OBJECTIVES Data on job histories is commonly available from study subjects and worksites, therefore jobs are often used for assigning exposures in historical epidemiological studies. Exposure estimates are often derived by offering jobs as fixed effects in statistical models. An alternative approach would be to offer job as a random effect to obtain empirical Bayes estimates of exposure. This a...

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, acquire nest-mate recognition cues from wax, the predominant material used in nest construction. Exposure of a newly emerged worker bee to wax-comb substrate significantly reduced the acceptability of that worker to sister bees. Cues acquired from the comb provided colony-specific information about the identity of worker bees; moreover, the effect of comb exposure ha...

We examine the interaction between risk (uncertainty) and production efficiency in determining pay-performance sensitivity in optimal executive compensation. Particularly, we show that the risk-incentive trade-off is exacerbated (attenuated) as production efficiency increases when the efficiency level is greater (less) than the level of compensation risk. This result suggests that the optimalit...

This special edition 7th GOHNET Newsletter will inform you about new practical tools to assess and manage risks at workplace level based on the concept of “Control Banding”. GOHNET Issue 5 introduced readers to one of these control banding tools, the International Chemical Control Toolkit. This Toolkit responds to the need for practical risk assessment and management approaches that can be appl...

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommends that appropriate workpractices be implemented to reduce the risk of worker exposure to arsine (AsH3) gas. There is a high potential for the generation of arsine gas when inorganic arsenic is exposed to nascent (freshly formed) hydrogen. This recommendation is based on several reports of worker exposure to arsine result...

Conventionally, the "breathing zone" is defined as the zone within a 0.3 m (or 10 inches) radius of a worker's nose and mouth, and it has been generally assumed that a contaminant in the breathing zone is homogeneous and its concentration is equivalent to the concentration inhaled by the worker. However, several studies have mentioned that the concentration is not uniform in the breathing zone ...

A 34-year-old chemical manufacturing worker had new onset of work-related asthma after several years of exposure to the fungicide, captafol. On specific bronchial challenge testing, he demonstrated a marked and persistent fall in FEV1. Cessation of exposure resulted in improved symptoms and pulmonary function. The delay in symptoms after several years of workplace exposure and the dual reaction...

Coal combustion is used in many industrial processes in South Africa. The exposure of workers and the absence of international biological monitoring standards for toluene created a problem. A cross-sectional study on 100 workers indicated that the biological threshold for ortho-cresol:creatinine ratio reference value of < 1 mg/g could presently be used as a reference for non-industrial human ex...

A case is described of chickenpox acute respiratory distress syndrome in an ambulance driver after the inter-hospital transfer of a patient known to have chickenpox pneumonia. Following this exposure, he neither avoided patient contact nor received varicella zoster immune globulin. He subsequently required 13 days of ventilatory support before making a full recovery. The case described supports...

Cohort mortality studies of underground miners have been used to estimate the number of lung cancer deaths attributable to radon exposure. However, previous studies of the radon-lung cancer association among underground miners may have been subject to healthy worker survivor bias, a type of time-varying confounding by employment status. We examined radon-mortality associations in a study of 4,1...