Published online August 31, 2007
PEDIATRICS
Vol. 120
No. 3
September 2007, pp.
685
(doi:10.1542/peds.2007-1540)
Adolescents’ Descriptions of Hazards in the Workplace
Alan Woolf, MD, MPH
Division of General Pediatrics
Pediatric Environmental Health Center
Children's Hospital
Boston, MA 02115
To the Editor.—
Runyan et al1 recently reported the results of a telephone-based cross-sectional survey of US youth aged 14 to 18 years regarding their activities and injury experiences in the retail and service sectors of the workplace. Their results revealed numerous areas of violation of federal laws regarding the types of work, conditions of work, and orientation and supervision for youth. As the authors themselves pointed out, recall bias is an important limitation to such a methodology and likely leads to a considerable underestimation of actual risk. This is particularly true with regard to certain circumstances in the workplace that might best be described as "near-miss" situations, which an adolescent may not appreciate at the time or remember later.
In our previous study of adolescent workplace toxic exposures over a 5-year period,2 8.4% of incidents reported to poison control centers were coded as resulting in noninjury outcomes; an additional 65.8% were coded as resulting in only minor injury. Because these reports were most often made timely to the event, one can speculate that youth would be likely to forget later that they ever occurred, especially if no injury were involved. Approximately half of all 8779 reported toxic exposures were calls made from home or the workplace itself and, thus, did not involve a visit to the emergency department. Again, an adolescent may well forget that such incidents ever happened if they did not need to see a doctor.
Many such incidents or circumstances might not have been captured by the Runyon et al study unless the toxic exposure occurred close to the time of the telephone survey or generated a trip to the emergency department. Runyon et al did not specify whether adolescents were asked during the survey to inventory their use of chemicals, solvents, cleaners, or other products on the job. However, they did report that 30% of the girls and 20% of the boys identified their primary tasks including food preparation and handling (some reported using a deep fat fryer, grill, or oven); an additional 18% of the boys and 8% of the girls described their primary duties as performing cleaning and laundry work. Close to 90% of the respondents performed cleaning tasks, although cleaning might not have been their primary job. Although limitations of our data precluded investigation into which toxic exposures were associated with which job sectors, some of the agents involved (eg, cooking oils, cleansers, soaps, bleach, hydrocarbons) may be used in entry-level retail and service jobs.
Recall bias requires us to interpret the Runyon et al results with caution and allow for the considerable undercounting of certain types of youth workplace injuries and the potentially hazardous circumstances in which adolescents find themselves. As the authors pointed out, improved orientation and better training of youth may well mitigate some of the risk. This should include their "right to know" about hazardous chemicals stored and in use and how to avoid toxic exposures to them. We found that many of the events we documented could have been prevented if the adolescents had simply been wearing barrier clothing, gloves, and/or goggles while working.
REFERENCES
- Runyan CW, Schulman M, Dal Santo J, Bowling JM, Agans R, Ta M. Work-related hazards and workplace safety of US adolescents employed in the retail and service sectors.
Pediatrics. 2007;119
:526
–534[Abstract/Free Full Text]
- Woolf A, Alpert HR, Garg A, Lesko S. Adolescent occupational toxic exposures: a national study.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2001;155
:704
–710[Abstract/Free Full Text]
PEDIATRICS (ISSN 1098-4275). ©2007 by the American Academy of Pediatrics
