Sharps injury prevention for hospital workers

Objectives. The purpose of this study was to collect data on self-reported sharps injuries to develop best practices to reduce them. Methods. Data on sharps injuries were collected for the period of January-October 2008 using Adverse Event Notification Forms already in use at Sema Hospital. Results. On average, 0.2% of all self-reported injuries were sharps injuries averaging one injury per month. Housekeeping staff sustained 64% of such injuries, nurses sustained 36% (5 incidents). Outpatient clinics experienced the most injuries at 28%, followed by the Internal Diseases Inpatient Unit with 21% and the Medical Waste Room with 14%. Injuries often occurred during contact with medical waste bags (28%) and while replacing full sharp-boxes (14%). Conclusion. In summary, reducing needle stick injuries is an important component of the occupational and patient safety program at Sema Hospital. The research described in this study allowed the hospital to provide targeted interventions to increase awareness of the risks of needle stick injuries and reduce such injuries. The steps used in the study can be used in any health care organization in the world to design a customized improvement plan to reduce risk and injury.     

Utilization of red mud waste into mesoporous ZSM-5 for methylene blue adsorption-desorption studies

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Red mud as industrial waste from bauxite was utilized as a precursor for the synthesis of mesoporous ZSM-5. A high concentration of iron oxide in red...     

Regime-dependent effect of tourism on carbon emissions in the Mediterranean countries

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This study aims to test the effects of the number of tourist arrivals and tourism receipts on carbon emissions for the Mediterranean countries. The...     

Export quality,economic growth,and renewable-nonrenewable energy use: non-linear evidence through regime shifts

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Since export has a key role in economic growth in terms of national production quantity, export quality can be considered another important factor...     

Insights into the Viscoelastic Peculiarities of Cyanobacterial Extracellular Polymeric Substance (EPS)

Journal of Polymers and the Environment - Extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) can be defined as renewable, high molecular weight polymeric materials produced by bacteria and microorganisms....     

Effects of pyrene on mussels in different experimental conditions

The toxicity of the polyaromatic hydrocarbon pyrene to Mytilus edulis and Mytilus galloprovincialis was investigated in experiments conducted in the United Kingdom for M. edulis and in Turkey for M. galloprovincialis. Experimental conditions of temperature and salinity were chosen to be appropriate to the ambient conditions in which the mussels typically live. The effect of different feeding regimes on pyrene bioaccumulation and toxicity was also investigated. Feeding rate and neutral red retention biomarker techniques were used for toxicity assessment. An experiment with M. edulis demonstrated that mussels exposed to pyrene accumulated increasing amounts of this compound throughout a 15-day exposure period and that accumulation increased in relation to exposure concentration and with increasing concentration of unicellular algal food material. However, in these experiments, which were protected from UV light, there was no clear relationship between pyrene concentration in tissues and feeding rate. A clear concentration-response relationship was observed between tissue concentration and neutral red retention for days 1 and 7 of the experiment, but this relationship was lost by day 15, with evidence of the cells recovering. A similar experiment was conducted with M. galloprovincialis at a single (high) pyrene concentration in darkness. The feeding rate of the exposed mussels was always lower than the feeding rate of the control mussels, although the difference was insignificant at 7-day exposure. A decreasing trend in health status of the mussels was indicated by the neutral red retention assay results after 7 and 15 days of exposure to pyrene. In a third experiment (with M. galloprovincialis), an illuminated algal chemostat system containing pyrene was inserted in the exposure system as the food source for the mussels. Both biomarker results showed conclusively that toxic effects correlated with pyrene bioaccumulation, though there was no clear evidence for light-enhanced toxicity. These experiments showed that experimental conditions such as salinity, temperature and feeding regime and perhaps the species of mussel used may influence whether pyrene is perceived as being a toxic molecule.     

Acute Hepatitis A Virus Infection in Tobruk,Eastern Libya: Increasing Trends After 2017

Food and Environmental Virology - Acute hepatitis A is a self-limited liver inflammation caused by hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection. The infection is transmitted by direct contact from person to...     

Industrialization,servicification, and environmental Kuznets curve: non-linear panel regression analysis

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This paper investigates whether the impact of income on CO2 emissions is invariant to endogenously estimated threshold levels for the economic...     

Ameliorative effect of flavocoxid on cyclophosphamide-induced cardio and neurotoxicity via targeting the GM-CSF/NF-κB signaling pathway

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Cyclophosphamide (Cyclo) is a chemotherapeutic agent used as an immunosuppressant and as a treatment for many cancerous diseases. Many previous pieces...     

Isolation of bacterial strains from compost teas and screening of their PGPR properties on potato plants

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The beneficial effect of compost and compost tea on plant growth and protection is mainly associated with the microbial diversity and the presence of...