Browsing: Emerging risks | Page 13

Researchers have identified links between common workplace chemicals and motor neuron disease, showing the need for safer alternatives, and between the occupational use of disinfectants among pregnant workers and childhood allergies.

Workers who are children face unique health and safety challenges at work, but their employers' policies and processes are often not age-appropriate and block them from reporting issues or engaging with safety, the director of a children's organisation says.

A significant proportion of Australian workers believe their postures worsened after they shifted to remote arrangements for the COVID-19 pandemic, showing employers must act as hybrid work becomes a permanent fixture.

Workers experiencing the emotional fallout from a workplace accident or injury can go on to endanger others, which is a hazard employers have a duty to manage, a senior employment and safety lawyer has warned.

"Languishing" workers tend to slip under the radar of workplace health and wellbeing interventions, increasing their risk of developing serious mental illnesses, behavioural change researchers have told a Sydney seminar.

A case report on a Scandinavian firefighter with melanoma has highlighted the dangers of a banned but still prevalent hazardous substance, and the need to assess the interaction of multiple workplace risk factors and the effectiveness of PPE.

In this Q&A with OHS Alert, two senior workplace safety lawyers examine the ongoing COVID-related challenges faced by safety managers, a wide range of emerging WHS risks and what employers and officers can do about them, and failings common to prosecuted WHS duty holders.

Australian workers are using cocaine at "unprecedented" levels, and employers are being urged to implement interventions to safeguard workers, prevent safety incidents and tackle workplace drug use cultures.

• Workplace harassment to be tackled by IR changes in Qld; and
  
• Beware workplace power imbalances on Valentine's Day.

Standing, treadmill and cycling desks improve workers' cognitive performance, and can counteract the increase in sedentary behaviour associated with pandemic-forced working-from-home arrangements, Australian researchers say.