Search results for "Environmental & Occupational Health"
showing 10 items of 126 documents
Occupational health disparities among U.S. long-haul truck drivers: the influence of work organization and sleep on cardiovascular and metabolic dise…
2018
Objective The organization of work has undergone vast transformations over the past four decades in the United States and has had profound impacts on worker health and wellbeing. The profession of commercial truck driving is one of the best examples. Particularly for long-haul truck drivers, changes in work organization have led to disproportionately poor physiological, psychological, and sleep health outcomes. Methods The present study examined disparities in cardiometabolic disease risk among long-haul truck drivers and the general population, and the influence of work organization and sleep in generating these outcomes. Researchers collected survey data from 260 drivers, and blood assay …
Risk exposure to vibration and noise in the use of agricultural track-laying tractors.
2016
Human exposure to mechanical vibration may represent a significant risk factor for exposed workers in the agricultural sector. Also, noise in agriculture is one of the risk factors to be taken into account in the evaluation of workers’ health and safety. One of the major sources of discomfort for the workers operating a tractors is the noise to which they are exposed during work. The aim of this study was to evaluate the risk of exposure to whole-body vibration for the operator driving track-laying tractors in vineyard orchard and the noise level. The experimental tests were performed with six different track-laying tractors coupled with the same rototilling machine. The results showed that…
Acceptance of truck platooning by professional drivers on German highways. A mixed methods approach.
2020
Abstract Truck platoon driving is a current branch of automated driving, which has the potential to radically change the work routine of professional drivers. In a platoon system, one truck (semi-)automatically follows a lead truck with a reduced distance, which produces significant savings in fuel and enables better traffic flow. In a current application of truck platoon driving, the following vehicle operates at level-2 automation. Thus, the driver of the following truck merely has to supervise the semi-automated system, which takes over steering and speed control when engaged. Level-2 truck platoon driving had not been tested with professional drivers in real traffic before. We hypothesi…
Antecedents of intensified job demands : evidence from Austria
2019
Purpose In order to understand the driving forces behind intensified job demands (IJDs), the purpose of this paper is to examine demographic factors, structural work-related factors, personal and job resources as antecedents of IJDs. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on cross-sectional (n=4,963) and longitudinal (n=2,055) quantitative data sets of Austrian employees. Data sets were analyzed via regression analyses. Findings The results showed that IJDs, as assessed through five sub-dimensions: work intensification, intensified job-related, career-related planning and decision-making demands, intensified demands for skills and for knowledge-related learning, remained fairly sta…
Causal Effects of Body Mass Index on Airflow Obstruction and Forced Mid-Expiratory Flow: A Mendelian Randomization Study Taking Interactions and Age-…
2021
Obesity has complex links to respiratory health. Mendelian randomization (MR) enables assessment of causality of body mass index (BMI) effects on airflow obstruction and mid-expiratory flow. In the adult SAPALDIA cohort, recruiting 9,651 population-representative samples aged 18–60 years at baseline (female 51%), BMI and the ratio of forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) to forced vital capacity (FVC) as well as forced mid-expiratory flow (FEF25–75%) were measured three times over 20 follow-up years. The causal effects of BMI in childhood and adulthood on FEV1/FVC and FEF25–75% were assessed in predictive (BMI averaged over 1st and 2nd, lung function (LF) averaged over 2nd and 3rd fol…
Long Working Hours and Job Quality in Europe: Gender and Welfare State Differences
2018
Chronic extreme long working hours (LWH) have been found consistently associated with poor health status. However, the evidence for moderately LWH (41&ndash
Validation of Semantic Analyses of Unstructured Medical Data for Research Purposes
2019
BACKGROUND: In secondary data there are often unstructured free texts. The aim of this study was to validate a text mining system to extract unstructured medical data for research purposes. METHODS: From a radiological department, 1,000 out of 7,102 CT findings were randomly selected. These were manually divided into defined groups by 2 physicians. For automated tagging and reporting, the text analysis software Averbis Extraction Platform (AEP) was used. Special features of the system are a morphological analysis for the decomposition of compound words as well as the recognition of noun phrases, abbreviations and negated statements. Based on the extracted standardized keywords, findings rep…
Seroepidemiology of hepatitis A and B and vaccination status in staff at German schools for the handicapped
2016
This study aims to assess serostatus and vaccination status of hepatitis A and B among staff at schools for the handicapped. We also wanted to investigate factors associated with serostatus, number of infections with hepatitis A/hepatitis B at work, and factors influencing being vaccinated or not. The cross-sectional study was carried out between August 2010 and August 2012 at 13 German schools for severely handicapped. Data were analyzed using blood samples, vaccination documents, and questionnaires. A total of 395 persons participated in our study (response: 59.7%), information on 367 could be used for analysis. Two respondents have been infected with HAV at work, 53.4% were anti-HAV sero…
Sickness presenteeism of German teachers: prevalence and influencing factors
2016
AbstractThe aim of the present study was to investigate teachers’ sickness presenteeism (SP). We examined the prevalence of SP in a sample of teachers as well as work-related and health-related influencing factors of teachers’ SP. We used a cross-sectional study design. Teachers working at different types of schools in Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany) participated in an online survey. We used Pearson’s Chi-squared test (in case of categorical variables) or Mann–Whitney-U-test (in case of continuous variables) to test for differences between SP and sociodemographic/work-related/health-related factors. Factors influencing SP were identified using multivariable logistic regression analyses. Nine…
Muscular Fitness and Work Ability among Physical Therapists.
2021
The Work Ability Index (WAI) is a validated and widely used tool in occupational research. However, normative values for physical therapists (PTs) by age and sex are lacking. Although the nature of PTs’ work is physically demanding, it is unknown whether muscular fitness is associated with their WAI. This study sought to provide reference WAI data for Spanish PTs and to evaluate the association between PTs’ muscular fitness and WAI. Data on WAI of 1005 PTs were collected using a questionnaire. A subgroup (n = 68) performed a battery of physical tests including grip strength, push-ups and back-extension endurance. Associations between muscular fitness and WAI were evaluated using logistic re…