Making child care centers SAFER: a non-regulatory approach to improving child care center siting.
(17/24)
Licensed child care centers are generally considered to be safe because they are required to meet state licensing regulations. As part of their licensing requirements, many states inspect child care centers and include an assessment of the health and safety of the facility to look for hazardous conditions or practices that may harm children. However, most states do not require an environmental assessment of the child care center building or land to prevent a center from being placed on, next to, or inside contaminated buildings. Having worked on several sites where child care centers were affected by environmental contaminants, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) endeavor to raise awareness of this issue. One of ATSDR's partner states, Connecticut, took a proactive, non-regulatory approach to the issue with the development its Child Day Care Screening Assessment for Environmental Risk Program. (+info)
Developing and implementing the Active Design Guidelines in New York City.
(18/24)
Influence of personal characteristics, job-related factors and psychosocial factors on the sick building syndrome. Danish Indoor Climate Study Group.
(20/24)
The influence of personal characteristics, life-style, job-related factors, and psychosocial work factors on symptoms of the sick building syndrome was investigated in Greater Copenhagen, Denmark. The buildings were not characterized beforehand as "sick" or "healthy." Of the 4369 employees sent a questionnaire, 3507 returned them. Multivariate logistic regression analyses of the multifactorial effects on the prevalence of work-related mucosal irritation and work-related general symptoms among the office workers showed that sex, job category, work functions (handling of carbonless paper, photocopying, work at video display terminals), psychosocial factors of work (dissatisfaction with superiors or colleagues and quantity of work inhibiting job satisfaction) were associated with work-related mucosal irritation and work-related general symptoms, but these factors could not account for the differences between the buildings as to the prevalence of the symptoms. The building factor (i.e., the indoor climate) was strongly associated with the prevalence of the symptoms. (+info)
Childhood cancer in relation to a modified residential wire code.
(21/24)
Several studies have found associations between wire configuration codes, a proxy for historical residential magnetic field exposure, and childhood cancer. The Wertheimer-Leeper coding method was modified by eliminating the distinction between thick and thin primaries, distinguishing only between open and spun secondaries, and reducing the number of categories from five to three. The association between the modified code and measured magnetic fields was similar to the association with the original wire code. The modified code was used to reanalyze data from a case-control study of childhood cancer in the Denver metropolitan area. In the original study, cases were diagnosed from 1976 to 1983 among children under age 15 and compared to controls selected through random digit dialing. Wire codes for the residence at diagnosis yielded imprecise elevations of two and above for very high current configuration homes or modest 1.5-fold elevations for a dichotomous wire code. In contrast, the modified Wertheimer-Leeper code generated risk estimates that were both precise and markedly elevated for the high wire code (HWC) compared to low wire code (LWC) classifications, with medium wire code (MWC) showing little or no increase in risk. High wire code yielded odds ratios of 1.9 for total cancers (95% CI: 1.1-3.2), 2.9 for leukemias (95% CI: 1.5-5.5), and 2.5 for brain cancer (95% CI: 1.1-5.5) that were not confounded by measured potential risk factors for childhood cancer. These risk estimates are larger than the dichotomized results and more precise than those from the original five-level wire code, though limitations in the original study remain, particularly potential control selection bias.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS) (+info)
Deaths and injuries due to the earthquake in Armenia: a cohort approach.
(22/24)
BACKGROUND: This is the first population-based study of earthquake injuries and deaths that uses a cohort approach to identify factors of high risk. As part of a special project that collected data about the population in the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Northern Armenia on 7 December 1988, employees of the Ministry of Health working in the earthquake zone on 7 December 1988, and their families, were studied as a cohort to assess the short and long term impact of the disaster. The current analysis assesses short term outcomes of injuries and deaths as a direct result of the earthquake. METHODS: From an unduplicated list of 9017 employees, it was possible to contact and interview 7016 employees or their families over a period extending from April 1990 to December 1992. The current analysis presents the determinants of 831 deaths and 1454 injuries that resulted directly from the earthquake in our study population of 32,743 people (employees and their families). RESULTS: Geographical location, being inside a building during the earthquake, height of the building, and location within the upper floors of the building were risk factors for injury and death in the univariate analyses. However, multivariate analyses, using different models, revealed that being in the Spitak region (odds ratio [OR] = 80.9, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 55.5-118.1) and in the city of Gumri (OR = 30.7, 95% CI: 21.4-44.2) and inside a building at the moment of the earthquake (OR = 10.1, 95% CI: 6.5-15.9) were the strongest predictors for death. Although of smaller magnitude, the same factors had significant OR for injuries. Building height was more important as a factor in predicting death than the location of the individual on various floors of the building except for being on the ground floor of the building which was protective. CONCLUSIONS: Considering that most of the high rise buildings destroyed in this earthquake were built using standard techniques, the most effective preventive effort for this disaster would have been appropriate structural approaches prior to the earthquake. (+info)
Experimental studies of subjective response to road traffic-induced building vibration.
(23/24)
The road traffic-induced building vibration was recorded continuously for 24 hr in three orthogonal axes outside and inside the building. Several alternative objective methods of quantifying the severity of exposures to whole-body road traffic-induced building vibration are used. The relationship between the results of all objective evaluation methods of vibration-induced by road traffic and the subjective responses to building vibration are compared. It was conducted that the ISO 2631-2 z-axis frequency weighting combined with a measure of vibration dose value (VDV = [integral of a4(t) dt)]1/4 may use a practicable objective evaluation procedure in buildings than L10 percentile vibration levels. It was also cleared that the L10 percentile vibration levels at the ground boundary of the regulation law of Japan Environmental Agency must be low levels. (+info)
Evaluation of whole-body road traffic vibration in building.
(24/24)
Level fluctuating vibration has been evaluated by the cumulative index L10, but some investigators suggest that the L10 cannot represent an adverse comment on vibration. In order to clarify the compliant, various factors involving vibration need to be analysed together by statistical methods, for instance factor analysis or quantum theory. The authors investigated the relationship between an evaluation index and human sensation of vibration in a subjective experiment in a wooden house. The subjects were exposed to vertical road traffic vibration reproduced with an electrodynamic vibrator placed near the house. The range of vibration levels at surfaces in contact with the subjects were from 50dB to 70dB in root mean square of frequency weighted acceleration level, i.e. the vibration level. Numbers assigned by the subjects and evaluation indices of the vibration level were analysed by applying the Stevens power law. The results showed that L10 or Leq (55) could become an effective index for the assessment of subjective perception of level fluctuating vibration in a wooden house. (+info)