Documents Burdorf, Alex 42 results

"Objective
This paper discusses the failure and success of society to decrease the adverse health effects of asbestos exposure on workers' health in relation to scientific knowledge.
Methods
The findings are based on a narrative literature review.
Results
Early warnings of the adverse health effects of workplace exposure to asbestos were published already in the 1930s. Serious health effects, such as malignancies and fibrosis due to occupational asbestos exposure, were highlighted in major medical journals and textbooks in late 1960s. New technologies could detect also asbestos fibers in the lung of non-occupational exposed persons in the 1970s. The first bans for using asbestos came in the early 1970s, and more general bans by authorities came in the 1980s and continue until today.
Conclusions
The rather late recognition of adverse effects of asbestos exposure in the general population and measures to decrease the exposure through more general bans came rather late. However, the very strong measures such as general bans in many countries have been a success. A Swedish study showed that the general ban and other measures have decreased the risk of malignancies due to occupational exposure. The effect of the bans on adverse effects in the general population has yet to be studied. Analysis of fibers in the lungs of persons born after the bans could be an efficient method."

"In the past three years, we have witnessed the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, with unprecedented challenges to all aspects of human life worldwide. In the workforce, it rapidly became clear that workers in some jobs were more likely to suffer adverse consequences for morbidity and mortality. In our earlier editorials in the Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment and Health, we reviewed emerging evidence, suggesting that well-established socio-economic health inequalities intermingled with occupational risk factors, making it difficult to target the conditions at work that contributed to the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in working populations ..."

"The future of work is rapidly changing, with higher flexibility of the labour market and increasing informal employment in many countries worldwide. There is also an increased pressure to extend working careers until older age. We introduce the concept of working life expectancy as a useful metric, capturing the expected numer of years in paid employment across the working age individuals, in particular among different groups. We describe factors that determine working life expectancy. Macro-level factors focus on the socioeconomic and political context that influences labour force participation, primarily policies and legislation in specific countries. At the meso level, employment contracts and working conditions are important. The micro level shows that individual characteristics, such as education, gender, and age, influence working careers. There are three important groups with a disadvantaged position in the labour market—workers with chronic diseases, workers with impairing disabilities, and workers aged 50 years or more. Within each of these disadvantaged groups, macro-level, meso-level, and micro-level factors that influence entering and exiting paid employment are discussed. To assure that paid employment is available for everyone of working age and that work contributes to better health, specific challenges need to be addressed at the macro, meso, and micro levels. To reach inclusive labour force participation, national policies, company practices, and workplace improvements need to be aligned to ensure safe and healthy workplaces that contribute to the health and wellbeing of workers and their communities."

"Objective
The Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health was launched 50 years ago. In this paper we describe how research topics have changed over time.
Methods
A complete list of all 2899 articles in the past 50 years was compiled. Each article was coded for type of exposure, type of health outcome, research design, first author, and country of correspondence address. Count of citations was based on the Scopus database.
Results
Overall, the attention for chemical exposure in the first 30 years has shifted towards the psychosocial work environment, shift work, and physical work load. These shifts in exposure are mirrored by increased attention over time for mental disorders and musculoskeletal disorders. Cardiovascular disorders and cancer have been studied consistently over the past 50 years. Researchers from Scandinavian countries have been responsible for about 50% of the Journal's content, while authorship has broadened to about 30 countries in recent years.
Conclusion
During the past 50 years, some research topics have consistently remained highly visible in the Journal, whereas other topics have gained or lost interest. In terms of authors' contribution, the Journal has its roots in research from the Nordic countries, but has evolved over time as a truly international periodical with a well-recognized position in research on occupational health."

"At the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, it is our fundamental conviction that workers' health
is a value in itself. To put it simply, work must not be health-hazardous, and work must not make the worker neither
physically nor mentally sick. In our minds, there is no need for any further rationale for healthy and safe work.
That said, it would be naïve to think that, in a bottom-line world, the bottom-line would not count with regard
to work and health. It does count at individual, company, and societal level. At individual level, a worker may worry
about reduced payment during sickness absence. ..."

"About one year ago, we wrote about how the COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding worldwide and started to impact our personal and professional lives (1). Little did we know that, one year later, more than 2.5 million people would have died, with the highest death tolls in Europe, North America, and Latin America (2). Whereas in many countries, life expectancy has increased steadily over the past decades with a couple of months per year, emerging evidence shows that the COVID-19 pandemic will abruptly end this trend in various countries. As one of the most affected countries, life expectancy at birth in the US was down during the first half of 2020 already 1.0 per year compared to 2019 (3). Projections indicate a potential loss in life expectancy of 1.13 years in 2020 for the total US population, resulting in the lowest life expectancy since 2003. ..."

"Objective
This study aimed to construct a job exposure matrix (JEM) for risk of becoming infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in an occupational setting.
Methods
Experts in occupational epidemiology from three European countries (Denmark, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom) defined the relevant exposure and workplace characteristics with regard to possible exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In an iterative process, experts rated the different dimensions of the COVID-19-JEM for each job title within the International Standard Classification of Occupations system 2008 (ISCO-08). Agreement scores, weighted kappas, and variances were estimated.
Results
The COVID-19-JEM contains four determinants of transmission risk [number of people, nature of contacts, contaminated workspaces and location (indoors or outdoors)], two mitigation measures (social distancing and face covering), and two factors for precarious work (income insecurity and proportion of migrants). Agreement scores ranged from 0.27 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.25–0.29] for ‘migrants' to 0.76 (95% CI 0.74–0.78) for ‘nature of contacts'. Weighted kappas indicated moderate-to-good agreement for all dimensions [ranging from 0.60 (95% CI 0.60–0.60) for ‘face covering' to 0.80 (95% CI 0.80–0.80) for ‘contaminated workspaces'], except for ‘migrants' (0.14 (95% CI -0.07–0.36). As country differences remained after several consensus exercises, the COVID-19-JEM also has a country-axis.
Conclusions
The COVID-19-JEM assesses the risk at population level using eight dimensions related to SARS-COV-2 infections at work and will improve our ability to investigate work-related risk factors in epidemiological studies. The dimensions of the COVID-19-JEM could also be valuable for other future communicable diseases in the workplace."