In This Issue |
Volume 14 Number 6 October 2016 | ||
From the Director’s DeskJohn Howard, M.D., Director, NIOSH Twenty Years and Counting: World-Class Research from the “L” BuildingNIOSH will celebrate a notable 20th anniversary this month. On October 19, 1996, a new facility was dedicated on NIOSH’s Morgantown, West Virginia, campus. The facility, often referred to now as the “L” Building, provided NIOSH for the first time with a strategic convergence of specialized equipment and dedicated laboratory space for advanced health-effects research. Organizationally, the responsibilities for those studies were delegated to a newly created Health Effects Laboratory Division (HELD). At the same time, the facility added vital work space and expanded research opportunities for the existing Morgantown divisions—the Division of Respiratory Disease Studies (now the Respiratory Health Division) and the Division of Safety Research.Drive Safely Work Week Planned for October 3–7The NIOSH Center for Motor Vehicle Safety is celebrating Drive Safely Work Week 2016. This year’s theme for the workplace campaign designed to improve the safety of workers, their family members, and communities is Drowsy, Distracted or Focused—Your Decisions Drive Your Safety. Access NETS’ free comprehensive online toolkit and follow @NIOSH_MVSafety for safe-driving tips. Join NIOSH On LinkedInNIOSH has established a new group on LinkedIn to highlight research, products, conferences, etc. for the Institute. If you have a LinkedIn account you can join and contribute here. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up and then join the group. NIOSH joins other LinkedIn program groups with which we are affiliated, such as Total Worker Health, Buy Quiet, and Work Organization and Stress. Latest Issue of Behind the Wheel at Work Now Available!The NIOSH Center for Motor Vehicle Safety recently released a new issue of its quarterly eNewsletter, Behind the Wheel at Work. Highlights from the latest issue include a feature on Business Pulse: Motor Vehicle Safety at Work, a “cheat sheet” cheat sheet of go-to road safety resources, and a Q&A with Johnson & Johnson’s Worldwide Fleet Safety Director. Total Worker Health® Funds New CentersNIOSH recently announced that it has funded six Centers of Excellence for Total Worker Health. Two new Centers of Excellence in Colorado and Illinois will join four existing Centers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and Oregon. The Centers of Excellence represent the extramural portfolio of Total Worker Health research funded by NIOSH to further its mission of protecting and advancing the safety, health, and well-being of the diverse population of workers in our nation. New Publication on Staying Safe at Work AvailableNIOSH and the Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP) at the University of California, Berkeley are pleased to announce the publication Staying Safe at Work: A Curriculum for Teaching Workers with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities about Health and Safety on the Job. Staying Safe at Work is a six-lesson training program designed to teach basic occupational safety and health knowledge and skills to young and older workers and students with disabilities The curriculum can help teach students or consumers/employees the foundational job safety and health skills that all workers need. The curriculum uses highly interactive and fun learning activities to teach foundational workplace safety and health skills, which are general, transferable, and applicable across all jobs and industries. NIOSH Nanotechnology Updates
NIOSH MMWR Report Translated Into ChineseThe July 17, 2015, MMWR report, Investigation of Childhood Lead Poisoning from Parental Take-Home Exposure from an Electronic Scrap Recycling Facility—Ohio, 2012, has been translated into Chinese and published in the Shanghai Evidence-based Report on Preventive Medicine, which is similar to MMWR. NIOSH Leads Workgroup to Propose New Causation CodesInternational Classifications of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) will add “Overexertion and strenuous or repetitive movements (X50)” as a new category of external causation codes. Comparable codes were available in ICD-9-CM, but based on early input from stakeholders, the codes were deactivated. The added codes will improve surveillance of work-related injuries using ICD-10-CM. The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation initiated the original request to NIOSH to add external causation codes comparable to the previous category, “Overexertion and strenuous movements (E927.0).” NIOSH led a workgroup of ergonomic experts to develop and propose new codes. NIOSH Participates in Discussion on Exoskeleton Performance StandardsOn August 23, NIOSH representatives participated in a discussion by federal agency representatives at the National Institute of Standards and Technology on needs and means for developing technical performance standards for exoskeletons in industrial settings. The meeting included a presentation by NIOSH’s Steve Hudock on NIOSH’s research laboratory capabilities for conducting scientific measurements of exoskeleton performance, including researcher expertise, measurement devices, camera systems, and other hardware/software for analysis. Others there from NIOSH were Christine Branche, Ren Dong, Brian Lowe, Tom McDowell, and John Wu. The participants tentatively scheduled a meeting for January 2017 to include input from representatives of academia and industry. In Memoriam: Dr. Pengfei GaoNIOSH was saddened to learn of the death of our colleague and friend, Pengfei Gao, Ph.D., CIH. Dr. Gao joined NIOSH in 1996. He served as the Personal Protective Equipment Coordinator for NIOSH’s Nanotechnology Research Center. He was internationally recognized for his research on chemical protective clothing. Recent projects included work on protective gown research stemming from the Ebola outbreak (see attached photo from the CDC honor awards ceremony in April). Throughout his career, Pengfei served as a mentor to many summer students, junior researchers, and postdoctoral fellows. Dr. Gao was the author or co-author of 30 manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journal and several NIOSH numbered documents. | ||
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