Drugs and alcohol

People who have sustained serious workplace injuries are at increased risk of suicide or fatal overdose, according to a study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

Driving case law

Around 850,000 people work in safety-sensitive industries in Australia. SafeWork Laboratories toxicologist Andrew Leibie said the latest figure indicated at least 18,500 workers could be operating under the influence of the hard drug, known as crystal meth or ice in its most potent form. He added that the figure could be much higher because many workplaces did not test for drug use.Workers who could be operating machinery or driving a vehicle would have impaired senses, the report warns, and would pose a risk to their own safety and the safety of co-workers.

Besides age-related hearing loss (presbycusis), environmental factors can have an impact too. Noise is the most obvious occupational one, but exposure to some substances, known as ototoxins, may harm our hearing or compound the damage noise causes.

Ambulance Victoria pleaded guilty to failing to provide a safe working environment and failing to ensure volunteer officers were not exposed to risks under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004. The organisation was fined A$200,000 (£113,500) on each charge at Warrnambool Magistrates’ Court on 8 March.

If you didn’t know what Dr Michael Hastings does for a living, his desk at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (MRC) provides some clues. Academic papers plus a plastic model of the human brain suggest that he’s a neuroscientist. But the mimosa sapling is the real give away, because Hastings studies the body clock and mimosa has a seminal place in our understanding of circadian rhythms.

In 2009 Nancy Leppink was appointed by President Obama to the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor. Her job as acting administrator was to help revivify the regulatory agency responsible for enforcing national labour standards including the minimum wage, child labour restrictions and statutory working time limits which had been almost dismantled under the previous administration.

The researchers analysed data from four previous cohort studies involving 19,280 men and 26,625 women from Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Participants were aged between 40 and 65, none of whom had diabetes when the study started.Questionnaires established participants’ exposure to bullying and violence at work in the previous 12 months.