OSH-DB Document Screening Criteria

The goal of OSH-DB's document screening criteria is to select from available literature those documents that have special relevance to occupational safety and health. The OSH-DB literature screening process is directed toward that goal.

Two basic criteria must be satisfied for inclusion of documents in OSH-DB:

1. Documents selected must be applicable to occupational safety and health.
2. Documents selected should be representative of the range of subject categories covered by the screening criteria.

The following paragraphs provide criteria for the selection or rejection of documents.

1. Behavioral Sciences - Includes behavioral and psychological problems, diseases, disorders of workers, psychogenic illness, worker motivation, job stress, shiftwork, behavioral engineering, and group dynamics. Includes machine and workplace studies. Does not include worker incentive programs or general news about worker behavior where there were no conclusions or hazards identified. Does not include product quality assurance plans or mathematical modeling.
2. Biochemistry, Physiology, and Metabolism - Includes measurement and interpretation of bodily process changes in humans or animals after exposure or stress. Animal studies must directly relate to human workplace exposures. Includes descriptions of any temporary and permanent change or disease or disorder created by occupational exposure to toxic agents, hazardous processes or conditions. Does not include papers on fundamental research that do not address occupational safety and health; these are likely to be accessed through other systems.
3. Chemistry - Includes qualitative and quantitative analytical methods; field, survey and exposure sampling methods; and any methodology which relates to measurement of chemical agents in the workplace. Includes information about decomposition and pyrolysis products or secondary agents relating to exposure. Does not include basic or theoretical chemistry. Does not include ACGIH TLV reports, general discussions or opinions of chemical exposures, or accident reports of a non-technical nature.
4. Control Technology - Includes descriptions of other methods of ventilation, recirculation, and control of industrial agents and processes. Includes descriptions of personal protective equipment and clothing and other equipment used to control exposure and reduce hazards. Also include information about the testing of control and measuring equipment. Does not include new product announcements or company promotional articles dealing with control equipment. Does not include equipment specification articles. Does not include industrial waste water treatment or waste disposal and transportation unless there is a direct effect on worker health and safety. New process descriptions should be included if they define methods for elimination or reduction of workplace exposure to toxic agents, hazardous processes, or conditions.
5. Education - Includes reports and evaluations of efforts to develop or to implement occupational safety and health curricula for training physicians, industrial hygienists, nurses, safety engineers, and related technicians. Does not include company safety training programs or professional and academic curriculum discussions. Do include technical papers and reports from conferences, but not a discussion of the program. Does not include opinions or editorial comments.
6. Engineering - Includes descriptions of the design, construction and use of materials, equipment, processes, and structures in the workplace if they pertain to the protection of the worker. Does not include equipment specifications, promotional material, and company programs that do not provide substantial technical implications.
7. Epidemiology - Includes discussions about the incidence and distribution of diseases, disorders, and injuries among workers. Includes longitudinal studies, surveys, and comparative and cohort research studies. Do not include the theoretical or compiled statistics or data unless the article leads to a conclusion about occupational hazards or accidents. Includes reports of interactions with other factors such as alcohol, smoking, and drug use if the occupation is a variable in the study.
8. Ergonomics - Includes discussions of studies on the interaction of equipment, machines, work environment, and man. Includes physical stress studies in man and animals as they relate to man in the workplace. Do not include studies which cannot be related to the worker or the work environment.
9. Health Physics - Includes reports of research on physical agents such as ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, noise, vibration, and other physical agents that affect the worker. Discussions of methods used to control the effects of these agents should be included. Of particular interest are those studies which examine exposure incidence, intensity, source, and character of physical agents. Does not include reports of basic or fundamental research that can be accessed through other information retrieval systems.
10. Occupational Medicine - Includes reports of case studies, clinical reports, surveillance, monitoring, analysis and diagnostic techniques of industrial health care. Does not include health-care-facility descriptions unless they are part of an industrial health care maintenance program. Includes reports about industrial nursing, but not general industrial health news stories. Workmens' compensation studies must discuss accident data. Detailed discussions of industrial medical record-keeping programs should be included.
11. Occupational Safety and Health Programs - Includes articles that give specific details of industrial health and safety programs, promotion of occupational safety and health awareness, delivery of health services, and other occupational safety and health related programs designed to protect the worker. Does not include news reports, curricula articles and announcements, company training discussions or programs, and general opinion.
12. Pathology and Histology - Includes descriptions of structural and functional changes in tissues and organs caused by occupational exposures. Includes studies that concern histological techniques that lead to diagnoses of occupational disease. Does not include reports of basic or fundamental research that are likely to be accessed through other information retrieval systems.
13. Safety - Includes reports of the prevention of traumatic occupational injury. Includes articles about the protection of workers by equipment, clothing and procedures. Accident-prevention studies should be included. Does not include promotional material about company safety programs, non-technical articles, news items, or safety data sheets. Statistical and accident rate data may be included only if they describe subsequent preventive action or procedures.
14. Toxicology - In-vivo and in-vitro studies of the effects (positive or negative) of exposure to biological and chemical agents in the workplace. Includes discussion of carcinogenic, teratogenic, mutagenic, and reproductive effects on workers and their progeny. Does not include theoretical, aquatic, plant, or invertebrate toxicology studies unless the relationship to worker exposure is stated in the article.
15. Hazardous Waste - Includes reports which describe occupational safety and health at hazardous waste sites; health effects on employees, their families and persons living in close proximity to the hazardous waste site. Includes studies that describe sampling and analytical methods used to determine the type of waste being handled as well as studies describing new monitoring procedures, equipment, devices or clothing utilized by employees or inspectors at hazardous waste sites. Includes technical articles detailing site characterization, decontamination procedures and remedial or removal activities. Does not include news articles about hazardous waste sites, chemical spills or news articles describing effects on the environment (plants, animals or water supply). Does not include articles about waste water or sewage treatment.