Occupational Health and the Built Environment: Ethical Issues

Author(s):  
David B. Resnik

The built environment includes many different types of human-made structures, such as houses, apartments, factories, shopping malls, office buildings, schools, roads, sidewalks, airports, parks, cities, dams, waste sites, sewers, electric power lines, pipelines, suburbs, and cities. This chapter provides an overview of ethical issues related to occupational health and the built environment, including property rights versus public health, distribution of health risks and environmental justice, occupational health and safety standards, and housing standards. To address these issues, decision-makers should have access to scientific information concerning the health impacts of the built and workplace environment and should be aware of the basic values at stake. Affected stakeholders, as well as the public at large, should have meaningful input into government decision-making related to these issues.

Universe ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 169
Author(s):  
Cristina Lazzeroni ◽  
Sandra Malvezzi ◽  
Andrea Quadri

The rapid changes in science and technology witnessed in recent decades have significantly contributed to the arousal of the awareness by decision-makers and the public as a whole of the need to strengthen the connection between outreach activities of universities and research institutes and the activities of educational institutions, with a central role played by schools. While the relevance of the problem is nowadays unquestioned, no unique and fully satisfactory solution has been identified. In the present paper we would like to contribute to the discussion on the subject by reporting on an ongoing project aimed to teach Particle Physics in primary schools. We will start from the past and currently planned activities in this project in order to establish a broader framework to describe the conditions for the fruitful interplay between researchers and teachers. We will also emphasize some aspects related to the dissemination of outreach materials by research institutions, in order to promote the access and distribution of scientific information in a way suited to the different age of the target students.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swarna Weerasinghe

Health and safety standards are paramount to all agricultural workers and more so to the foreign seasonal farm workers. European, North American and Oceanic agricultural sector heavily depends on the foreign workers migrating temporarily to carryout seasonal agricultural work that are not attractive to local citizens. The aim of this chapter is to critically analyze existing workplace health and safety measures, policies and practices of Foreign agricultural workers with a secondary focus on Canadian public health standards that applies to COVID-19 pandemic control and beyond. During the pandemic, many countries opened international labour migration as a measure of economic recovery. Recent news media reported two Caribbean workers in the Canadian Agricultural sector, had died of COVID-19 complications. The basis of this chapter is the research based evidence that the author carried out on occupational health and safety standards of the population of foreign seasonal farm workers using a multi-method data collection: a scoping review of existing standards, policies and practices and personal interviews with seasonal agricultural workers and their employers. This chapter provides a critical analysis of data from multiple sources and from multiple jurisdictions to uncover gaps and malpractices of existing occupational health and safety practice standards for illness and injury prevention of foreign seasonal farm workers.


Author(s):  
Brooke S. West ◽  
◽  
Anne M. Montgomery ◽  
Allison R. Ebben

AbstractThe setting in which sex workers live and work is a critical element shaping health outcomes, in so far that different venues afford different sets of risk and protective factors. Understanding how contextual factors differ across venue types and influence health outcomes is thus essential to developing and supporting programmes promoting the rights and safety of people in sex work. In this chapter, we focus primarily on indoor workplaces, with the goals of: (1) elucidating unique social, economic, physical, and policy factors that influence the well-being of sex workers in indoor workplaces; (2) highlighting sex worker-led efforts in the Thai context through a case study of the organisation Empower Thailand; (3) describing best practices for indoor settings; and (4) developing a framework of key factors that must be addressed to improve the rights and safety of sex workers in indoor workplaces, and to support their efforts to organise. The chapter draws attention to convergences and divergences in key challenges that sex workers encounter in indoor venues in different global contexts, as well as opportunities to advance comprehensive occupational health and safety programmes. Indoor venues pose important potential for establishing and implementing occupational health and safety standards in sex work and also may provide substantial opportunity for collective organising given the close proximity of people working together. However, any efforts to improve the health and safety of sex workers must explicitly address the structural conditions that lead to power imbalances and which undermine sex worker agency and equality.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Arifiani Widyawati

Cooking is an activity that is repeatedly every day. Cooking by applying occupational health and safety will ease and simplify the process, the time and energy needed will also be more efficient. The purpose of this research is to raise public awareness of the importance of implementing occupational health and safety, specifically ergonomics and physiology in all activities, especially when cooking. The method that I used in this research is qualitative descriptive with data collection techniques through direct case studies in "Warmindo" around UNS. The result of this research is to inform the whole community about the importance of implementing occupational health and safety, specifically ergonomics and physiology. This research effort, so that the public knows and aware of the importance of implementing occupational health and safety, because if people apply occupational health and safety in their activities it will reduce the number of work accidents in Indonesia and the community will also save energy and time. this research can introduce the public to work that is safe, healthy, and avoid work-related diseases in accordance with existing standards in occupational safety and health regulations. If the community apply it to their lives so that it can have an impact by reducing the level of work accidents or injuries due to improper work positions.


Author(s):  
Daisy Fancourt

Working with the arts in health care can present a range of challenges and areas of sensitivity. This chapter considers some of the most important protocols when working in health. This includes crucial issues around patient safeguarding, such as codes of conduct for working with patients and the public, patient confidentiality, ways of flagging causes for concern, and considerations when undertaking photography or filming. It also looks at important aspects of health and safety, including standard infection control precautions, risk assessments, and occupational health. Finally, the chapter explores how to engage patients, public, and staff in interventions to provide a safe and friendly environment.


1999 ◽  
Vol 1999 (1) ◽  
pp. 585-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra K. Scholz ◽  
Ann Hayward Walker ◽  
Janet H. Kucklick ◽  
Robert G. Pond

ABSTRACT The potential and perceived environmental risks associated with dispersant use have been addressed by many scientific studies costing millions of dollars and tens of thousands of research hours. Nevertheless, decision makers still have many diverse and contradictory viewpoints, which can impede their ability to evaluate and reach consensus on the actual risks associated with this countermeasure. In an attempt to resolve the problem in a different way, a new approach was formulated, based on the following hypothesis: The inability to create a solid foundation for dispersant decision support is based not only on limitations to scientific information, but also on the wide differences in the way people understand and interpret this information. In other words, a critical aspect of improved decision making for dispersants is related to good risk communication, not more natural science studies. In 1994, industry initiated a research project to test this hypothesis and define the critical risk communication factors for dispersant decision making. This paper presents a summary of the identified dispersant risk communication issues. Building upon previous papers which described the project methodology and analytical results, this paper presents the risk communication messages which need to be shared with decision makers and the public. This information promotes a technically sound, clear, and common framework for evaluating the ecological risks associated with dispersant use in marine waters.


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