Workplace wellness

Workplace wellness Personal and corporate health status The nature of a corporate health culture 

In recent times it has become more evident that mat r companies are increasingfy recognizing the influence of employee health on worker satisfaction and morale, and the subsequent benefits on the entire corporate culture measured by various factors. These include company image decreased turnover increased performance and productivity lower health insurance premiums reduced workers compensation costs and less employee absenteeism. 

The most obvious benefits that result from health progranunes at work are improvements in health for programme participants. Most of the potential benefits of a workplace health programme can be categorized as  

In order to be able to better inflnence the health of individuals and the overall organization, it is important to rmderstand the type of factors which combine to determine health status of both individrrals, the organizations to which they belong and the countries in which they reside. In addition to the types of factors outlined above, it is also important to consider the mrrlti-faceted concept of health and realize that we can also examine health from the point of view of  

Work occupies approximatefy half an employed adult s waking life and mrrst be expected to influenee his or her health, primarily through industrial hazards, injury and stress-related illnesses. These direct risks encourrteted in the work environment are the traditional province of the occupational health and safety services. However, it is also clear that the health people bring to work influences their ability to function. The relationship between work and health indieates that marty factors contribute to the health of an individual. 

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Issues like employees driving home after an on-the-premises sundowner or happy hour need to be considered. The policy must not be seen to be an undue interference in an employee s private life, but that is not to say that workplace wellness campaigns shouldn t target alcohol, drags, smoking, and fitness and eating habits. The problem arising from workplace social functions can be reduced if low or non-alcoholic drinks are available and adequate food is provided. 

Roy Hegney is the original author of much of the material in Chapters 1,3 and 5-7, and Best Piachce in Chapter 2. Kellie Easter is the original author of much of the material in Chapters 2 and 4. Geoff Taylor is the author of Chapters 8-11 and 13-14, and addihonal material in Chapters 1-7 and 12. There is some edited material Laraine Tetfer in Chapter 8 (on Workplace Wellness) and by... 

While professional awareness has increased, there are still hindrances to universal access in the workplace. Today almost all companies have access to the Internet, but company policy may limit usage during business hours or on company equipment Also, many countries still face prohibitive online access charges, although free market competition will take care of that in time, and Canada s no-charge policy may well be the wave of the future ... 

A guide to the integrity, workplace environment and miscellaneous aspects of the Offshore Installations and Wells (Design and Construction, etc) Regulations 1996 Control of substances hazardous to health m fumigation operations... 

This chapter provides orientation and an introduction to the subject of air quality. As a part of this introduction, we begin exploring the options for ensuring high quality air in the environment. The focus of this book is on industrial air pollution problems, and hence, the term environment refers to the universal ecosystem that humans live and interact in, as well as the workplace. 

Diatomaceous earth, widely-known and long-used as a filteraid in process and waste filtrations, has a high microcrystalline silica content. As well as being a respiratory hazard in the workplace, the silica is being scrutinized in some jurisdictions as a potentially hazardous dust in landfills in which spent filter cakes are deposited. 

The hazards of chemicals are commonly detected in the workplace first, because exposure levels there are higher than in the general environment. In addition, the exposed population is well known, which allows early detection of the association between deleterious health effects and the exposure. The toxic effects of some chemicals, such as mercury compounds and soot, have been known already for centuries. Already at the end of the eighteenth century, small boys who were employed to climb up the inside of chimneys to clean them suffered from a cancer of the scrotum due to exposure to soot. This was the first occupational cancer ever identified. In the viscose industry, exposure to carbon disulfide was already known to cause psychoses among exposed workers during the nineteenth century. As late as the 1970s, vinyl chloride was found to induce angiosarcoma of the liver, a tumor that was practically unknown in ocher instances. ... 

Many very hazardous solvents, such as benzene and carbon tetrachloride, were widely used until the 1970s. The situation was very similar for the use of pesticides. Among the toxic pesticides that were still in wide use 20 years ago were chlorophenols, DDT, lindane, and arsenic salts, all of which are classified as human carcinogens as well as being acutely toxic. Fortunately, use of these kinds of very toxic chemicals is now limited in the industrialized world. However, because the number of chemicals used in various industries continues to increase, the risks of long-term health hazards due to long-term exposure to low concentrations of chemicals continues to be a problem in the workplace. 

The first step is to identify the substances present at the workplace. As a starting point, knowledge of the process is needed in order to formulate a list of all chemical agents used in the establishment. The list should include not only primary products but also intermediate and final products, as well as reaction products and by-products. For the chemical agents in the list, it is necessary to know their chemical properties, especially hazardous ones their OEL values, including biological limit values and, where these are not available, other technical criteria that can be used to evaluate the risk. It is also helpful to include any information on the safety and health risks of those substances provided by the supplier or other readily available sources. This information on dangerous substances and preparations, in the form of safety data sheets, is intended primarily for industrial users, to enable them to take the measures necessary to ensure the safety and health of workers. 

Industrial hygiene The science and art devoted to the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of those environmental factors or stresses arising from the workplace which cause sickness, impaired health and well-being, or significant discomfort and inefficiency among workers or among the citizens of the community. 

It has been estimated that hundreds of billions of dollars per year is lost due to decreased workplace productivity and increased health costs that can be saved by maintaining good indoor air quality in commercial buildings. The financial benefits of improving lAQ can accrue from reducing costs for health care and sick leave, as well as the costs of performance decrements at work caused by illness or adverse health symptoms and of responding to occupant complaints and costs of LAQ investigations. 

In contrast to that, mentoring is seen as an effective method of enhancing the development of people, precisely because it t)q)ically improves both learning retention as well as the transfer of the learned information to real life situations (e.g. the workplace). Emphasizing the motivation for adopting mentoring, Jossi (1997) points out that ... 

You could also consider involving the peers of mentees as well as customers and suppliers, particularly if you wish to assess whether the learning that has occurred in a mentoring association is being applied in the workplace. 

REMEMBER What you write in the policy has to be put into practice. The true test of a health and safety policy is the actual conditions in the workplace, not how well the statement is written. 

Filter samples can be prepared to airborne workplace concentrations by spiking each filter with aqueous solution containing elements with concentrations gravimetrically traceable to ultrapure metals or stoidiiometricaUy well defined oxides. The amormts correspond for some of the materials to current threshold limit values of contaminants in workroom atmospheres provided that the simulated filter has been exposed to one cubic meter of air. The certified values are based on a gravimetric procedure, i.e. weight per volume composition of the primary reference material dissolved in high purity sub-dis-tiUed acids. The National Institute of Occupational Health in Oslo, Norway, has produced several batches of such materials certified for 20 elements. Additionally, information values are reported for four other elements see Table 6.2. 

Analytics plays a critical and sometimes underestimated role in the pace and direction of industrial projects. As laboratories are increasingly automated, the management skills of scientists are increasingly relied upon to coordinate a complex and dynamic workplace.107 There are many aspects of project management which are not within the discretion of an analytical manager. The exigencies of project timing and institutional culture, as well as the nature and volume of the sample stream, influence the flow and... 

Passive dosimetry, which proved useful for the pursuit of better workplace hygiene in agriculture during the past 40 years (Durham and Wolfe, 1962), yields unvalidated and excessive amounts of worker exposure (Krieger, 1996). Currently, our approach with respect to indoor and agricultural exposure assessments has been the evaluation of exposure estimates using well-known, studied chemicals to first understand the work task and at a later time develop chemical-specific studies as required in the regulatory arena. 

A significant advantage to performing well with a wide range of flame retardants is formulating flexibility. There are many factors which limit the choice of flame retardants asided from flame retardant performance and compatability. For example, environmental constraints (no antimony to the sewer, no ammonia in the workplace) and compatability constraints (shorter than normal shelf life with certain emulsions) may limit the choice. 

Electrochemical sensors with a liquid electrolyte are widely used for the detection of corrosive or toxic gases in the workplace. Portable monitors are used in short time measurements of exhaust gases as well. These sensors work amperometri-cally - an external voltage supply is connected with the electrode on both sides of the measuring cell. 

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