Early environmental justice advocacy started with a focus on the impacts of where toxic pollutants and toxic facilities were located in relation to communities of color.
Ergonomics in particular is frequently delegated to industrial hygienists. While most industrial hygiene university programs include some ergonomics education, the basics aren’t always enough to make the desired impact. Advancing knowledge and education...
Certified Athletic Trainers are increasingly being recruited to work as ergonomic practitioners in industrial settings. In this role, a Certified Athletic Trainer (ATC) can help prevent musculoskeletal injuries in settings like warehouses, labs, manufacturing plants, and office buildings. ATCs can be valuable members of an occupational and environmental health and safety (OEHS) team, performing workstation evaluations; training workers on safe posture, techniques, and tools; and managing ergonomic programs aimed at reducing injuries and optimizing productivity....
A combination of pandemic related work-from-home practices and advances in information technology is shifting the traditional work location for many employees from the office to remote work locations. Full-time telework, where employees can work from anywhere and at any time, is now offered by 37% of organizations (1).
Common advantages of teleworking include:
Reduction of corporate office space needs
Attending to government regulations such as clear air standards
The May edition of the Safety Spotlight has been posted. The focus this month is on Fleet, Walk and Bike Safety. You can access the current newsletter here (as well as older editions).
From 2007 – 2014, more than 139,000 California workers suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). The highest rates of CTS were found in industries that manufacture apparel, process food, and perform administrative work, where workers are often required to perform repetitive tasks and/or maintain awkward postures. Women were found to have a CTS rate more than 3x that among men, with persons aged 45-54 most impacted.
You can learn more about CTS in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s October 5th issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)....
Involving workers in the decision-making process is a vital step to improve productivity and workplace safety. Worker insight can help identify problem areas and effective solutions, and also improve buy-in to implement changes in practice.
The best employers know how to utilize their employees' knowledge to improve the organizational environment and promote human-centered work. This can be accomplished through creating systems for collaboration (Burgess-Limerick et al, 2018). Participatory ergonomics (PE) is a branch of ergonomics drawing on varied mechanisms...
Hearing loss is one of the most common chronic physical conditions in the United States, ranked third behind hypertension and arthritis. 12% of the US working population experience hearing difficulty, and 58% of these cases are attributable to occupational noise exposure as reported by the National Center for Health Statistics.
If ergonomics is part of your job, you already know that people make great work happen.
A wider understanding of the full scope of the discipline will make your work easier and more sustainable. Expanding your ergonomics skills is your ticket to the next level.
Ergonomics promotes a holistic approach which considers physical, cognitive, social, organizational, environmental, and other relevant factors.
The 2019 wildfire season was not as active as 2018, however, there were still 46,706 recorded wildfires from January 1 to November 22, 2019 (National Interagency Fire Center), burning about 4.6 million acres.
As wildfires ravage California and other states throughout the US, they take a serious toll on our land and more importantly, our health. According to the CDC, exposure to wildfire smoke can cause chest pain and asthma attacks, with many people...
