Workplace Pressures, Hazards Raise Risk of Youth Job Injuries
Exposure to work hazards and a frenetic job pace increases the likelihood of injury among adolescent and young adult workers, a new systematic review suggests. Work setting also appears to play a role in predicting the risk of injury, with food service and construction industry jobs topping the list of hazardous employment in this age group. The review appears in the February issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and was reported by Newswise.
These studies provide sufficient evidence that the type of work setting, in particular restaurant work and manual labor jobs, was independently associated with work injury, said lead author F. Curtis Breslin, Ph.D., a scientist at the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto. Breslin and his colleagues analyzed nine studies published between 1997 and 2005 that examined nonfatal injuries among 12- to 24-year-old workers. Previous research had indicated that young male workers sustain injuries at about twice the rate of female workers, but the review found that when males and females are working similar jobs, they have a similar risk for work injury, with the injury rate higher for minorities than for young white workers. It seems to be more the job they’re doing, not the characteristics of the kids themselves that affects injury risk, Breslin said.
Carol Runyan, Ph.D., director of the Injury Prevention Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said the study raised many questions. I would want to know more about whether there are differences in the types of environments in which minority versus majority workers are employed and whether language barriers impinge on the success of training and supervision practices, Runyan said. She suggests that parents talk with their children about what they are doing at work, including what kind of training and supervision they are getting. Runyan also advises parents to meet the supervisors of their children to let them know they are aware of the work environment and to try to determine if the supervisor is managing them in a responsible way.
Reprinted with permission. © CCH
<p>Exposure to work hazards and a frenetic job pace increases the likelihood of injury among adolescent and young adult workers, a new systematic review suggests. Work setting also appears to play a role in predicting the risk of injury, with food service and construction industry jobs topping the list of hazardous employment in this age group.</p>
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