U. Human Services

Young workers warrant special consideration to foster a safe and healthful entr e to the world of work. While there is consistent evidence that young workers are at increased risk for injury in the workplace, largely due to inexperience, the solutions and path forward are not straight-forward. Efforts to facilitate opportunities for youth to gain meaningful job experiences that foster development of marketable job skills for their future need to be balanced with efforts to protect them from work-related injury and illness. Additionally, work is just one component of youths' lives and their transitions into adulthood. Family and social relationships and education are other important components of young workers' lives that have complex relationships with work that need to be considered. Research on the impacts of youth work is conducted in multiple disciplines, with little interaction between them. These include the fields of business, law, psychology, public health, sociology, and youth development. NIOSH co-funded, with the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation, a project that convened a unique series of symposia between 2007 and 2010 that brought together scholars from multiple disciplines, practitioners and business representatives from the U. S. and Canada to consider the implications of youth employment, and to make recommendations for moving forward, considering the complex relationships of work with other components of youth development. These Proceedings compile white papers (or subsequently published articles) that were developed to foster discussions at this series of symposia, along with an ambitious research and policy agenda that was spawned from these interdisciplinary discussions. White papers and articles were authored by business scholars, epidemiologists, health communicators, physicians, psychologists, and sociologists. These Proceedings serve as a foundation for fostering interdisciplinary attention to the complex issues surrounding young worker safety and health, and serve to inform the many stakeholders who did not attend the invitational series of symposia. These Proceedings will be useful to scholars from multiple disciplines, practitioners (e.g. safety professionals, unions, business leaders and educators), and policy makers interested in expanding their knowledge about young worker safety and health.

In 1964, the first Surgeon General's report on the effects of smoking on health was released. In the nearly 50 years since, extensive data from thousands of studies have consistently substantiated the devastating effects of smoking on the lives of millions of Americans. Now, this 2010 report of the Surgeon General explains beyond a shadow of a doubt how tobacco smoke causes disease, validates earlier findings, and expands and strengthens the science base. Armed with this irrefutable data, the time has come to mount a full-scale assault on the tobacco epidemic. More than 1,000 people are killed every day by cigarettes, and one-half of all long-term smokers are killed by smoking-related diseases. A large proportion of these deaths are from early heart attacks, chronic lung diseases, and cancers. Every year, thousands of nonsmokers die from heart disease and lung cancer, and hundreds of thousands of children suffer from respiratory infections because of exposure to secondhand smoke. There is no risk-free level of exposure to tobacco smoke, and there is no safe tobacco product. This new Surgeon General's report describes in detail the ways tobacco smoke damages every organ in the body and causes disease and death. We must build on our successes and more effectively educate people about the health risks of tobacco use, prevent youth from ever using tobacco products, expand access to proven cessation treatments and services, and reduce exposure to secondhand smoke. Putting laws and other restrictions in place, including making tobacco products progressively less affordable, will ultimately lead to our goal of a healthier America by reducing the devastating effects of smoking. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other federal agencies are diligently working toward this goal by implementing and sup¬porting policies and regulations that strengthen our resolve to end the tobacco epidemic. CDC has incorporated the World Health Organization's MPOWER approach into its actions at the local, state, and national levels. MPOWER consists of six key interventions proven to reduce tobacco use that can prevent millions of deaths. CDC, along with federal, state, and local partners, is committed to monitor¬ing the tobacco epidemic and prevention policies; protecting people from secondhand smoke where they live, work, and play; offering quit assistance to current smokers; warning about the dangers of tobacco; enforcing comprehensive restrictions on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship; and raising taxes and prices on tobacco products. In 2009, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was enacted, giving FDA explicit regulatory authority over tobacco products to protect and promote the health of the American public. Among other things, this historic legislation gave the agency the authority to require companies to reveal all of the ingredients in tobacco products-including the amount of nicotine-and to prohibit the sale of tobacco products labeled as "light," "mild," or "low." Further, with this new regulatory mandate, FDA will regulate tobacco advertising and require manufacturers to use more effective warning labels, as well as restrict the access of young people to their products. FDA will also assess and regulate modified risk products, taking into account the impact their availability and marketing has on initiation and cessation of tobacco use. This 2010 Surgeon General's report represents another important step in the developing recognition, both in this nation and around the world, that tobacco use is devastating to public health. Past investments in research and in comprehensive tobacco control programs-combined with the findings presented by this new report-provide the foundation, evidence, and impetus to increase the urgency of our actions to end the epidemic of tobacco use.