Environmental and Occupational Health (EOH)

Issues: Amazon site BFI4 strives for ‘Safety Always,’ however, no documented safety culture and engagement policy or programming exists at BFI4 or network wide. Description: The project aimed to create, develop and implement policy and programming focused around employee safety engagement and culture that was sustainable long-term.

The University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) Labor and Occupational Health Program (LOHP), in collaboration with the University of Washington (UofW) Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center (PNASH) and the Northwest Forest Worker Center (NFWC), are developing resources to assist employers and contractor supervisors in the forestry services industry in training workers c

The Asia Pacific region is one of the most densely populated regions in the world and, therefore, one of the most at risk regions for disease outbreaks. Despite their large and dense populations, a number of nations in the region suffer from significant deficiencies in their public health infrastructures.

Nearly every American Indian reservation in the United States is classified by the USDA as a food desert, an area with limited access to fresh, healthy, and affordable foods. This suggests that food security, or the access to safe, nutritious, and life-supporting foods is a problem in many American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities.

Across the country, dry cleaning is the largest source of emissions of the toxic chemical perchloroethylene (Perc).

Background: Low back pain (LBP) is a leading cause of occupational disability and a large contributor to worker compensation costs among bus drivers in the transportation sector.

In 2010, janitors and cleaners in the US suff

Background: Harassment is a problem in the modern workplace. Nurses experience harassment at higher rates than average. Nurses are exposed to multiple types of harassment in the workplace.

Community-based occupational health trainings offer an innovative approach to reaching underserved populations who may have inadequate access to more traditional methods of health and safety education. The community-based organization (CBO) partners in this project maintain established connections to low-wage worker communities and are best suited to influence hard-to-reach workers.

Background: Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of mortality in the world, accounting for an estimated 17.5 million deaths (WHO 2015 factsheet). Recent studies on the influence of environmental factors have shown an association between air pollution and heart disease, with diesel exhaust emission having a significant impact.

Background 

Title: Building Emergency Response Capacity with Northwest Tribes

To evaluate the impact of the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) of the Proposed Cleanup Plan for the Lower Duwamish Waterway Superund Site, this study used a cross-sectional design and qualitative analysis to investigate opinions and attitudes of Cleanup decision makers and stakeholders.

Background: Molecular viability testing (MVT) is a novel RT-qPCR based diagnostic assay designed for rapid, sensitive, and specific detection of viable bacterial pathogens. Previous research has found it to be 5- to 10- fold more sensitive than standard DNA-targeted PCR for detecting bacterial pathogens in complex samples.

Aim: Previous studies in various sectors have indicated that piece rate payment is associated with increased rates of occupational injuries, compared to hourly pay. The relationship between payment type and heat-related illness (HRI) has not previously been studied. We aimed to examine the relationship between payment type and HRI in agricultural workers.

Background: South Park and Georgetown, two of Seattle's most diverse and affordable neighborhoods, contain the primary commercial traffic corridors from the Port of Seattle to interstates and state highways.

The Latino farm worker population in the Yakima Valley of Washington State is disproportionately at risk for various environmental and occupational health injuries and health problems.

Occupational accidents and injuries are incidents that occur while working or doing activities related to work. There are several impacts such as pain, suffering, absence, death and economic consequences. In Thailand, injuries comprised a significant part of first three major causes of deaths.

Training can improve safety in occupational settings. Pesticides represent an occupational hazard to a large number of workers in agriculture. Many of the affected workers in the Pacific Northwest come from or relate to Spanish-speaking, migrant communities. Literacy, language and cultural issues may affect their ability to fully engage in English-only pesticide safety training.

El Proyecto Bienestar (The Well-Being Project) is a community-based research project that is concerned with environmental justice. El Proyecto Bienestar’s primary goal is to improve the health and well-being of Hispanic agricultural workers and their families in Yakima Valley, Washington.

The overall goal of this project was to evaluate the bioterrorism response plans of local first responder and support agencies relative to the fictitious activation of the Bio Detection System (BDS) in the United States Postal Service (USPS) Seattle Processing and Distribution Center.

Diesel engine exhaust is a source of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) in diameter that contributes to air pollution. Epidemiologic studies have found associations between health effects and diesel exhaust (DE) exposures, but the mechanisms of toxicity are still unclear.

As populations within the United States have grown and expanded into formerly low population density agricultural areas, pesticide application practices have caused increasing concern over the health of those living in nearby communities, particularly for children.

In 2005, a key informant survey conducted by researchers with the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety & Health (PNASH) Center identified a clinician pesticide training gap.

Studies from a hospital setting have suggested that static charges on some surfaces may attract bacteria in excess of normal sedimentation or diffusion, perhaps contributing to the occurrence of nosocomial infections. Bacteria can accumulate significant static charge during aerosolization.

The public health burden of cardiovascular disease in the United States is enormous. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, heart disease and stroke are the first and third leading causes of death in the U.S., respectively. Traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, and age have long received much attention.

Residents of San Juan Island (population 15,700) in Washington State obtain drinking water from municipal systems and public and private wells. Mandated testing of public water systems and new building sites, revealed naturally occuring fluoride levels up to several times the EPA's limit of 4.0 mg/L (0.51-12.45 mg/L).

Significance: The built environment has become an area of recent interest in public health. Neighborhood walkability is one way to meaningfully quantify the potential impact of a built environment on health behaviors, specifically walking. Exercise, including walking, is positively associated with physical function in older adults.

In preparation for recommending defensible environmental health standards that protect against potential adverse health effects, this project examines the importance of age, gender, routes of exposure, co-exposure, ethnicity, smoking, socio-economic states (SES), and co-morbidity across health studies that meet criteria for use in potential risk assessments.

This paper documents a formative research project that evaluated a workshop designed to help organizations design age-friendly workplaces. A gap exists between knowledge of an ongoing demographic shift toward an older workforce and appropriate responsive action among employers.