WORKER AWARENESS OF EXPOSURE - INDUSTRIES AND OCCUPATIONS WITH LOW AWARENESS

A goal of occupational health is to inform workers of hazards on their jobs. This analysis addresses this goal by identifying industries and occupations with low worker awareness of potential exposures. Industr ies and occupations were ranked by the greatest positive difference be tween the proportion of workers exposed and proportion perceiving expo sure to chemical and physical hazards. Those with low awareness had th e greatest difference, i.e., high exposure and low perception. This an alysis was performed by adding exposure data from a national exposure survey to a national health survey with perceived exposure data. The h ospital and construction industries and occupations in these industrie s ranked among the top five for all hazards. For example, for hospital workers the difference between proportion exposed and proportion perc eiving exposure to chemicals was 62% and to radiation was 42%, and for workers in construction the difference was 54% for exposure to noise and 63% for exposure to vibration.