WORKPLACE SAFETY GROUP

Risk-assessment tools and adaptive capacity enhancement to prevent and manage the hazards of today's workplaces 

Historically, workplaces were contaminated with biological and chemical agents that are known to cause a variety of illnesses ranging from respiratory disease to cancers. Thanks to worker protection laws passed in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, regulations are now in place that minimize most of those hazardous exposures by motivating management to employ cleaner processes and through required notice postings of hazards in the workplace, better training of workers so they can avoid hazardous situations, and more focused first responses when breaches occur. 

Today's workplaces are different. With advanced technology and automation, exposure concerns have shifted to technological failures that can jeopardize workers, repetition fatigue that can lead to lack of focus and physical fumbling, and exposures to the new, emerging technological delivery systems themselves. Included here are biologically active waveforms, untested for safety, that are attendant to workplace automation, the use of mobile devices, WiFi, and device to machine connections that are portended through the growing Internet of Things. While historical workplace hazards could be monitored by environmental wipe tests, air monitoring and worker surveillance including blood and urine testing, the workplaces of today are far more complex as is lag in the development of safety interventions to protect workers from unknown and emerging threats. 

The Workplace Safety Group applies scientific evidence-based tools, with progress biomarkers, to assess workplace risks, including non-invasive biomarkers and survey instruments to both identify workplace safety procedures for management to apply and empower workers to take self-help steps while the bigger picture of safety is being figured out.