Before effective treatments were introduced in the 1950s, tuberculosis was a leading cause of death and disability in the United States. Health care workers were at particular risk. Although the occupational risk of tuberculosis has been declining in recent years, this new book from the Institute of Medicine concludes that vigilance in tuberculosis control is still needed in workplaces and communities. Tuberculosis in the Workplace reviews evidence about the effectiveness of control measuresâ€"such as those recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionâ€"intended to prevent transmission of tuberculosis in health care and other workplaces. It discusses whether proposed regulations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would likely increase or sustain compliance with effective control measures and would allow adequate flexibility to adapt measures to the degree of risk facing workers.

In Massachusetts, a 12-year-old girl delivering newspapers is killed when a car strikes her bicycle. In Los Angeles, a 14-year-old boy repeatedly falls asleep in class, exhausted from his evening job. Although children and adolescents may benefit from working, there may also be negative social effects and sometimes danger in their jobs. Protecting Youth at Work looks at what is known about work done by children and adolescents and the effects of that work on their physical and emotional health and social functioning. The committee recommends specific initiatives for legislators, regulators, researchers, and employers. This book provides historical perspective on working children and adolescents in America and explores the framework of child labor laws that govern that work. The committee presents a wide range of data and analysis on the scope of youth employment, factors that put children and adolescents at risk in the workplace, and the positive and negative effects of employment, including data on educational attainment and lifestyle choices. Protecting Youth at Work also includes discussions of special issues for minority and disadvantaged youth, young workers in agriculture, and children who work in family-owned businesses.

Today, hazardous work kills 2.3 million people each year and injures millions more. Among the most compelling yet controversial forms of legal protection for workers is the right to refuse unsafe work. The rise of globalization, precarious work, neoliberal politics, attacks on unions, and the idea of individual employment rights have challenged the protection of occupational health and safety for workers worldwide. In Hazard or Hardship, Jeffrey Hilgert presents the protection of refusal rights as a moral and a human rights question. Hilgert finds that the protection of the right to refuse unsafe work, as constituted under international labor standards, is a failure and calls for a reexamination of worker health and safety policy from the ground up. The current model of protection follows an individual employment rights framework, which fails to protect workers against the inherent social inequalities within the employment relationship. To adequately protect the right to refuse as a human right, both in North America and around the world, Hilgert argues that a broader protection must be granted under a freedom of association framework. Hazard or Hardship will be a welcome resource for labor and environmental activists, trade union leaders, labor lawyers and labor law scholars, industrial relations experts, human rights advocates, public health professionals, and specialists in occupational safety and health.

This book has been designed to meet the needs of anyone working in this field, but particularly those completing the occupational health component of a basic health care programme or those pursuing a career in Occupational Health Nursing.