Notices to Readers
NIOSH Guidelines for Protecting the Safety and Health of
Health-Care Workers
Compared with the total civilian population, health-care
workers file a greater number of workers' compensation claims for
sprains and strains, infections, parasitic diseases, dermatitis,
viral hepatitis, mental disorders, eye diseases, influenza, and
toxic hepatitis. To help reduce the incidence of injury and
disease among health-care workers, CDC's National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has published Guidelines
for Protecting the Safety and Health of Health Care Workers (1).*
This comprehensive publication addresses all major health
and safety hazards that workers encounter in hospitals and other
health-care facilities. It includes an overview of hospital
hazards; methods for developing hospital safety and health
programs; methods for disposing of hazardous wastes; a list of
occupational safety and health agencies and resource
organizations; and discussions of safety hazards, infectious
diseases, and noninfectious health hazards.
The guidelines presented in this document incorporate the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations and the
most recent CDC-recommended NIOSH standards and guidelines,
including those for protecting health-care workers from
occupational transmission of hepatitis B virus, human
immunodeficiency virus, and other bloodborne pathogens. The
document also contains specific information from the Joint
Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the
National Fire Protection Association, and the Environmental
Protection Agency.
Reported by: Div of Standards Development and Technology
Transfer, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health,
CDC.
Reference
NIOSH. Guidelines for protecting the safety and health of
health care workers. Cincinnati, Ohio: US Department of Health
and Human Services, Public Health Service, CDC, 1988; DHHS
publication no. (NIOSH)88-119.
Single copies are available without charge from the
Publications Dissemination Section, DSDTT, National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health, CDC, 4676 Columbia Parkway,
Cincinnati, Ohio 45226; telephone (513) 533-8287.
Disclaimer
All MMWR HTML documents published before January 1993 are electronic conversions from ASCII text into HTML. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users should not rely on this HTML document, but are referred to the original MMWR paper copy for the official text, figures, and tables. An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371; telephone: (202) 512-1800. Contact GPO for current prices.
**Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to mmwrq@cdc.gov.
