Out Loud Blog

I got my H1N1 flu shot today. Finally. Talk about being a procrastinator, right?

I could blame my late vaccination on all sorts of things. Back in the fall, when the shot was in high demand, I didn’t qualify because I wasn’t in a high-risk category. I added my name to the waiting list at my doctor’s office with the understanding that they would call when more shots became available. “Should be about a week,” the receptionist told me. This was late November.

That week passed. Then another. All the while, both H1N1 cases and concerns were dwindling. Even so, I knew the vaccine was still important. By being vaccinated, I’d protect myself and also have less of a chance of passing the flu on to someone who would be in the high-risk category. It was the responsible thing to do.

On the other hand, H1N1 was shaping up to be not as big of a threat as everyone first feared. If I did catch H1N1, I’d probably be sick for a week and then back to my old self. Not to mention that the holidays were coming up and I was busy. So busy that I didn’t bother contacting my doctor, even as December passed and I still hadn’t received a call from the office. Never mind that it was being reported that the shot should now be available in my area – I never bothered to check.

This week, however, I couldn’t live down my H1N1 vaccine guilt. It’s National Influenza Vaccination Week, and health care professionals continue urging people to get the vaccine, even if major concerns about the flu have died down a bit.

This week, I also interviewed Dr. Noni MacDonald at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dr. MacDonald is a specialist in pediatric infectious disease. During our discussion, which will appear on EHSToday.com soon in the form of a podcast, she said a few things that caught my attention.

First, she suggested that during the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918, people would be falling all over themselves for a vaccine. “If they knew there was a vaccine to protect them, they’d be lined up around the block, standing in line for 4 days in a row to get it,” MacDonald said.

Additionally, while this flu isn’t turning out to be as deadly as originally feared, it’s still bad news. It’s sending young people to the hospital and putting them on ventilators – young people who normally would not end up in the hospital after contracting a case of the seasonal flu.

Finally, MacDonald reiterated that the vaccine is safe and that we need to weigh the risks of the flu versus the risks of the vaccine.

“We have a lot of experience with the influenza vaccine for a large number of years in a wide number of different kinds of populations. It’s a very safe vaccine,” she stressed.

“People have forgotten what these bad diseases can look like, and they ramp up their anxiety about risk about the vaccine as opposed to putting this into perspective,” she said about vaccines in general. “The risk of the vaccine is very, very small. The benefits of the vaccine are very large.”

I decided I couldn’t put off my vaccination any longer. Better late than never, right? I called my doctor’s office, confirmed that there was plenty of H1N1 vaccine available (whatever happened to that waiting list?) and stopped by early in the morning for the shot.

When I asked the nurse how many people were still coming in for this vaccine, she laughed at me.

“The rush was in October and November,” she said. “Now, not so much. We’re not seeing very many people get it now.” Then she stuck the needle into my arm and told me I was all set.

I have now finally, officially received my H1N1 flu shot. And I have to say – it didn’t even hurt.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, ruled that in the case of Elaine Chao v. Summit Contractors, OSHA regulation 29 C.F.R. Sec. 1910.12(a) “is unambiguous in that it does not preclude OSHA from issuing citations to employers for violations when their own employees are not exposed to any hazards related to the violations.” Therefore, according to the ruling, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) “abused its discretion in determining that the controlling employer citation policy conflicted with the regulation.”

This U.S. Court of Appeals ruling – that OSHA can issue citations to a “controlling” employer on a job site for violations even though that employer’s workers are not exposed to any hazards related to the violations – could have significant impact on many employers across the country. more…

ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) is a risk management control developed by the Health Physics community in the early days of research on radioactive substances.

The dose response effect from exposure to radioactive materials was not well known, as evidenced by the fact that so many of the early researchers died of radiation poisoning. Even as knowledge concerning the health effects of ionizing radiation grew, specific dose response correlations remained uncertain. Consequently, the approach to keep all exposures to radiation as low as reasonably achievable seemed to be prudent. more…

Great American Insurance Group is a believer about using incentives to promote employee health. This year, the Cincinnati-based company’s parent, American Financial Group, held a AFGreat Health Challenge in which it promised to give away a car and other prizes if at least 70 percent of employees participated in health screenings and if the company’s overall health scores improved compared to the previous year.

The incentive program was a success. More than 75 percent of the company’s 5,500 employees participated in some aspect of the six-month program. About half of the employees purchased pedometers that allowed them to upload their steps to a company Web site, track their progress and compete against each other in walking clubs.

On December 9, the company held a ceremony in which it awarded a 2009 Saturn Sky as a grand prize to a San Diego employee. It also gave away $10,000 and $5,000 shopping sprees, and a $2,500 gas card. Other finalists received Wii game systems.

Scott Beeken, AFG’s vice president for benefits strategy and planning, made the case for health promotion incentives both for health and productivity reasons and as a good financial move. “If a single at-risk employee can avoid a triple by-pass procedure, we’ll save as much as $75,000 and enable that person to remain a happy and healthy member of the Great American family for years to come. A $30,000 car seems like a pretty small price to pay for a payoff like that.”

During the program, health risk assessments showed more employees with good scores and fewer with poor scores compared to 2008. Employees who participated in the weight loss program lost an average of 18 pounds. Employees who participated in the walking program averaged more than 8,200 steps per day, about 2 miles more than the typical office worker walks per day. Screenings identified two employees with early stage cancers.

AFG’s health care costs this year have been holding steady. In fact, the company declared a health premium holiday for employees on several of the company’s health plans because of lower than expected costs.

Does OSHA need to “resurrect the process” for developing standards? Yes, says former NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D., J.D., who said in a world increasingly looking to the European Union for standards leadership, OSHA runs the risk of becoming “irrelevant.”

Howard, speaking at a symposium on “The Future of Occupational Safety and Health” sponsored by the International Safety Equipment Association, said the main issue contributing to the charge of irrelevance against OSHA is “the lack of connectivity between the current causes of worker injury, illness and death, and the absence of standards that address such causes.” more…

A safety consultant writes us: “I have a client that’s trying to convince all employees to stop wearing rings while working. Some employees are saying there are no facts and data to back up the ‘No Rings’ policy.” more…

I’ll be the first to admit that my relationship with regular exercise has been on-again, off-again at best. Obviously, I’m not alone. The Centers for Disease Control reports that more than 1 in 4 adults say they are obese, an increase of nearly 2 percent from 2005 to 2007. And to be honest, you had to go no further than the National Safety Congress last week to see how prevalent this problem is in our society. more…

A recent experience caused me to realize that EHS managers more and more frequently are becoming not just road warriors, but international road warriors, subjected to hours and even days spent traveling every week. I’m going to start this category off with my own road warrior story, but feel free to add your own comments and suggestions for ways to proactively utilize time spent in airports, train stations, taxis, etc., or, better yet, ways to get around recorded customer service messages to find a real person who can help.

I flew out to the National Safety Congress this year on a sunny Sunday morning, looking forward to landing just a couple of hours after I left – the benefit of east to west travel – and enjoying some relaxing hours by my hotel pool before the serious work started. I made the mistake of taking an airline I’ve heard nothing but complaints about and connecting in O’Hare, the nation’s second busiest airport. Recipe for disaster right? RIGHT! more…

Why would we change the name of a magazine – Occupational Hazards – that is celebrating its 70th anniversary in October? Well, we got the idea from you.

For the past 20 years (at least), we’ve been documenting the changes going on in the occupational safety and health field. Corporate staffs were slashed and the lines between various professional specialties started to blur as companies structured their programs around generalists. While their duties varied, many of them reported in our National Safety Survey that their responsibilities included safety, industrial hygiene, occupational health and environmental management. more…