Reducing Laundry Linen Sharps Contamination: Employee Safety Management

Burken, Mitchell I.; Preston, William; Atkinson, Suzanne E.

doi:10.2307/30145533

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Engineering interventions have targeted hazards associated both with acute traumatic injury and with work-related musculoskeletal disorders. In the area of acute traumatic injury, interventions have included needle-sheathing phlebotomy/ venipuncture devices [Billiet et al, 1991;Goldwater et al, 1989] and sharps containers [Kraskinski et al, 1987;Ribner et al, 1987;Sellick et al, 1991;Makofsky et al, 1993;Burken et al, 1994] to prevent needle stick injuries; environmental designs of convenience stores to reduce robbery risk associated with homicides [Amandus, 1995]; petroleum drilling equipment designed to reduce tongs-related injury [Mohr et al, 1989]; and ground proximity and minimum safe altitude warning devices to prevent aircraft crashes [Loomis et al, 1982].…”

Section: Engineering Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and conduct of occupational injury intervention studies: A review of evaluation strategies

et al. 1997

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Occupational injuries continue to exact a great toll on American workers and their employers-the physical and financial costs are enormous. However, in the current political climate, few employers or regulatory agencies will implement injury prevention interventions without specific evidence of their effectiveness. This paper reviews the literature on the design, conduct, and evaluation of occupational injury interventions. Our review suggests that randomized controlled trials are rare and also notes that the quasi-experimental studies in the literature often use the weakest designs. We recommend a hierarchical approach to evaluating occupational injury interventions-beginning with qualitative studies, following up with simple quasi-experimental designs using historical controls, continuing with more elaborate quasi-experimental designs comparing different firms' experience, and, when necessary, implementing randomized controlled trials. Am.

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Section: Engineering Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and conduct of occupational injury intervention studies: A review of evaluation strategies

et al. 1997

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“…Sharp items are, as defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (USA) [ 8 ], objects which can penetrate the skin, such as needles, scalpels, or pieces of broken glass [ 9 ], as well as teeth or bone splinters [ 10 ]. It was shown that sharps contamination can be reduced to some extent with staff education, but cannot be excluded completely [ 11 ]. Besides sharps, expensive medical equipment finds its way into soiled garment and is thus lost for further use [ 12 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Detection of Foreign Items in Laundry Industry by Dual-Energy X-ray Transmission—Advantages and Limits

Bauer

Wagner

Leisner

2022

Sensors

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Firefighters, paramedics, nursing staff, and other occupational groups are in constant need of fast and proper cleaning of their professional workwear, not only during a pandemic. Thus, laundry technology needs to become more efficient and automated. Unfortunately, some steps of the cleaning process, such as finding and removing foreign items from pockets or belts, are still completed manually. This is not just time-consuming but potentially dangerous for the workers due to the hazardous nature of items such as scissors, scalpels, or syringes. Additionally, some items may damage the garments by staining or harm the laundry machines, causing malfunctions and process failure. On the one hand, these foreign items are often hidden inside the clothes, making detection very challenging with conventional superficial sensors. On the other hand, these items can be diverse and cannot be detected by metal detectors alone. X-ray transmission has proven to be a powerful tool for detecting items inside of objects. The dual-energy approach (DE-XRT) even allows obtaining quantitative information about the chemical composition of the measured materials. In this study, working garments were accompanied and filled with realistic foreign items. The potential of DE-XRT to detect those items was successfully shown.

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Reducing Laundry Linen Sharps Contamination: Employee Safety Management

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Design and conduct of occupational injury intervention studies: A review of evaluation strategies

Design and conduct of occupational injury intervention studies: A review of evaluation strategies

The Detection of Foreign Items in Laundry Industry by Dual-Energy X-ray Transmission—Advantages and Limits

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