Weekly E-Newsbrief
October 20, 2023
The E-Newsbrief of the National Clearinghouse is a free weekly newsletter focusing on new developments in the world of worker health and safety. Each issue provides summaries of the latest worker health and safety news from newspapers, magazines, journals, government reports, and the Web, along with links to the original documents. Also featured each week are updates from government agencies that handle hazmat and worker safety issues such as DOE, EPA, OSHA and others.
Subscribing to the National Clearinghouse Newsbrief is the best way to stay on top of the worker health and safety news.
- Top Stories
- Calendar Features
- On The Web This Week
- Federal Agency Update
- Awardee Highlights/Online Learning
- Job Openings
- We Want Your Feedback
- Newsbriefs Past Issues
| Top Stories | Back to Top |
The Impact of Work on Well-Being: Six Factors That Will Affect the Future of Work and Health Inequalities
Work has long been considered a social determinant of health, but it has been underused as a lever to address health inequities. New studies suggest that if public health bodies and policymakers put greater focus on improving the work environment, it could achieve major gains in population health and reduce health inequities. Modern advances in data and quantitative methods increasingly allow us to ask more policy-relevant "what if" questions about the broader health impacts of changes to specific aspects of the work environment. In the face of emerging challenges to worker health, such as climate change, telework, and irregular work hours, there is a need to develop and test interventions to reduce work-related determinants of unequal health.
Medical Xpress [Authors: Peter Smith, Arjumand Siddiqi, Cameron Mustard, John William Frank, & Reiner Rugulies]
Serotonin Levels Are Depleted in Long Covid Patients, Study Says, Pointing to a Potential Cause For ‘Brain Fog’
Since the mystery of long Covid emerged in 2020, interferons and serotonin have been likely culprits as combatants in the body’s prolonged battles against the virus. Theories about why symptoms persist long after the acute infection has cleared often point to two suspects: viral reservoirs where SARS-CoV-2 lingers and inflammation sparked by the infection that doesn’t subside. New research published in Cell implicates both interferons and serotonin in long Covid in a way that brings together those hypotheses and could also explain “brain fog,” or the neurocognitive difficulties people endure. The mechanisms are also linked to excessive blood clotting and autonomic dysfunction, in which the nervous system can’t control processes like heart rate or blood pressure.
STAT News [Author: Elizabeth Cooney]
After Historic Strike, Kaiser Permanente Workers Win 21% Raise Over 4 Years
Kaiser Permanente and a coalition of unions reached a tentative deal, ending the largest healthcare labor dispute in U.S. history. The new contract aims to address staffing shortages with raises that will amount to 21% in wage increases over the next four years. Other details of the agreement include new restrictions on hiring subcontractors and using outside firms for temporary staffing. It also requires Kaiser to invest in job training programs, and use referral bonuses, mass job fairs and other workforce development efforts to ensure an adequate supply of new employees for the future. The deal comes after tens of thousands of nurses, emergency room technicians, and pharmacists participated in a three-day strike from October 4-6, 2023.
NPR [Authors: Selena Simmons-Duffin & Scott Maucione]
Feds Try to Head Off Growing Problem of Overdoses Among Expectant Mothers
Empowered is a program that provides services for pregnant and postpartum women who have a history of opioid or stimulant use or are currently using drugs. Pregnancy often motivates people to seek treatment for substance use, yet significant barriers stand in the way of those who want care, even as national rates of fatal drug overdoses during and shortly after pregnancy continue to rise. Empowered focuses on meeting its participants’ most pressing need, which varies depending on the person. Needs vary from help getting government-issued identification so they can access other social services to securing safe housing. A federal initiative seeking to combat those overdoses is distributing millions of dollars to states to help fund and expand programs like Empowered.
Kaiser Health News [Authors: Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez & Katheryn Houghton]
| Calendar Features | Back to Top |
New Jersey Work Environment Council Upcoming Trainings
The New Jersey Work Environment Council is hosting three upcoming training courses. The Violence Prevention Training Program will discuss workplace violence prevention strategies and will take place on October 25, 2023, from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. ET. The Preventing Exposure to Chemical and Disinfectant Hazards virtual training will cover OSHA’s HazCom standard and assessing chemical hazards and understanding safety data sheets, and will occur on October 30, 2023, from 1:00 p.m.-2:30 p.m. ET. The Hazard Mapping Training Program will provide information on how to examine hazards in your workplace and learn how to develop a map to identify, locate, and evaluate hazards so they can be targeted for elimination, and will take place on November 8, 2023, from 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ET.
Event Registration: Violence Prevention Training Program
Event Registration: Preventing Exposure to Chemical and Disinfectant Hazards
The Post-Disaster Context: Considerations for Engineers
The last decades have yielded significant research regarding sustainable and resilient engineering design and urban planning. Yet destructive disasters happen, and engineers and planners responding to and rebuilding after disasters can find themselves in dynamic, time-compressed decision-making situations and underappreciating the social, economic, and governance factors that also need to be considered. During this webinar, engineers will share from their 30 years of collaboration about what it is like to work in a post-disaster environment, considerations for rebuilding in disaster-prone regions, and the structures that need to be in place that allow for rapid and simultaneous engineering evaluation and responses that best serve disaster-impacted communities. The webinar will take place on October 26, 2023, from 2-3 p.m. ET.
Public Health Research and Surveillance Priorities from the East Palestine, Ohio Train Derailment: A Workshop
A two-day virtual public workshop will explore potential health research and surveillance priorities arising from the train derailment and material hazards spill that occurred in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3, 2023. The workshop will bring together participants and subject matter experts from government, non-governmental organizations, private sector organizations, and affected communities to discuss short and long-term human health impacts from the train derailment incident and similar incidents involving the transportation of hazardous materials. It will take place November 6, 2023, 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. and November 7, 2023, 8:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. ET.
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| On The Web This Week | Back to Top |
New Report Has Terrific News for the Climate
According to the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), governments have made substantial progress in curbing their climate pollution since the 2015 Paris Agreement. The deployment of clean technologies is fast accelerating, and global temperatures are on a less dangerous path than they were a decade ago, yet that progress will need to accelerate faster to meet the targets set in the Paris agreement to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures. The new report provides a clear picture of where recent progress has been sufficient, where it’s falling short, and what it will take to get on track to achieve net zero global climate pollution by 2050.
Yale Climate Connections [Author: Dana Nuccitelli]
Net Zero Roadmap: A Global Pathway to Keep the 1.5°C Goal in Reach
Chronic Health Conditions More Frequent Among Miners: Study
Miners are at elevated risk for chronic pain, hearing loss and high blood pressure compared with workers in nonmanual occupations, NIOSH researchers say. They looked at 2007-2018 data for more than 105,000 male workers and calculated the frequency of chronic health outcomes for six different industry groups with a high proportion of manual labor occupations and compared it with that of nonmanual labor industries. Findings show that miners younger than 55 had a higher likelihood of high blood pressure, while all miners showed an elevated occurrence of lower back pain, leg pain stemming from lower back pain, joint pain and hearing loss.
On the Safe Side Podcast Episode 44: Respirable Crystalline Silica and Mental Health at Work
In Episode 44, the Safety and Health team examines a previous feature story on respirable crystalline silica. Respirable crystalline silica is 100 times smaller than a grain of sand, allowing it to get into the lungs when inhaled. The small particles can get trapped in lung tissue, causing inflammation and scarring while inhibiting the lungs’ ability to take in oxygen. The podcast also features Suzi Craig, vice president of workplace mental health at Mental Health America, who joins to discuss normalizing conversations and attitudes around mental health. This discussion covers destigmatizing conversations surrounding mental health at work, preventing burnout, and the concept of psychological safety.
Safety and Health Magazine [Authors: Kevin Druley, Alan Ferguson, & Barry Bottino]
Recovery Ready Workplace New York Symposium
Between 2009 to 2015, an estimated 225,000 New York workers were lost from the labor market due to opioids. Recovery Ready Workplace initiatives have emerged around the U.S. as important interventions in addressing substance use disorder (SUD) and the opioid overdose crisis. This symposium, hosted by the New York State Coalition to Prevent Addiction and Support Recovery in Employment, will share information on the importance of Recovery Ready Workplaces and why they are necessary in New York. The symposium will take place on December 4 and 5, 2023 in Albany, New York.
| Federal Agency Update | Back to Top |
EPA Awards $3.8M in Research Grants to Establish Research Centers to Address Children’s Health in Underserved, Rural Agricultural Communities
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $3,798,738 in grant funding to two institutions to establish research centers to address children’s cumulative health impacts from agricultural and non-chemical exposures. Children in underserved, rural agricultural communities face increased health risks due to the combination of agricultural pollutants in air, water, and soil, as well as non-chemical stressors such as poverty and limited access to services. The research centers will investigate the cumulative health impacts of early life stage (prenatal and from childhood up to adolescence) exposures to pollutants and the added effect of non-chemical stressors among children in these communities across the United States.
HHS and Pfizer Reach Agreement to Increase Patient Access to Paxlovid
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced that HHS and Pfizer have reached an agreement that extends patient access to Paxlovid, maximizes taxpayer investment, and begins Paxlovid’s transition to the commercial market in November 2023. This agreement builds on HHS and Pfizer’s strong partnership over the last three years that enabled the development, manufacture, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics at a record pace. Paxlovid is a prescription medicine used to treat COVID‑19 in adults who are at high risk for progression to severe illness, including hospitalization or death.
Biden-Harris Administration Announces $3.5 Billion for Largest Ever Investment in America’s Electric Grid, Deploying More Clean Energy, Lowering Costs, and Creating Union Jobs
White House Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu and Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm announced $3.46 billion for 58 projects across 44 states to strengthen electric grid resilience and reliability across America. These projects will leverage more than $8 billion in federal and private investments to deliver affordable, clean electricity to all Americans and ensure that communities across the nation have a reliable grid that is prepared for extreme weather worsened by the climate crisis. The projects selected are helping maintain and create good-paying union jobs, with more than three-quarters of the projects selected having partnerships with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Biden-Harris Administration Awards $6.7 Million for Sea Level Rise and Coastal Resilience Research
NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) is announcing $6.7 million in fiscal year 2023 funding that will be spent on 18 coastal resilience research projects across the nation. Eight new and seven continuing awards are funded under NCCOS’s Effects of Sea Level Rise (ESLR) Program. These projects will help facilitate informed adaptation planning and coastal management decisions that account for the effects of sea level rise and climate change and evaluate the use of nature-based solutions in mitigating coastal vulnerability and risk.
| Awardee Highlights/Online Learning | Back to Top |
From Chemical Spills to Hazardous Mold, School of Public Health center is Focused on Training People to Confront Existing and Emerging Threats to Public Health
The University of Minnesota (UMN) Hazmat Training Program is a partner within the larger Midwest Consortium for Hazardous Waste Worker Training (MWC). Since its founding in 1987, the MWC has trained hundreds of thousands of people in hazardous waste cleanup, response and abatement. The UMN center provides over 50 training sessions per year regionally to about 500 people completing continuing education training through their program. MWC’s focus on training people who directly handle and clean up hazardous chemicals remains core to its work, but as climate change and other factors emerge as public health threats, their mission is also evolving. From a warming planet to an ever-increasing reliance on hazardous chemicals, the threats to our public health continue to grow and evolve. As they do, MWC will continue its efforts to train people to meet the needs of an increasingly complex public health environment.
University of Minnesota School of Public Health News [Author: Virgil McDill]
| Job Openings | Back to Top |
City of Boise, Idaho is Seeking a Risk and Safety Coordinator
The City of Boise, Idaho is seeking an experienced and team-oriented Risk and Safety Coordinator to help support our incredible growing workforce. A strong candidate will have equal experience in both risk management and organization-wide safety protocols. Responsibilities include administering City of Boise safety, occupational health, risk mitigation, and other programs to ensure compliance with City policy in addition to federal, state, and local laws and regulations, and delivering employee training and assists in emergency response planning.
| We Want Your Feedback | Back to Top |
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