Electric shocks at work in Europe: development of a job exposure matrix

Abstract

Our JEM classifies occupational titles according to risk of electric injury as a proxy for occurrence of electric shocks. In addition to assessing risk potentially arising from electric shocks, this JEM might contribute to disentangling risks from electric injury from those of extremely low frequency magnetic field exposure.

Occupational exposures and Parkinson's disease mortality in a prospective Dutch cohort

“…Exposure to DME was estimated using the DOMJEM 25. ELF-MF exposure was determined with an adapted version of the ELF-MF JEM of Bowman et al 26 27 Furthermore, risk of electric shocks at work was assigned with a newly developed shock-JEM based on electrical injury registration data 28. The first three JEMs make use of a semiquantitative ordinal exposure scale, based on the intensity and prevalence of exposure within a job, with three exposure categories: not exposed (environmental background), low exposed and high exposed.…”

“…These categories were assigned scores of 0, 1 and 4, respectively 23. The shock-JEM has a similar structure but is based on the pooled accident rates of electric shocks, categorising jobs into low, medium and high risk (with assigned scores of 0, 1 and 4, respectively), based on the 75th and 90th centile of job-specific accident rates 28. For 12% of both the cases and the subcohort, job descriptions were missing occupational history or the reported jobs could not be coded.…”

Occupational exposures and risk of dementia‐related mortality in the prospective Netherlands Cohort Study

“…Electrical shocks: using an Electrical Shock-JEM based on registries of occupational electrical injuries [Huss et al, 2013]. Diesel motor exhaust: using the expert-based Dom-JEM on (suspected) lung carcinogens [Peters et al, 2011].…”

Electrical injury in relation to voltage, “no-let-go” phenomenon, symptoms and perceived safety culture: a survey of Swedish male electricians

“…The highest rate of injuries concerned hand/finger with a frequency of 1.93 per 10,000 employee-years (Fordyce et al 2007). When exposures in different occupations in five European countries were assessed, electrical and electronic equipment mechanics and fitters were reported to have the highest risk for an electrical injury with 11.8 electrical injuries per 10,000 workers per year (Huss et al 2013). In a French retrospective register study based on several national registers, 311 electrical injuries during the period 1996-2005 were reviewed.…”

“…Only a few register studies describe the frequency of electrical injury (Fordyce et al 2007;Huss et al 2013;Piotrowski et al 2014). Burn-related injuries among electric utility workers were studied by using the "Occupational Health and Safety Database" in the USA, in which 399 workers treated for electrical injuries were identified.…”