Few female miners – about one in 200 – show signs of pneumoconiosis, researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found in a recently published study.
In honor of National Miners' Day on December 6, NIOSH Director John Howard, MD, highlighted the new research in his “From the Director's Desk” column in the institute's December eNews newsletter.
For the study, NIOSH researchers analyzed over 50 years of NIOSH data from the institute's Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program. The study found that most female miners had worked in the industry for less than a decade and did not work in areas such as continuous mining or drilling, which limited their exposure to high levels of inhalable dust.
Other recently published research supported by NIOSH includes the following:
- A study of Ohio private sector employers' compensation claims related to respiratory illnesses. The study looked for respiratory disease-related diagnosis codes in more than 2 million claims filed with the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation between 2001 and 2018 and found 23,015 workers' compensation claims – about six claims per 10,000 full-time workers – related to respiratory disease.
- A multi-year analysis of mining injuries using workers' compensation claims data. While more than half of the claims were for medical treatment only, claims involving lost work accounted for 40% of the claims but 90% of the costs.
NIOSH also recently released the “Respirator Selection Guide for the Healthcare Industry,” a new fact sheet for healthcare employers. The fact sheet provides employers and healthcare respiratory protection program managers with industry-specific guidance on the selection and use of respirators to help minimize the number of healthcare professionals exposed to harmful contaminants. The fact sheet describes the capabilities of filtering respirators (FFR) such as N95 respirators, elastomeric half-face respirators (EHMR), and powered respirators (PAPR). It also discusses issues in selecting respirators and levels of protection appropriate to health care hazards.
NIOSH also announced the release of a “Line of Duty Death Report” from its Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program on the death of a 25-year-old firefighter recruit on his first day of training. The fire recruit collapsed during a fitness training session.
An ambulance crew was dispatched and the crew transported the firefighter recruit to the nearest hospital emergency room. The recruit was intubated, treated for hyperthermia and admitted to the hospital's intensive care unit, where he died two days later.
A coroner's report listed the cause of death as hyperthermia, with an enlarged heart and obesity as contributing factors.
NIOSH's recommendations in the report included the following:
- Fire departments should ensure that all firefighter candidates receive a medical examination before being hired.
- Fire departments should communicate to cadets/recruits which program components are mandatory at the beginning of training and which serve as benchmarks for measuring physical fitness progress over the course of training.
- Fire departments should advise incoming cadets/recruits on how to improve their physical fitness prior to beginning formal training.
- Fire departments should provide information about heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses (HRIs) in recruits' acceptance letters, especially if training is conducted in warm or hot weather, and provide annual refresher training on HRIs for training center personnel.