Ivan Most coauthors paper in the ‘American Journal of Industrial Medicine’

Ivan G. Most, Sc.D., P.E., adjunct professor for graduate programs in Public Health, coauthored a paper with David Parker, Samuel Yamin, Lisa Brosseau, Min Xi, Bob Gordon, B. Wissbroecker, and Rod Stanley for the Fall 2015 edition of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. 

The paper, titled "Machine Safeguarding Practices in Small Metal Fabrication Businesses," reports on the National Machine Guarding Program, a research project that has been ongoing for ten years. Machine shops in Minnesota and New England that were clients of two workers compensation insurance companies participated. Most helped organize the participants in New England, working with John Dodge and Rod Stanley of the Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company (MEMIC).

The manuscript describes measures for machine safeguarding and presents baseline data characterizing safeguarding practices in small metal manufacturing enterprises in a nationwide sample. “Metal fabrication workers experience high rates of occupational injuries relative to much of the U.S. industrial workforce,” the paper states. “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 132 lost-time injuries per 10,000 metal fabrication workers during 2013, compared to the overall U.S. private industry rate of just under 100 per 10,000."

The paper is dedicated to John Dodge (1967 - 2013), whose occupational health efforts made work safer for so many people. A companion paper [Parker et al., 2015] presents results of an evaluation of shop safety management programs in the same sample.