Industrial Hygiene

11/12/2025: Current International Research Efforts for Traditional Occupational Aerosol Samplers

About the webinar:

Aerosol sampling at workplaces requires many different strategies and tools. In particular, the choice of which air sampler to use is highly dependent on various environmental and practical factors. This means there can be dozens of samplers to choose from. In order to address the issues around sampler selection and sampler performance, the International Sampler Comparison Group (ISCG) was formed. This presentation will outline the current efforts of this group in the area of traditional aerosol sampling, including a review of existing sampler performance data, the...

10/14/2025: Evaluating Degreaser VOC Exposure in Auto Shops Using Air Sampling and Biomarkers

About the webinar:

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are toxic chemicals in degreasers routinely used in auto shops. This presentation will describe and share preliminary results from the Safer Degreaser Study, during which we visited auto repair shops before or after they participated in a public health intervention led by the Hazardous Waste Program, in King County, WA, which helps transition businesses from using VOC-based degreasers to safer alternatives. We aimed to characterize the exposure to VOCs typically found in degreasers by measuring VOCs in blood, urine, and exhaled breath...

09/09/2025: The Trust Decoder: Trust and Industrial Hygiene

About the webinar:

Trust is the foundation of a successful industrial hygiene program and professionals. It ensures open communication, accurate data collection, effective control implementation, and a shared commitment to protecting worker health. Trust is critically important for industrial hygiene because it underpins the effectiveness of all workplace health and safety efforts. Dr. Breysse Cox will cover the basic foundational concepts of trust and decode why these are critical for industrial hygiene professionals.

08/12/2025: Positive Psychological Functioning, Work, and Health

About the webinar:

How do optimism, purpose in life, and other aspects of positive psychological functioning shape our health and longevity? This presentation will explore research on positive psychological functioning and its associations with long-term health outcomes. It will also highlight various interventions designed to enhance positive psychological functioning and discuss how such interventions can be applied in occupational settings to improve worker well-being and performance.

Air pollution exposure is linked with methylation of immunoregulatory genes, altered immune cell profiles, and increased blood pressure in children

Prunicki M
Cauwenberghs N
Lee J
Zhou X
Movassagh H
Elizabeth Noth
Lurmann F
Hammond K
Balmes JR
Desai M
Wu JC
Nadeau KC
2021

Publication

04/09/2024: Exposure to Cleaning Chemicals and Disinfectants in Latina House Cleaners

About the webinar:

Cleaning products and disinfectants (CP&D) are known to cause a variety of health effects. This presentation will describe the activities of the Safe and Just Cleaners Project, which was a significant study in NYC focused on assessing employment and working conditions among Latina immigrant house cleaners. In this presentation, Dr. Harari will describe 1) regularly used household CP&D among Latina house cleaners and 2) inhalation and dermal exposure levels to CP&D in everyday household cleaning...

NC OSHERC NORA Seminar Series

About the webinars: The North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center invites you to join them for the NORA Interdisciplinary Seminar Series. This series was established in 2002, and has been offered quarterly since 2005, typically in the months of February, April, August, and November. The seminars are fully virtual via Zoom and a recording link is available on the web page a few days after each seminar. This enables distance education students and others in the broader occupational health and safety community to attend and participate, facilitating...

Chapter 9: Findings on COVID-19 Prevention from a Survey of California Grocery Workers

Roberts, A
Dominguez C
2022

Household Energy and Health: What's Come and What's to Come

Ajay Pillarisetti
2022

Between 3 and 4 billion people globally rely on the inefficient combustion of solid fuels – including wood, dung, crop residues, and charcoal – to meet basic household energy needs. The household air pollution resulting from these activities is a major contributor to the global burden disease, mainly through particulate pollution exposure that results in an estimated 2.3 million deaths yearly, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. This talk will provide a historical perspective on the identification of solid fuel combustion as a health risk, with a focus on the...

Exposure-response relationships for personal exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2·5), carbon monoxide, and black carbon and birthweight: an observational analysis of the multicountry Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial

Kalpana Balakrishnan
Kyle Steenland
Thomas Clasen
Howard Chang
Michael Johnson
Ajay Pillarisetti
Wenlu Ye
Luke P Naeher
Anaite Diaz-Artiga
John P McCracken
Lisa M Thompson
Ghislaine Rosa
Miles A Kirby
Gurusamy Thangavel
Sankar Sambandam
Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay
Naveen Puttaswamy
Vigneswari Aravindalochanan
Sarada Garg
Florien Ndagijimana
Stella Hartinger
Lindsay J Underhill
Katherine A Kearns
Devan Campbell
Jacob Kremer
Lance Waller
Shirin Jabbarzadeh
Jiantong Wang
Yunyun Chen
Joshua Rosenthal
Ashlinn Quinn
Aris T Papageorghiou
Usha Ramakrishnan
Penelope P Howards
William Checkley
Jennifer L Peel
HAPIN Investigators
2023

Background: Household air pollution (HAP) from solid fuel use is associated with adverse birth outcomes, but data for exposure-response relationships are scarce. We examined associations between HAP exposures and birthweight in rural Guatemala, India, Peru, and Rwanda during the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial.

Methods: The HAPIN trial recruited pregnant women (9-<20 weeks of gestation) in rural Guatemala, India, Peru, and Rwanda and randomly allocated them to receive a liquefied petroleum gas stove or not (ie, and...