Epidemiologic Research on the Etiology of Injuries at Work

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONDuring the past half century, traumatic injuries have emerged as a pre-em inent public health challenge. Injury is the leading cause of hospitalization and death in persons younger than 45 years of age; results in more years of potential life lost than cancer or heart disease; and is second only to respiratory conditions as a reason for contact with physicians (3). One third of all nonfatal injuries and one sixth of all injury fatalities among adults aged 20 to 64 occur on the job (3).The public health response to a broad spectrum of occupational health and safety problems has embraced three traditional applications of epide miology: surveillance; etiologic research (i.e. studies to identify risk factors); and evaluation of the effect of interventions. With the increased recognition of injury as a serious public health problem, it is logical that efforts to prevent and control occupational injury should rely on the same epidemio logical approach used to attack other public health problems (9, 13).In industry and government, the role of surveillance in identifying the most important occupational injury problems, targeting high-risk popUlations, and monitoring trends has been recognized for a long time (16, 26, 28,48). The application of epidemiological methods to the study of the etiology of occupational injury is far less common.This review is intended to summarize etiologic studies of occupational injuries, identify their methodological strengths and limitations, point out needs for methodological improvement in such studies, and suggest a research agenda. In order to limit the scope of this broad topic, studies focusing exclusively on musculoskeletal injuries and intentional injuries have been excluded from this review. The epidemiological research literature on back injuries has been reviewed elsewhere (l6a, 18a, 37). Intentional injuries have only been recognized as a serious public health problem (outside and within the workplace) within the past decade (2a, 34, 52a, 58) and the preponderance of causality studies to date have appeared in criminology and sociology literature, rather than in the public health literature. BACKGROUND

Associação entre as características individuais e sócio-econômicas e os acidentes do trabalho em Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil

“…Posteriormente, realizou-se a análise multivariada somente para os trabalhadores industriais, e os resultados foram similares. (Veazie, 1994). No entanto, estudos de casos e controles estão sujeitos a uma série de possíveis vieses: * para renda e escolaridade(em todos os grupos-controle) e também para idade e cor (controles de trabalho) ** procurando emprego, insatisfeito com chefe, insatisfeito com salário e hostilidade no emprego.…”

“…A idade tem sido um dos fatores de risco mais estudados (Veazie, 1994), sendo os resultados controversos (Laflamme, 1995). Os resultados da Tabela 2 mostram que os trabalhadores com mais de trinta anos tiveram duas vezes mais risco de acidentar-se.…”

“…Veazie et al (1994), em uma revisão entre 1970 e 1992, encontraram apenas 117 estudos sobre fatores de risco. Destes, 32 foram considerados pelos autores como satisfatórios por não apresentarem erros de classificação ou vieses e por controlarem fatores de confusão.…”

Educational status and organizational safety climate: Does educational attainment influence workers’ perceptions of workplace safety?

“…Selfreported measures have been effectively used in accident and safety analyses (e.g., Gyekye, 2005Gyekye, , 2006Siu et al, 2003). Besides, while epidemiologic reports have been found to be faulty, biased and deficient because of poor documentation (Parker et al, 1994;Veazie et al, 1994), research reports have found self-reported accident rates to be closely related to documented accident rates (Smith et al, 2001). Notwithstanding the above-mentioned limitation, the current study contributes to the growing body of research which has identified educational status as important variable for investigation in safety management policies.…”

Percepção de exposição a cargas de trabalho e riscos de acidentes em Pelotas, RS (Brasil)

“…Ampla revisão bibliográfica revelou grande número de artigos descritivos, mas foi reduzido o número de referências sobre as cargas de trabalho e o risco de acidentes. Conforme revisão realizada por Veazie et al 21 O presente estudo utilizou o delineamento de casos e controles para investigar a associação entre a exposição às cargas de trabalho, verificada através da percepção dos trabalhadores, e os acidentes de trabalho notificados em Pelotas. Para cada caso foram selecionados três controles: um trabalhador da mesma empresa, um vizinho do acidentado e um controle populacional.…”