The agriculture, forestry, and fishing sectors are the cornerstone of industries that produce food, fiber, and biofuel. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducts research in order to improve worker safety and health in these sectors. This National Research Council book reviews the NIOSH Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Program to evaluate the 1) relevance of its work to improvements in occupational safety and health and 2) the impact of research in reducing workplace illnesses and injuries. The assessment reveals that the program has made meaningful contributions to improving worker safety and health in these fields. To enhance the relevance and impact of its work and fulfill its mission, the NIOSH Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Program should provide national leadership, coordination of research, and activities to transfer findings, technologies, and information into practice. The program will also benefit from establishing strategic goals and implementing a comprehensive surveillance system in order to better identify and track worker populations at risk.

A practical guide to industrial safety. It seeks to assist specialists in managing operations in industrial settings, including high-risk personal exposure such as inhalation hazards and direct chemical contact. It covers hazards in the chemical process industries, inhalation hazards in refineries, indoor air quality management, personal protective

The workplace is where 156 million working adults in the United States spend many waking hours, and it has a profound influence on health and well-being. Although some occupations and work-related activities are more hazardous than others and face higher rates of injuries, illness, disease, and fatalities, workers in all occupations face some form of work-related safety and health concerns. Understanding those risks to prevent injury, illness, or even fatal incidents is an important function of society. Occupational safety and health (OSH) surveillance provides the data and analyses needed to understand the relationships between work and injuries and illnesses in order to improve worker safety and health and prevent work-related injuries and illnesses. Information about the circumstances in which workers are injured or made ill on the job and how these patterns change over time is essential to develop effective prevention programs and target future research. The nation needs a robust OSH surveillance system to provide this critical information for informing policy development, guiding educational and regulatory activities, developing safer technologies, and enabling research and prevention strategies that serves and protects all workers. A Smarter National Surveillance System for Occupational Safety and Health in the 21st Century provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of OSH surveillance. This report is intended to be useful to federal and state agencies that have an interest in occupational safety and health, but may also be of interest broadly to employers, labor unions and other worker advocacy organizations, the workers' compensation insurance industry, as well as state epidemiologists, academic researchers, and the broader public health community. The recommendations address the strengths and weaknesses of the envisioned system relative to the status quo and both short- and long-term actions and strategies needed to bring about a progressive evolution of the current system.

It is the unique mission of the Health Hazard Evaluation Program within the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to respond to requests to investigate potential occupational health hazards. In contrast to other NIOSH programs, the Health Hazard Evaluation Program is not primarily a research program. Rather, it investigates and provides advice to workplaces in response to requests from employers, employees and their representatives, and federal agencies. The National Research Council was charged with evaluating the NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluation Program and determining whether program activities resulted in improvements in workplace practices and decreases in hazardous exposures that cause occupational illnesses. The program was found to play a key role in addressing existing widespread or emerging occupational health issues. This book makes several recommendations that could improve a very strong program including more systematic use of surveillance data to facilitate priority setting, and greater interaction with a broader array of workers, industries, and other government agencies.

This updated Dictionary provides a comprehensive reference for hundreds of environmental engineering terms used throughout the field. Author Frank Spellman draws on his years of experience, many government documents, and legal and regulatory sources to update this edition with many new terms and definitions. This fifth edition includes terms relating to pollution control technologies, monitoring, risk assessment, sampling and analysis, quality control, and permitting. Users of this dictionary will find exact and official Environmental Protection Agency definitions for environmental terms that are statute-related, regulation-related, science-related, and engineering-related, including terms from the following legal documents: Clean Air Act; Clean Water Act; CERCLA; EPCRA; Federal Facility Compliance Act; Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act; FIFRA; Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendment; OSHA; Pollution Prevention Act; RCRA; Safe Drinking Water Act; Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act; and TSCA. The terms included in this dictionary feature time-saving cites to the definitions' source, including the Code of Federal Regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Energy. A list of the reference source documents is also included.