Kjellstrom T

Comprehensive and updated throughout, this new edition makes it easy to detect, diagnose, and treat the full spectrum of problems caused by occupational or environmental factors, including physical, chemical, and biologic agents. An international cast of experts offers in-depth, authoritative guidance on clinical problems as well as the legal and regulatory issues impacting the practice of occupational and environmental medicine today. Section 1 is on principles and practice. Section 2 on work sectors and special populations includes a chapter on mining.

Environmental pollution has many facets, and the resultant health risks include diseases in almost all organ systems. Thus, a chapter on air and water pollution control links with chapters on, for instance, diarrheal diseases (chapter 19), respiratory diseases in children and adults (chapters 25 and 35), cancers (chapter 29), neurological disorders (chapter 32), and cardiovascular disease (chapter 33), as well as with a number of chapters dealing with health care issues.......

This chapter highlights the health risks of globalization without preventive systems and makes reference to the international efforts to ensure effective worker protection programs are in place. The improved global information and communications systems create new opportunities for occupational health advocacy that can help bring about such programs.

This paper considers how climate change may affect rural Australian mental health. Rural Australians live with various systematic disadvantages and many feel marginalised; climate change, especially drought, has worsened this. With drier conditions and more severe droughts expected in much of southern and eastern Australia over coming decades, and the demands for change and adaptation that this will present, we urgently need to understand the likely consequences for the mental health and wellbeing of people in rural Australia. Existing knowledge can guide us through understanding

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between the daily number of deaths, weather and ambient air pollution. METHOD: An ecological study. We assembled daily data for the city of Christchurch, New Zealand (population 300,000) from June 1988 to December 1993. We used Poisson regression models, controlling for season using a parametric method. RESULTS:

“Too hot” working environments are not just a question of “comfort”, but a real concern for health protection and ability to perform work tasks. For un-acclimatized persons, already at temperatures above 22.5 degrees C the ability to perform at full capacity is reduced, and for acclimatized persons this reduction starts at 26 degrees C (WBGT). The reduction in work ability can be considered a form of “disability” that should be taken into account when assessing the “burden of disease or ill health” caused by global warming.