Fit testing of tight-fitting respiratory protective facepieces has been in use for some years, but there are still widespread misconceptions and misunderstandings about what a fit test pass actually signifies. Various aspects frequently generate research papers, and there are three relevant ones in this issue (Han and Lee, 2005; Kuo et al., 2005; Vaughan and RajanSithamparanadarajah, 2005). In ...

Because of two 3σ anomalies, the Standard Model (SM) fit of the precision electroweak data has a poor confidence level, CL = 0.02. Since both anomalies involve challenging systematic issues, it might appear that the SM could still be valid if the anomalies resulted from underestimated systematic error. Indeed the CL of the global fit could then increase to 0.71, but that fit predicts a small Hi...

Accessible improved sanitation is critical to health, and inequities in improved sanitation can be interpreted as health inequities across socioeconomic groups (1). In China, sanitation improvement in rural areas has made great progress in recent years. However, China still has a disparity in coverage rates of improved sanitation among 30 provinces. Aiming to identify the determinants that lead...

The disease burden from unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene (WSH) is estimated at the global level taking into account various disease outcomes, principally diarrhoeal diseases. The risk factor is defined as including multiple factors, namely the ingestion of unsafe water, lack of water linked to inadequate hygiene, poor personal and domestic hygiene and agricultural practices, contact with un...

Background Health concerns unique to women are growing with the large number of women venturing into different trades that expose them to hot working environments and inadequate sanitation facilities, common in many Indian workplaces. Objective The study was carried out to investigate the health implications of exposures to hot work environments and inadequate sanitation facilities at their wor...

Knowledge of environmental health was assessed in a sample of 192 students at Ja'afaru Secondary School, Zaria, Nigeria, by means of a questionnaire. A follow-up practice survey was also administered to assess the environmental sanitation of the school and the homes of a subsample of the students. Observations were recorded on the sources of water, the methods of refuse and sewage disposal, and...

Despite significant financial investment, the effective implementation and sustained use of water and sanitation (WATSAN) technologies remains a chimera, with one billion people using unimproved water facilities and two and a half billion not benefitting from adequate sanitation. The poor success rate of WATSAN interventions results from a predominance of supply-driven approaches which lack rec...

OBJECTIVES Rapid urbanisation has often meant that public infrastructure has not kept pace with growth leading to urban slums with poor access to water and sanitation and high rates of diarrhoea with greater household costs due to illness. This study sought to determine the monetary cost of diarrhoea to urban slum households in Kaula Bandar slum in Mumbai, India. The study also tested the hypot...

Water supply and sanitation services are essential to human and environmental well-being. Globally one of the biggest challenges to sustainable development is lack of access to improved water supply and sanitation services. Yet it is less obvious what sustainable development means in countries with high coverage of these services. In this article sustainable development is explored from the per...