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Construction Industry Briefing: Issue 15 (August 08)

The following topics are covered in this issue: Constructing Better Health Initiative ,Lead, Wood dust, Stress, and Managing health in construction.

1. Constructing Better Health Initiative (CBH)

There is a outline in ‘Personnel Today’ of developments to date in the ‘Constructing Better Health Initiative’ (CBH). The article highlights the Health and Safety Executive‘s finding that 1.8 million working days were lost in the construction industry in 2006-2007:

http://www.personneltoday.com

See below for the link to the overview published on the BOHS web site:

http://www.bohs.org/resources

2. Lead

The US National Safety, Inc web site has an item about lead risks in the construction industry: The writer states that ‘Lead exposure continues to be one of the most common exposures and the dangers of lead poisoning can be acute and chronic..’:

http://nationalsafety.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/exposure-to-lead-in-the-construction-industry/

3.Wood dust

An article published in the Annals of Occupational Hygiene includes statistics of variance ratios and attenuation for exposure to particles for a number of industries including the construction industry:

http://annhyg.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/men052v1

4. Stress

Below is a link to an MSC thesis entitled ‘Modeling the relationship among occupational stress, psychological/physical symptoms and injuries in the construction industry’. The author states that ‘…the impact of psychosocial factors, specifically stress as experienced by construction workers is an area of growing research. Research in the area of occupational stress in the Construction Industry is yielding results that suggest that overall work safety on the construction site, should take into account psychosocial aspects of work.’:

http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-07102008-154311/unrestricted/Abbe_Thesis.pdf

5. Managing health in construction (ECI guide)

A preview of the European Construction Institute’s Guide to Managing Health in Construction is available to view on the Google Books Site at:

http://books.google.co.uk/books

The target audience of the book are ‘site managers, health and safety managers, and other managers with a responsibility…for the management of health in the construction industry’.

 

If you would like us to feature any specific construction occupational health issue then let us know.

CONSTRUCTION BRIEFINGS ARCHIVE