More than 79,000 new workers compensation claims and over $1.6 billion in workers’ compensation payments were made in fiscal year 2009. According to President Obama, many of these work-related injuries and illnesses are preventable, and executive departments and agencies can and should do even more to improve workplace safety and health, reduce the financial burden of injury on taxpayers, and relieve unnecessary suffering by workers and their families.
The POWER Initiative will extend prior workplace safety and health efforts of the Federal Government by setting more aggressive performance targets, encouraging the collection and analysis of data on the causes and consequences of frequent or severe injury and illness, and prioritizing safety and health management programs that have proven effective in the past.
Under the POWER Initiative, each executive department and agency will be expected to improve its performance in seven areas:
- Reducing total injury and illness case rates
- Reducing lost time injury and illness case rates
- Analyzing lost time injury and illness data
- Increasing the timely filing of workers’ compensation claims
- Increasing the timely filing of wage-loss claims
- Reducing lost production day rates
- Speeding employees’ return to work in cases of serious injury or illness
Executive departments and agencies (except the U.S. Postal Service) are being required to coordinate with OSHA and Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs to establish performance targets in each category. The Secretary of Labor will be leading the POWER Initiative by measuring both Government-wide and agency-level performance and reporting to the President annually.
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FDA Joins with EPA and Other Agencies to Improve Chemical Toxicity Screening
The FDA has joined the Tox21 partnership, including EPA, the National Institute of Health Chemical Genomics Center, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences National Toxicology Program, merging and improving the methods used to screen hazardous chemicals that are harmful to human health and the environment. Tox21’s robotic screening and single informatics platform screens thousands of chemicals a day for toxicological activity in cells that would take one person a year to do by hand. EPA contributes to Tox21 through the Toxcast program.
How Safe and Effective are Herbal Dietary Supplements?
Millions of people are taking herbs and other plant-based dietary supplements to improve their health, but they have precious little information on the actual effectiveness or potential ill effects of these products.
C&EN Senior Editor, Celia Henry Arnaud, suggests that consumers are taking a gamble when it comes to the safety and effectiveness of hundreds of pills and potions cluttering store shelves. Such products include black cohosh and red clover, used by menopausal women to reduce hot flashes, and kava, which is used to treat anxiety and insomnia. Scientists are concerned that some supplements may contain high levels of toxic metals, such as lead and mercury, or pesticides. There’s also the possibility that the plant itself might be toxic or that a supplement can cause harm by reacting with conventional drugs.
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration, which regulates supplements as foods rather than drugs, recently took a step toward improving the situation by requiring all supplement manufacturers to test their products for contaminants. However, scientists still know little about the ingredients in many supplements and what effect they might have on the body. Ongoing research is providing new information that will help address these concerns in the future, including the long-term safety of these products for consumers, the article indicates.
Research Links Recreational Pool Disinfectants to Health Problems
Splashing around in a swimming pool on a hot summer day may not be as safe as you think. A recent University of Illinois (U of I) study links the application of disinfectants in recreational pools to previously published adverse health outcomes such as asthma and bladder cancer.
Each year, 339 million visits take place at pools and water parks across the United States. Not only is swimming fun, but it’s also the second most popular form of exercise in the country. Because of this, disinfection of recreational pools is critical to prevent outbreaks of infectious disease.
However, Michael Plewa, U of I professor of genetics, said negative outcomes can occur when disinfection byproducts form reactions with organic matter in pool water.
Pool water represents extreme cases of disinfection that differ from the disinfection of drinking water as pools are continuously exposed to disinfectants.
“All sources of water possess organic matter that comes from decaying leaves, microbes and other dead life forms,” Plewa said. “In addition to organic matter and disinfectants, pool waters contain sweat, hair, skin, urine, and consumer products such as cosmetics and sunscreens from swimmers.”
These consumer products are often nitrogen-rich, causing concern that they may contribute to the generation of nitrogenous disinfection byproducts, Plewa added. When mixed with disinfectants, these products may become chemically modified and converted into more toxic agents. These disinfection byproducts can mutate genes, induce birth defects, accelerate the aging process, cause respiratory ailments, and even induce cancer after long-term exposures. In this study, collections from public pools and a control sample of tap water were evaluated to identify recreational water conditions that could be harmful to your health.
A systematic mammalian cell genotoxicity analysis was used to compare the water samples. Plewa said this sensitive DNA technology examined genomic damage in mammalian cells, allowing researchers to investigate damage at the level of each nucleus within each cell.
The study compared different disinfection methods and environmental conditions. Results proved that all disinfected pool samples exhibited more genomic DNA damage than the source tap water, Plewa said.
“Care should be taken in selecting disinfectants to treat recreational pool water,” Plewa advised. “The data suggest that brominating agents should be avoided as disinfectants of recreational pool water. The best method to treat pool waters is a combination of UV treatment with chlorine as compared to chlorination alone.”
Plewa recommends that organic carbon be removed prior to disinfection when the pool water is being recycled.
Also, swimmers can help reduce the genotoxicity of pool water by showering before entering the water. Pool owners should also remind patrons about the potential harm caused by urinating in a pool. These simple steps can greatly reduce the precursors of toxic disinfection byproducts, Plewa said.
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