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133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition
December 10-14, 2005
Philadelphia, PA
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133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA |
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Hester Lipscomb, PhD, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, Box 3834, Durham, NC 27110, 919 286-1722, hester.lipscomb@duke.edu, James Nolan, Local 2119, Carpenters District Council of Greater St Louis and Vicinity, 8886 Cozens Ave, Jennings, MO 63136, and Dennis Patterson, Local 1310, Carpenters District Council of Greater St louis and Vicinity, 509 Grand Ave, Waterloo, IL 62298.
Residential construction workers present challenges to epidemiologic study. Their jobsites are small, and their workplaces and employers change frequently. They have therefore been neglected in many occupational health efforts. We describe the collaboration of union carpenters and academic researchers in an active injury surveillance effort in which journeymen carpenters collected standardized information from injured peers in an effort to more clearly understand circumstances surrounding injuries. Through this effort, in which participation among injured carpenters was 80%, injuries from pneumatic nail guns were documented as responsible for 14% of all residential injuries. Data indicated that 65% of these injuries would likely have been prevented through use of a sequential trigger design which was rarely available. Apprentice carpenters were at particularly high risk (rate ratio 3.0 compared to journeymen) due in part to more exposure to a dangerous tool. Contributing human factors were also identified, including poor placement of non-firing hand, use of non-dominant hand, bypassed safety mechanism, and lack of eye protection. Training for apprentice carpenters was begun and the effectiveness of this endeavor is being evaluated through surveys of apprentice carpenters at various stages of training and through ongoing injury surveillance. We are also assessing changes in contractor purchasing behaviors and safety training for workers and the diffusion of sequential trigger tools to job sites. The ongoing process, made possible through ongoing collaborations of labor, management and academic researcher, provides a good example of surveillance being brought full circle from data collection, problem identification, intervention development, evaluation and ongoing feedback
Learning Objectives:
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.
The 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition (December 10-14, 2005) of APHA