Occupational ailments have an effect on 25,000 Connecticut workers each year: report | 2020-09-09

Farmington, CT — An approximated 25,000 operate-associated sicknesses are documented in Connecticut just about every 12 months, in accordance to a report produced Sept. 1 from UConn Health.

The report is dependent on 1997-2018 info from a few key resources: reports of men and women filing for workers’ compensation, physicians’ stories to the Occupational Ailments and Injuries Surveillance Program, and the Bureau of Labor Studies/Connecticut Office of Labor annual survey of staff. It does not incorporate traumatic injuries.

In 2018, an estimated 7,000 function-connected infectious diseases were reported, along with 9,000 chronic musculoskeletal disorders 2,000 lung conditions 800 skin ailments 300 hearing decline conditions and 5,000 “other” situations, including pressure, head aches, coronary heart ailments and “difficult-to-classify” health issues. Based on the workers’ comp information, perform-associated sicknesses were being most probable to happen in federal government (77.6%), manufacturing (44.2%) and trade (31.2%). According to the BLS info, the state’s fee of illness (14.1 per 10,000 workers) was 9% increased than in 2017.

 

Although the information precedes the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, “occupational sicknesses are evidently in our minds today as we see the risks posed by COVID-19 to frontline workers in well being care, transportation, retail and elsewhere,” Tim Morse, creator of the report and professor emeritus at UConn Health and fitness, stated a Sept. 2 press launch. “However, workers in Connecticut deal with numerous other infectious illnesses these kinds of as bloodborne exposures in health and fitness care Lyme disease and pores and skin conditions in outdoor employees musculoskeletal disorders in producing, places of work and design and task stress and heart situations in protective solutions.”

To lessen the danger of work-relevant sicknesses, UConn Well being recommends:

  • Conducting ergonomics evaluations to enable avoid musculoskeletal issues.
  • Using safer substitutes for cleaning chemical compounds.
  • Restricting infection threat by washing hands frequently, enhancing air flow programs, and applying N95 respirators or powered air-purifying respirators.