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Biomedical subjects

C Levenstein

Publications and source records attributed to C Levenstein.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

The work environment impact assessment: a methodologic framework for evaluating health-based interventions.

BACKGROUND: A new conceptual framework is needed to evaluate health-based interventions based on the premise that like the environment, workplaces are complex ecologies. The proposed Work Environment Impact Assessment (WEIA) is analogous to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), a concept and method developed 30 years ago in the environmental policy arena to evaluate potential consequences of human activity for the natural environment. WEIA entails identifying and evaluating both intended and unintended consequences, or outcomes, associated with a particular intervention. Because the workplace is a complex ecology, changes in one aspect may lead to changes in other aspects. WEIA calls for a systematic and comprehensive approach to the total work environment. METHODS: To illustrate the utility of WEIA we use this approach to evaluate an intervention to reduce the public's exposure to the pesticide Alar, which had been used on apples until it was withdrawn from the market in 1989. RESULTS: While this intervention did indeed reduce the public's exposure to Alar, it also led to other unintended consequences, namely new ergonomic hazards for apple pickers, increased stress levels in the orchards for both pickers and growers, as well as new worker, and perhaps public, exposure to potent neurotoxins. CONCLUSIONS: The goal of using WEIA is not to engage in a risk-risk debate that stalls worthwhile interventions. Rather, we propose that by conducting a Work Environment Impact Assessment, all possible positive and negative "ripple" effects stemming from an intervention can be considered, so that the intervention can be designed to achieve maximum benefit.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Good Practice Guidelines for occupational health research funded by the private sector.

The role of the private sector in funding academic research is increasing and the well-developed guidelines for government-sponsored research do not apply to the academic-industry arena. Good Practice Guidelines for privately funded occupational health research are necessary. Industry sponsors and academic researchers belong to differing systems with differing goals and means to achieve and evaluate them. As a result, problems are inherent in the relationship. Guidelines would benefit industry by providing criteria against which industry-funded research could be judged and evaluated. Guidelines would help university researchers assure that their work is examined and criticized on its merits. Such protection would foster quality research over the long term. Here, we consider the issues involved and explore questions that came out of a workshop convened under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When private funding is involved, university scientists have a professional responsibility to ensure that the integrity of researchers, subjects, and the research process is well protected. A body of experience allows us to create Good Practice Guidelines beneficial to all parties.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2001

Organized labor, public health, and tobacco control policy: a dialogue toward action.

An action-oriented conference, Organized Labor, Public Health, and Tobacco Control Policy, was held in September 2000 in Boston, Massachusetts. Labor union leaders, tobacco control and public health activists, researchers, and practitioners met for two days to: 1) learn about existing labor-based tobacco control initiatives; 2) educate one another about resources, barriers, and opportunities for labor-public health joint action on tobacco policy; 3) and identify where agendas overlap and form the basis for specific next steps in collaborative efforts in tobacco-related research, training, and advocacy. This report summarizes presentations and participant discussions to inform readers of the information exchanged and of the enthusiasm shared by conference participants translated into a set of joint recommendations for increased labor-based and joint labor-public health action to reduce the burden of tobacco on working people.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2001

Low-hanging fruit: social values and industry discretion in toxics use reduction policy.

In this article, we examine the implementation of an innovative environmental policy, the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act (TURA), which seeks to shift environmental intervention into production through the reduction of toxics use. TURA attempts to promote change by requiring facilities to undertake toxics use reduction planning as a way to identify opportunities for reducing hazardous chemical use, and the creation of a new third-party policy actor known as the toxics use reduction planner to monitor facility compliance. We draw upon interviews with toxics use reduction planners to highlight the limited nature of change actually wrought by toxics use reduction planning. The article concludes that industry preferences, while not wholly inconsistent with change, have largely determined the way in which this public policy has been implemented.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2001

Robbers aboard: workplace violence and (in)security in public transport in Salvador, Brazil.

This paper examines the impact of violent crime on the working conditions, health, and security of bus drivers and bus conducters in the public transport system of Salvador, Brazil. The research included in-depth extensive interviews with workers, labor union officials, users, managers, and police. The typical social profile of offenders is as poor, unemployed youths, mostly without criminal records, seeking easy money mainly for leisure pursuits. Takes are minimal. We observed a pattern of bus robbery as a psychological power-game which for the bus workers, apart from physical injuries and fatalities, generates fear, identity conflicts, tense relations with users, and labor conflicts regarding the recuperation of stolen fares and worker and user security issues. We outline and evaluate the efficiency of security measures, including the use of lethal force by police.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2000

Local labor unions' positions on worksite tobacco control.

OBJECTIVES: This report describes local unions' positions on tobacco control initiatives and factors related to these positions. METHODS: A national random sample of local union leaders was surveyed by telephone. RESULTS: Forty-eight percent of local unions supported worksite smoking bans or restrictions, and only 8% opposed both a ban and a restriction. CONCLUSIONS: Support for tobacco control initiatives among local unions was higher than might be expected on the basis of previous evidence. Engaging unions in smoking policy formation is likely to contribute to the larger public health goal of reducing smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke among workers.

Attitude↗
PubMed2000

Dependent convergence: the importation of technological hazards by semiperipheral countries.

This article complements the substantial body of literature produced over the last three decades on the export of hazards from developed countries to developing countries. After reviewing the central arguments proposed by this literature, the authors add to the debate by focusing on the role of national actors in the importation of these hazards, based on the experience of late 1970s' developments in the petrochemical industry in Brazil. The Brazilian case indicates that social struggles and/or interactions among actors in developing and developed nations determine to what extent hazardous technologies are imported without environmental controls and to what extent their hazardous effects are controlled by these nations. This study suggests that the future development of a more inclusive theory of export-import of hazardous technologies and products should take into account the dialectical relationship established between social actors internal to the exporting and importing countries.

Brazil↗
PubMed1999

Feeling the heat: displaced tobacco workers in North Carolina.

Tobacco control is a successful public health movement, but little attention is being paid to what this success means for workers and communities who are economically dependent on tobacco. The social context of job loss for these workers remains largely unstudied. We conducted a case study of a cigarette manufacturing facility closure in Reidsville, North Carolina and report on the effects of the closure for workers and the community. Results suggest the need for: 1) worker education directed toward developing skills for jobs that pay family-supporting wages, and 2) community-driven strategies to attract new businesses that offer such jobs. Public health organizations, labor unions, community development groups, business representatives, civic leaders, academic institutions, and others should unite in efforts to assist tobacco-dependent workers and communities to transition to other economic bases. These efforts should be funded by the tobacco industry.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1997

Back to the future: sweatshop conditions on the Mexico-U.S. border. II. Occupational health impact of maquiladora industrial activity.

Present working conditions in one of the most active areas of the maquiladora system along the Mexico-U.S. border are reminiscent of nineteenth-century U.S. sweatshops. The organization of production is Tayloristic and authoritarian, with detailed division of labor, repetitive simple tasks, and piecework wages. Modern participative management styles are not apparent in the maquiladora setting. This study consists of two separate but interrelated surveys conducted in 1992, one of community leaders and this one of workers in maquiladora enterprises in the towns of Matamoros and Reynosa, Mexico. The community survey evaluated the economic and psychosocial impact of the maquiladora enterprise and was conducted simultaneously to the workers' survey and in the same Mexican towns where the workers lived and worked. The community leaders acknowledged the employment opportunities that maquiladora factories had brought to the region but believed them to have high environmental and psychosocial costs. For the occupational component, a community-based survey of 267 maquiladora workers was conducted. participants were chosen with more than a year seniority in the industry and living in the two Mexican cities surveyed. They responded to an extensive questionnaire given by trained canvassers. The workers' survey found evidence that maquiladora workers (81% female) report symptoms from musculoskeletal disorders related to working conditions. Acute health effects compatible with chemical exposures were also identified. Prevalence of symptoms was correlated with increasing duration of exposure to ergonomic risk factors and qualitative chemical exposure indexes. Other chronic disease was not apparent. The survey demonstrated inequalities in salary, working hours, and safety training between the two communities. Matamoros workers are substantially better paid and work fewer hours per week than Reynosa workers. Most hazards reported in the worker's survey have been well studied in the general occupational health literature with respect to adverse health effects. Therefore, it is recommended that hazard surveillance studies would be more useful towards the goal of prevention than further etiologic studies. Specific recommendations on policy and remediation interventions are also made.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

A Multisectoral Approach to Prevention of Lead Poisoning in Hungary: Lessons Learned and Potential for Replicability Elsewhere.

Hungarian and American occupational and environmental health professionals are collaborating in a research and demonstration project designed to prevent lead poisoning in Hungary. Using a multisectoral approach, the project has three phases: data collection and review, risk communication, and facilitation of program and policy development. First, the project team reviewed relevant data of many types through a workshop at which commissioned papers were presented, key-informant interviews, and a survey of knowledge, attitudes, and practices. The team then conducted a multifaceted risk-communication program to disseminate information about lead hazards in general and what had been learned about lead exposures and lead poisoning in Hungary. It presented training workshops for workers exposed to lead at work and for groups serving as "mediators" who could affect others' behavior, such as nongovernmental organizations, labor unions, public health nurses, pediatricians, teachers and students, and coordinators of the Hungarian Healthy Cities Project. It also conducted a campaign of "concentrated action," using a variety of communication approaches directed to car owners, pregnant women, mothers of small children, and others, in order to convey knowledge and change attitudes, emphasizing emotional appeals. Project leaders will organize a multisectoral working group to develop, coordinate, and implement an overall activity plan aiming to reduce lead pollution. The approach developed and used in this project provides a model for preventing lead poisoning that may be transferrable or adaptable for use for preventing lead poisoning and other environmental health problems elsewhere.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1997

The Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union: refining strategies for labor.

In a period of declining union membership and severe economic and environmental crisis it is important that labor unions rethink their traditional roles and organizational goals. Responding to some of these problems and reflecting a history of innovative and progressive unionism, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) has sought to address occupational and environmental health problems within the context of a political struggle. This study suggests that by joining with the environmental movement and community activists, by pursuing a strategy of coalition building, and by developing an initiative to build and advocate for a new political party, OCAW provides a model for reinvigorating trade unionism in the United States.

Chemical Industry↗
PubMed1997

Labor positions on worksite tobacco control policies: a review of arbitration cases.

Although worksite smoking restrictions have become increasingly common in recent years, organized labor has generally not been involved in the adoption of these policies; some evidence suggests that unions often oppose the adoption of worksite smoking policies. To contribute to an understanding of labor's role in tobacco control policies, this paper reports the results of a review of 85 arbitration cases and 5 cases of unfair labor practices charges published between 1986 and 1994. In most of the cases reviewed, management unilaterally imposed a new smoking policy, which the union then grieved. Union opposition to the policy generally focused on the process by which the policy was adopted, rather than the content of the policy; the concern was that management had breached its duty to bargain with the union regarding the adoption of the policy. These results underline the importance of joint labor-management actions on worksite tobacco control policies.

Employee Grievances↗
PubMed1996

Policy implications of intervention research: research on the social context for intervention.

Intervention research is of significance because the failure or success of particular interventions may have influence on policy and practice. Poorly designed interventions may impede progress in health and safety. Frequently, interventions are based on scientific/ technical definitions of occupational health and safety problems but involve intrusion into complex sociotechnical work environments. Intervention research must be built on a solid foundation of social science research. An example of research useful to health and safety intervention is the Gray Institute study of management practices in the chemical industry that was commissioned by OSHA a few years ago. It focused on safety management in chemical manufacturing firms and their contractors, including a survey of managers and contractors and nine intensive case studies of particular plants. The study describes safety management practices in the best firms in the industry. Such research can provide the groundwork for effective safety interventions in the industry, including training and training requirements, experimentation with redefined managerial responsibilities, regulation of contractors, and others. It also suggests the kinds of useful data that might be collected by NIOSH in the normal course of health and safety studies. Finally, it suggests that the interdisciplinary teams currently investigating occupational health and safety should be expanded to include social scientists.

Chemical Industry↗