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During the COVID-19 pandemic, national risk management scenarios took an unexpected course at different individual and collective scales. In France, in the field of occupational risk, long-established practices, rules, and categories have been disturbed and placed 'under stress'. The field of prevention of occupational risk, which has constituted a distinct field in health policies, with its own bodies, missions and approaches, was similarly disturbed. To describe and analyse these social phenomena, we propose using two complementary concepts: the British 'risk work' and the French 'prevention work' ['travail de prévention']. We show some of the empirical manifestations of risk work associated with prevention work and their effects on the boundaries instituted in the field of prevention at work. Our investigation used data from documentation and interviews in order to explore the experiences of two categories of professionals – physicians specialising in occupational health and home care aides – concerned with prevention during an acute phase of the pandemic. We point out that the question of protective means and equipment has been a central issue, in a context characterised by tensions between knowledge and available material resources. We also show that contradictions and points of tension between actors reveal the subjects under discussion and the more or less porous nature of the boundaries. Amid these processes, however, the principles underlying occupational health were reaffirmed, along with the need for a cooperation between workers and prevention professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new machines introduced by industrialisation subjected workers' bodies to a new pace of work, new tasks and hitherto unknown risks. While the hygienist community in France contributed enormously to the emergence of public health in Europe, it focused only belatedly on the dangers of machines for the physical integrity of workers. This article seeks to explain why there was so little interest in this issue during the first phase of French industrialisation (1800–70). Industrial work was perceived by public-health advocates as a step forward compared to former crafts, often carried out in unhealthy workshops. For them, machines helped rationalise production tasks, ventilate workspaces, relieve workers' suffering and replace men for the most laborious and dangerous tasks. Because of these many advantages, they forgot about the drawbacks of industrial mechanisation. As the decades went by, accidents due to machines maimed and killed more and more workers. Despite the warnings issued by some doctors, it was not until the 1860s that hygienists started to question the benefits of machines. However, engineers rather than doctors took over the responsibility of safety at work, followed by lawmakers who dealt with this issue at the end of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Evaluation of the radiological protection quantity E requires determining the dose deposited in different organs and tissues. This is why monitoring in exposed workplaces is ensured by dosimeters that are worn on the trunk and calibrated to measure the personal dose equivalent Hp(10) as an estimator of the effective dose E. However, the characteristics of the instrumentation and the definition of Hp(10) itself can result in significant differences between these two quantities. The Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety Laboratory of Dosimetry for Ionizing Radiation in France is currently developing an instrumented anthropomorphic dummy allowing the evaluation of the effective dose for photon irradiation fields. For neutron fields, a preliminary numerical study has been done. The calculations were made using a mathematical anthropomorphic phantom, and the transport of irradiating particles was calculated using the Monte Carlo code MCNPX. The numerical study has been validated, and the results of some standard irradiations and differences between the effective dose and its estimator have been calculated for various realistic workplace simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]