S+H Staff

San Diego – Seventy-eight percent of college students reported that they drive while talking or texting on a cell phone, and about 50 percent said they text while driving on a freeway, according to a study conducted by the University of California, San Diego’s Trauma Epidemiology and Injury Prevention Research Center.

Emmitsburg, MD – From 2008 to 2010, fire departments responded to approximately 365,500 fires in residential buildings that caused an estimated 2,560 deaths, 13,000 injuries and $7.4 billion in property loss, according to a report released April 26 by the U.S. Fire Administration.

Atlanta –The percentage of adults 20 and older with high total cholesterol levels declined by 27 percent from 1999 to 2010, according to a data brief released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

In what Italian Health Minister Renato Balduzzi called a “historic” decision, an Italian court recently convicted two executives of failing to comply with safety rules and sentenced them to serve 16 years behind bars.

As I write this, nearly two months have passed since Safety+Health published an article on ladder safety (featuring incorrect photos), but the dust hasn’t yet settled. A new debate has emerged.

Abuse of prescription painkillers has become a crisis in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and its effect may be beginning to be felt in the workers’ compensation system.

Belt-tightening continues in Washington, as the Obama administration’s fiscal year 2013 budget request provides OSHA with only a modest funding increase.

Although the recession may have caused workers’ compensation costs to decline for employers, experts warn increased rates could be coming up.

Instruments and monitors are the product focus.

To combat the possibility of workers forming an addiction to painkillers, experts recommend that employers keep in touch with the injured worker and get the employee back to work as soon as possible.