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Background: Occupational Health and Safety (OSH) inspectors of the Health Units of Piedmont Region wrote 47 case histories based on data gathered from injury investigations as part of the project "From the injury investigation reports to case histories: creation of a collection of case histories on occupational injuries". Afterwards a Community of Practice (CoP) was initiated with the aim of sharing recommendations for prevention of occupational injuries., Objective: The aims of the article are: 1) to describe the implementation process of the CoP; 2) to evaluate the benefits of CoP regarding the improvement of professional practice of OSH inspectors., Methods: Two injury case histories were peer reviewed during each meeting of the CoP. A focus group was set up to evaluate benefits of CoP. Seven OSH inspectors participated in this focus group., Results: Eight CoP meetings were organized and about 70 OSH inspectors participated. Fourteen stories were peer reviewed and eight were published on www.dors.it. Operators involved in the focus groups reported that the main reasons for participation in the CoP were the need to compare and tackle new challenges. The criticalities are tied to the turnover of the participants and to the lack of recognition by management. Most of the operators felt it was too early to include professionals such as Workers' Safety Representatives and Prevention and Safety Service Managers in the CoP due to their different professional roles., Conclusions: OSH inspectors reported professional benefits of CoP experience. We believe that this approach might be transferred, integrated and developed in other regions and included in the next national prevention plan.

Background: Many authors consider narrative descriptions of injuries gathered by OSH inspectors extremely important in identifying causes, setting priorities and drawing up intervention strategies. Narratives provide additional insight regarding complex behaviour, attitudes and interactions, which help to understand the decision patterns and the context of the injury. Storytelling is an effective way of sharing and remembering information., Objective: The main aim was to describe the experience of collecting stories from injury investigation reports, backed up by systematic prevention guidelines, that will improve information sharing by means of a knowledge transfer method based on storytelling., Methods: OSH operators from Health Units, who were invited to provide the injury stories, were enrolled through educational workshops aimed at selecting the injuries to relate following the sentinel event approach, using an effective style of writing, identifying the key elements of the story and using witnesses' narratives to study in depth the critical points identified during the investigation., Results: 110 OSH operators voluntarily joined the project between 2012 and first half of 2015. 33 injury stories were collected, discussed and published on Dors' website http://www.dors.it/storiedinfortunio., Conclusions: The results show that prevention and protection measures do indeed benefit from a narrative-based approach, so that health and safety can be viewed in a more comprehensive way by facilitating knowledge improvement and sharing.

Background: Exposure to carcinogens is still widespread in working environments. For the purpose of defining priority of interventions, it is necessary to estimate the number and the geographic distribution of workers potentially exposed to carcinogens. It could therefore be useful to test the use of tools and information sources already available in order to map the distribution of exposure to carcinogens. Formaldehyde is suggested as an example of an occupational carcinogen in this study., Objectives: The study aimed at verifying and investigating the potential of 3 integrated databases: MATline, CAREX, and company databases resulting from occupational accident and disease claims (INAIL), in order to estimate the number of workers exposed to formaldehyde and map their distribution in the Piedmont Region., Methods: The list of manufacturing processes involving exposure to formaldehyde was sorted by MIATline; for each process the number of firms and employees were obtained from the INAIL archives. By applying the prevalence of exposed workers obtained with CAREX, an estimate of exposure for each process was determined. A map of the distribution of employees associated with a specific process was produced using ArcView GIS software., Results: It was estimated that more than 13,000 employees are exposed to formaldehyde in the Piedmont Region. The manufacture of furniture was identified as the process with the highest number of workers exposed to formaldehyde (3,130),followed by metal workers (2,301 exposed) and synthetic resin processing (1,391 exposed)., Conclusion: The results obtained from the integrated use of databases provide a basis for defining priority of preventive interventions required in the industrial processes involving exposure to carcinogens in the Piedmont Region.

Background: Currently, about 250,000 workers are employed in the call-centre sector in Italy. The nature and the organization of the work exposes workers to a variety of psychosocial and ergonomic hazards, with a potential impact on physical and psychological health., Objective: The aim of the study was to investigate working conditions and health status among call-centre operators, in order to estimate the prevalence of exposure to psychosocial and ergonomic risk factors, and of potentially work-related health problems., Methods: Workers from seven call-centres operating in the Torino area were invited to participate in the survey. During the period 2005-2006, 775 subjects working in telecommunications (70%), telemarketing (14%) and finance (16%) completed a standardized questionnaire on socio-demographics and lifestyle, working conditions, symptoms and diseases., Results: Poor microclimatic conditions, elevated noise, high levels of exposure to psychosocial factors and a high prevalence of unfavourable ergonomic working conditions were observed With regard to health conditions, the mental health index was lower than that expected for the Italian population. Overall, 60%, of the subjects reported headache, 57% musculoskeletal symptoms and 46% voice disorders, for which they consulted a physician and/or took medication., Conclusion: A high proportion of call-centre operators were exposed to organizational and psychosocial risk factors, while the self-reported prevalence of potentially work-related health conditions was also high, as has been reported by other authors. Although further epidemiological studies are needed to meaningfully evaluate these associations, it also appears necessary to implement interventions on the most frequently encountered hazards in this sector.