Exposure at work: offices, sites, field work and industrial premises. Schools and campuses are counted here.
OSHA investigation records show lockout was not attempted at all in at least 59% of fatal machine maintenance incidents, and a national audit of 2,632 machines explains why: procedures were posted at 9% of them. What the evidence says about guards, locks, and the short jobs that kill.
The largest prospective study of back belts found 17.1% back pain among daily wearers and 17.5% among those who never wore one. What the evidence supports instead is changing the task.
Hair cells do not grow back, and the safe exposure time halves with every three decibels. At 100 dBA – earbuds near maximum – the daily allowance is fifteen minutes; venues average 104 to 112 dB. The exposure table, the evidence on temporary threshold shift, and the protection actually worth buying.
Between 20 and 25% of epinephrine administrations in schools are to children with no known allergy — a first reaction, with no care plan. And the delay that turns a frightening afternoon into a fatal one is usually an antihistamine reached for first.
In 2024 the WHO dropped the droplet-versus-airborne distinction that underpinned decades of advice. Exhaled particles behave like smoke, not falling cannonballs — which moves ventilation to the top of the list and surface cleaning near the bottom.
The WHO and ILO attributed 745,000 deaths in a single year to long working hours — a 35% higher stroke risk at 55+ hours a week. And the WHO defines burnout as workplace stress that was not managed, which puts the failure somewhere other than your resilience.
A million-person meta-analysis found that sitting eight hours a day raised mortality by 59% in inactive people and by almost nothing in active ones. Then 83,013 accelerometer-tracked adults showed standing more gave no cardiovascular benefit at all.
