30 research outputs found

    Int J Tuberc Lung Dis

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    20202021-01-22T00:00:00ZCC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States/32317057PMC78220601190

    Worker health chartbook, 2000

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    "Understanding and preventing occupational injuries and illnesses require focused efforts to identify, quantify, and track both health and their associated workplace conditions. Occupational safety and health surveillance activities provide the ongoing and systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data needed for prevention. Current occupational safety and health surveillance data reveal the staggering human and economic losses associated with occupational injuries and illnesses. Much work remains to be done to reduce those losses, despite overall decreases in occupational injuries and illnesses in recent years. Our ability to survey and assess the state of occupational safety and health has improved over time. However, occupational safety and health surveillance data remain fragmented--collected for different purposes by different organizations using different definitions. We continue to have substantial gaps in surveillance information. Each surveillance system has limitations, particularly those that attempt to quantify occupational illness. Nonetheless, the data provide useful information for targeting and evaluating prevention efforts. To make these data more accessible, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has assembled this chartbook, which provides occupational safety and health surveillance information from different sources in a single volume. This initial work focuses on injury and illness outcomes rather on exposures and hazards. Included are contributions from several Federal agencies. Little information is included on public-sector employees or from State-bases surveillance systems. Future editions of the chartbook will target additional data sources to provide a more comprehensive picture of occupational injury and illness for the U.S. workforce. The data provided in this chartbook indicate encouraging decreases in the frequency of some occupational fatalities, injuries, and illnesses. Surveillance has helped to identify new and emerging problems and trends such as musculoskeletal disorders and asthma. Although our ability to monitor these outcomes has improved over time, this chartbook illustrates the continued fragmentation of occupational health surveillance systems as well as the paucity (or even total absence) of data for certain occupational disorders and groups. The data suggests a compelling need to improve, expand, and coordinate occupational safety and health surveillance activities to develop and augment the data needed to guide illness and injury prevention efforts. Working with government and non-government partners, NIOSH will continue efforts to enhance occupational health surveillance in the coming years." - NIOSHTIC-2"September 2000"--T.p. verso.Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-187)

    Pharmacol Ther

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    This review provides an overview of literature addressing progressive massive fibrosis (PMF) from September 2009 to the present. Advances are described in understanding its pathophysiology, epidemiology of the occurrence of PMF and related conditions, the impact of PMF on pulmonary function, advances in imaging of PMF, and factors affecting progression of pneumoconiosis in dust-exposed workers to PMF. Basic advances in understanding the etiology of PMF are impeded by the lack of a well-accepted animal model for human PMF. Recent studies evaluating lung tissue samples and epidemiologic investigations support an important role for the silica component of coal mine dust in causing coal workers' pneumoconiosis and PMF in contemporary coal miners in the United States and for silica in causing silicosis and PMF in artificial stone workers throughout the world. Development of PMF is associated with substantial decline in pulmonary function relative to no disease or small opacity pneumoconiosis. In recent reports, computed tomography has had greater sensitivity for detecting PMF than chest x-ray. Magnetic resonance imaging shows promise in differentiating between PMF and lung cancer. Although PMF develops in dust-exposed workers without previously identified small opacity pneumoconiosis, the presence of small opacity pneumoconiosis increases the risk for progression to PMF, as does heavier dust exposure. Recent literature does not document any effective new treatments for PMF and new therapies to prevent and treat PMF are an important need.CC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States

    Occupational respiratory diseases

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    Shipping list no.: 87-222-P."September 1986."S/N 017-033-00425-1 Item 499-F-2Also available via the World Wide Web.Includes bibliographies and index

    On the Theory Class\u27s Theories of Asbestos Litigation: The Disconnect Between Scholarship and Reality?

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    More than 100,000 new asbestos claims were filed in 2003, the most ever in one year. Asbestos litigation thus continues to thrive even though 80-90% of claimants have no illness recognized by medical science, let alone suffer any lung impairment. To explain how this disconnect between medical science and tort litigation has come about, I cover the following subjects: 1) medical consequences of exposure to asbestos-containing materials; 2) the phenomenon of the unimpaired claimant; 3) medical evidence with regard to the incidence of asbestosis; 4) the effect on asbestos litigation of the failure of the Manville Trust audit to be approved; 5) the causes and effects of seemingly orchestrated changes in party and witness testimony with regard to the identification of asbestos-containing products at work sites; and 6) the Baron & Budd script memo. The core of the article is an empirical analysis of attorney-sponsored asbestos screenings which account for approximately 90% of claims being generated. On the basis of that empirical research, I conclude that asbestos litigation today largely consists of former industrial and construction workers: (1) recruited by an extensive network of entrepreneurial screening companies which are employed by lawyers to screen hundreds of thousands of potential litigants each year at local union halls, hotel and motel rooms, shopping center parking lots, and other locations throughout the country; (2) asserting claims of injury though they have no medically cognizable injury and cannot demonstrate any statistically significant increased likelihood of contracting an asbestos-related disease in the future; (3) in a civil justice system that has been significantly modified to accommodate the interests of these litigants by dispensing with many evidentiary requirements and proof of proximate cause; (4) mostly in forum-shopped jurisdictions, where judges and juries often appear aligned with the interests of plaintiff lawyers; (5) often supported by specious medical evidence, including: (a) evidence generated by the entrepreneurial medical screening enterprises and B-readers - specially certified x-ray readers that the enterprises or plaintiff lawyers select, who fail to exercise good faith medical judgment but instead conform their findings and reports to the expectations of the plaintiff lawyers who retained them, and (b) pulmonary function tests which are often administered in knowing violation of standards established by the American Thoracic Society and result in findings of impairment which would not be found if the tests were properly administered; and (6) who frequently testify according to scripts prepared by their lawyers which include misstatements with regard to: (a) identifications of and relative quantities of asbestos-containing products that they came in contact with at work sites, (b) the information printed on the containers in which the products were sold, and (c) their own physical impairments. It is beyond cavil that asbestos litigation thus represents a massive civil justice system failure. Because of the awesome power of the asbestos plaintiffs\u27 bar, the issues posed by this failure appear impervious to resolution by civil justice reform. Realistically, the only for a in which the issues of the mass production of bogus medical evidence and scripted client and witness testimony can be addressed is through an investigatory grand jury process. A review of the scholarly literature indicates a substantial degree of indifference to the causes of this civil justice system failure. Many of the published articles on asbestos litigation focus on transactional costs and ways in which the flow of money from defendants to plaintiffs and their lawyers can be expeditiously and efficiently prioritized and routed. The failure to acknowledge, let along analyze, the overriding reality of specious claiming and meritless claims demonstrates a disconnect between the scholarship and the reality of the litigation that is nearly as wide as the disconnect between rates of disease claiming and actual disease manifestation. In this article, I set forth some tentative explanations of this phenomenon

    Fraud and Abuse in Mesothelioma Litigation

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    Best practices for dust control in coal mining

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    "The extraction, transport, and processing of coal produces respirable-sized dust that can be inhaled by miners and cause disabling and potentially fatal lung diseases known as coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP, commonly called "black lung") or silicosis. Once contracted, there is no cure for these lung diseases, so prevention is the goal. Since 1970, NIOSH has offered health screenings to underground coal miners to identify CWP in individuals and to track CWP prevalence across the industry. After an initial 30-year downward trend, CWP prevalence has been increasing over the last 20 years. Coal dust particles larger in size than respirable dust, known as float coal dust, are also produced during mining. Float coal dust settles out of the ventilating air onto the floor, ribs, and roof of underground mining entries. This dust can be lifted back into the air from these surfaces to fuel powerful explosions, which have contributed to numerous fatal mine disasters. To address these issues, coal mine operators search for and implement control technologies that limit worker exposure to respirable dust and minimize the deposition of float coal dust. The controls discussed in this second edition of this handbook range from long-utilized controls that have developed into industry standards to emerging controls that continue to be researched. The handbook is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the health effects of exposure to respirable coal and silica dust. Chapter 2 discusses respirable dust sampling instruments and sampling methods. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 focus on respirable dust control technologies for longwall mining, continuous mining, and surface mining, respectively. Chapter 6 discusses float coal dust sampling and control technologies." - NIOSHTIC-2NIOSHTIC no. 20063272Suggested Citation: NIOSH [2021]. Best practices for dust control in coal mining, second edition. By Colinet JF, Halldin CN, Schall J. Pittsburgh PA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2021-119, IC 9532. https://doi.org/10.26616/NIOSHPUB20211192021-119_web.pdf20211016

    Asbestos related pleural disease

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