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Background Little is known about risk factors associated with poor health among employees with COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] living in Central Appalachia. Purpose: Determine variability in health distress based on risk factors, including race and income, among employees with COPD from Central Appalachian U.S. States. Methods: 2016-2017 BRFSS data were analyzed from employed adults with COPD living in KY, NC, TN, and WV (N = 1,326). Health risks included (1) comorbidities; (2) substance use/abuse; and (3) limited healthcare access as predictors of mental and physical distress, with race and income entered as covariates. Results: Respondents reporting several comorbidities were more likely to report physical and mental distress compared to those without comorbidities. Workers who used e-cigarettes on some versus no days were more likely to report physical distress. Those reporting cost preventing access to medical care versus no cost barriers were more likely to report physical and mental distress. Low-income workers were more likely than higher-income workers to report distress. Discussion: Comorbidities, e-cigarettes, and high medical costs are potential causes of occupation-related disability among employees with COPD working in Central Appalachian U.S. States. Translation to Health Education Practice: Worksite interventions should address risks negatively associated with health outcomes among workers with COPD from Central Appalachia.

Objective: Sound levels in nightclubs are dangerously high. We administered the Dangerous Decibels hearing-health intervention to nightclub staff to test its efficacy. Design: In a single group, repeated measures were taken before training, a week after training and at 3 months after training. Setting: A nightclub in the city of Auckland, New Zealand. Method: We delivered training to 20 people who work in nightclubs: bar staff, disc jockeys (DJs), security staff and police. We assessed supports and barriers towards hearing-health behaviour, knowledge, attitudes and self-reported behaviour at the three time points. Results: The ratio of supports to barriers for good hearing-health behaviour improved 1 week after training and continued to improve at 3 months. Participants' knowledge increased after training and was maintained 3 months later. Attitudes and self-reported behaviour did not change. Conclusion: The continued improvement in supports-to-barriers ratio at 3 months post-training has not been observed previously and may reflect a change in participants' thinking as a result of the intervention. The lack of change in self-reported behaviour implies that the effect of acculturation to loud music in nightclubs was not wholly overcome.

The purpose of this conceptual research framework is to develop and integrate a safety training model using a behaviour-based safety training programme into laboratories for young adults, during their tertiary education, particularly in technical and vocational education. Hence, this research will be investigating the outcome of basic safety knowledge among young adults and precautions needed to avoid occupational accidents and work-related diseases before they are exposed to real-life working situations. Numerous findings have found young adults are more prone to accidents compared to older adults and it happens due to lack of effective safety training and ineffective dispersion of safety knowledge to the young adults. An explanatory mixed method design is suggested for use as the main method; quantitative in the form of questionnaire based and supported by short interview in qualitative methods. A pre-test post-test non-equivalent control group design (with delayed post-test) is identified and it will use questionnaires (based on Theory of Planned Behaviour with an extension of a cognitive mediator) to predict and identify the changes in the safety practices behaviour of engineering students. Behaviour Based Safety (BBS) programme and Standard Safety programme will be used as individual interventions and integrated in the engineering laboratories; whilst the traditional programme will be monitored as the control group method. Three groups of purposive sampling engineering students will be selected and two of the groups will undergo different interventions concurrently leaving one group intact for control measurement. The expected results of analysis of variance (ANOVA) for pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test data between Behaviour Based Safety (BBS) programme, Standard Safety programme and traditional programme will determine the most effective among intervention safety programmes conducted for the engineering students. These future findings should also be able to provide proof that the combination of safety education and safety behaviour based training is the best method to be integrated as effective intervention into the engineering students' safety practices behaviour at the laboratories. The expected findings will help to develop an effective ways of educating and training young adults about work safety, which can be used in engineering laboratories and workshops.

During the past two decades, historians have been brought into legal cases in unprecedented numbers. As the courts have tried to adjudicate responsibility for environmental and occupational diseases, history and historians have played an increasingly central role in shaping decisions in the cases themselves as well as in related social policy. In suits over tobacco-related diseases, asbestosis, harm from radiation, and other toxic substances, historians of technology and science, social history, and public health are being brought to the courts in growing numbers to provide expert testimony aimed at assessing responsibility for damages that have arisen years, sometimes decades, after exposure. As the role of the historian has expanded, so, too, has the controversy surrounding the participation of historians in legal cases. In this essay, the authors have gone through their own internal process in deciding whether to work for those injured by industries, institutions, or products. The authors share their experience when they became expert witnesses in two cases. Their experience and the controversies that are roiling the historical community take on a special resonance in the light of the recent BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Rhetorical scholarship criticizes melodrama for its tendency to simplify and reify public controversies and valorizes the comic frame as an ethically superior mode of rhetoric. These judgments are rooted in the discipline's reliance on Burkean categories, a reductionist conception of melodrama, and an implicit assumption that social unification should be the telos of rhetoric. In response, this essay advances a concept of melodrama as an integrated set of rhetorical appeals. It uses examples of environmental rhetoric to illustrate how the inventional resources of melodrama can transform public controversies and oppose dominant discourses that rationalize or obscure threats to the quality and existence of life on Earth. Based on these arguments, the essay endorses a sophistic critical perspective that foregrounds timeliness as the primary ground for rhetorical judgment and refuses to treat any rhetorical frame as inherently superior to another. (Contains 65 notes.)

Occupational noise-induced hearing loss is the second most self-reported occupational illness or injury in the United States. Among coal miners, more than 90% of the population reports a hearing deficit by age 55. In this formative evaluation, focus groups were conducted with coal miners in Appalachia to ascertain whether miners perceive hearing loss as a major health risk and if so, what would motivate the consistent wearing of hearing protection devices (HPDs). The theoretical framework of the Extended Parallel Process Model was used to identify the miners' knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and current behaviors regarding hearing protection. Focus group participants had strong perceived severity and varying levels of perceived susceptibility to hearing loss. Various barriers significantly reduced the self-efficacy and the response efficacy of using hearing protection. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Examined the effects of a multicomponent, four-year hearing-conservation program for farm youth. Researchers conducted pre- and postintervention hearing tests in control and intervention students. Surveys examined family hearing loss, farm work, noise exposure, and hearing-protection device (HPD) utilization. Significantly more intervention students than control students used HPDs. Influential program components included HPD distribution and yearly hearing tests. (SM)

States health campaign messages designed to encourage behavior adaptation have greater likelihood of success than campaigns promoting avoidance of at-risk behaviors that cannot be avoided. Tests a model of health risk behavior using four different behaviors in a communication campaign aimed at reducing farmers' risk for skin cancer--questions farmers about skin cancer prevention, detection behaviors, attitudes. (PA)

Examines the vocal demands of teaching in a noisy environment for elementary vocal music teachers. Uses the Voice Conservation Index (VCI), a 31-item self-report scale, to collect data on vocal stress. Correlates this data with other factors including years spent in teaching and teaching schedule. (MJP)

In a survey concerning repetitive stress injury (RSI) and carpal tunnel syndrome, 87 percent of the 40 sign language interpreters reported that they had at some time experienced at least 2 symptoms associated with RSI, and most interpreters knew others with RSI problems. Data indicate that RSI is a severe problem among sign language interpreters. (Author/JDD)

Develops lists of jobs in which workers report functional disabilities, using 6,096 females and 3,653 males from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I Epidemiological Follow-Up and attrition and mortality analyses for 6,911 women and 4,723 men. Occupational safety and health are critical to understanding functional disability levels. (SLD)

Sick building syndrome (SBS) is a situation in which at lease 15-20 percent of a building's occupants exhibit physical symptoms in a pattern that is linked to the building in which they work. Describes health effect, factors and causes of SBS, implications for risk management, and precautions school officials should take. (MLF)

A survey of secondary industrial arts teachers showed little knowledge of hearing conservation methods. Although 47 percent of the teachers believed that they had acquired an occupational hearing loss, they did not use personal hearing protection. (Author)

Presents a historical perspective of educational and environmental curricula orientation in Africa. Examines environmentally-related problem areas (such as deforestation, pesticides, and endangered species) and lists the benefits and advantages of environmental education. A restructuring of Africa's formal education curriculum is recommended. (ML)

The effectiveness of chart audit with written feedback as a tool for encouraging residents to obtain and record occupational information during history-taking is evaluated. (Author/MLW)

Discusses job-related health problems, such as infectious diseases and job stress, that are of concern to child caregivers in child care settings. Ways that these problems can be alleviated and/or medically treated are also discussed. (BB)

Teaching Staff in day schools for mentally retarded students with direct classroom contact may carry an occupational risk of HBV infection. A seroepidemiologic study associated the prevalence of HBV markers with classroom contact with an HBsAg-positive student, duration of employment at school, and previous work with mentally retarded individuals. (PS)