Few women coal miners—around 1 in 200—show signs of pneumoconiosis, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) researchers found in a recently published study.

In recognition of National Miners Day on December 6, NIOSH Director John Howard, MD, highlighted the new research in his “From the Director’s Desk” column in the institute’s December eNews newsletter.

For the study, NIOSH researchers analyzed over 50 years of NIOSH data from theinstitute’s Coal Workers' Health Surveillance Program. The study found that most women coal miners worked less than a decade in the industry and didn’t work in areas like continuous mining or drilling, limiting their exposure to high levels of inhalable dust.

Other recently published research supported by NIOSH includes the following:

• A study of respiratory-related workers' compensation claims from private sector employers in Ohio. The study searched for respiratory disease-related diagnostic codes among more than 2 million claims filed with the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation between 2001 and 2018 and found 23,015 workers' compensation claims—approximately 6 claims per 10,000 full-time equivalent workers—related to respiratory disease.
• A multiyear analysis of mining injuries using workers’ compensation claims data. While more than half of claims were for medical treatment only, claims that included lost work time accounted for 40 percent of claims but 90 percent of the costs.

NIOSH also recently published “Respirator Selection Guide for the Healthcare Industry,” a new fact sheet for healthcare employers. The fact sheet provides industry-specific respirator selection and use guidance for employers and respiratory protection program managers in the healthcare industry to help minimize the number of healthcare professionals exposed to harmful contaminants. The fact sheet outlines the capabilities of filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) like N95 respirators, elastomeric half-mask respirators (EHMRs), and powered air-purifying respirators (PAPRs). It also discusses issues in selecting respirators and levels of protection appropriate for healthcare industry hazards.

NIOSH also announced the release of a Line of Duty Death Report from its Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program on the death of a 25-year-old firefighter recruit on his first day of training. The firefighter recruit collapsed during a physical fitness training run.

An ambulance crew was dispatched, and the crew transported the firefighter recruit to the nearest hospital's emergency department. The recruit was intubated, treated for hyperthermia, and admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit, where he died 2 days later.

A medical examiner’s report listed the cause of death as hyperthermia, with an enlarged heart and obesity as contributing factors.

NIOSH’s recommendations in the report included the following:

• Fire departments should ensure all firefighter candidates receive a preemployment medical examination.
• Fire departments should communicate to cadets/recruits which program components are mandatory at the beginning of training and which are used as benchmarks to measure physical fitness progress over the course of training.
• Fire departments should provide guidance to incoming cadets/recruits on how to improve their physical fitness capacity before the start of formal training.
• Fire departments should provide information on heatstroke and other heat-related illnesses (HRIs) in recruits’ acceptance letters, especially if training will be administered in warm or hot weather, and have annual refresher training on HRIs for training center staff.