factors. J Occup Environ Med 42, 575-581 (2000)... 

Nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses requiring days away from work, 2006. United States Bureau of Labor, News, Whashington, DC, November 8, 2007. Accessed online in 2008 http //www.bls.gov/iff/home.htm. 

Miser WF, Doukas WC, Lillegard WA. Injuries and illnesses incurred by an army ranger unit during Operation Just Cause. Mil Med 1995 160 373-380. 

Emergency treatment of nonoccupational injuries and illnesses is also provided, although it is not specifically referred to in these documents. 

The Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOU) collects information from a random sample of about 250,000 establishments representing most of private industry. Worker characteristics are collected only for those workers sustaining injuries and illnesses that require days away from work to recuperate. 

Analysis of dangerous jobs is not complete, however, unless data on nonfatal job-related injuries and illnesses are examined. 

Table 1-4 Guy A. Toscano s Compilation of Occupations with the Largest Number of Injuries and Illnesses with Days Away from Work to Recuperate during 1994...

Chance of Occupational Injury or Illness = Employment + Total Nonfatal Cases. Employment based on 1994 CPS. Source U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, 1994. 

For jobs with high numbers of nonfatal injuries and illnesses, overexertion is the leading event. These injuries result from lifting objects or, in the case of nursing aides and order-ties, patients. Injuries from overexertion accounted for about one third of all the nonfatal injuries in 1994 it took a median of five days for those injured to recuperate. 

Figure 1-1 Guy A. Toscano s compilation of occupations with the largest number of injuries and illnesses with days away from work to recuperate during 1994.

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