The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is the US federal agency responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work‐related injury and illness. As part of the Centers for Disease Control in the US Department of Health and Human Services, NIOSH gathers information, conducts scientific research, and provides publications and services. One of their services is to provide web access to NIOSHTIC‐2, a searchable bibliographic database of workplace safety and health resources supported in whole or in part by NIOSH. It currently contains approximately 38,000 citations and is updated monthly. The majority of the publications date from 1971 to the present with the exception of those from the NIOSH Mining Safety & Health Research Laboratories (formerly the US Bureau of Mines) that date from the 1930s. NIOSH supported publications include NIOSH alerts, technical reports, health hazard evaluations, fatality assessment and control evaluation reports, criteria documents, grant reports, health and safety guides, and NIOSH authored journal articles, books and symposia.
An indispensable guide to NIOSH supported documents, searching tools, and document delivery information is found under the About tab. The database is searchable by keyword with Boolean searching available in the advanced search option. Keywords assigned to the citations are not part of a controlled vocabulary. Indexed fields are title, author, source, NTIS accession number, keywords, CODEN, Chemical Abstracts Service registry number, editors, ISBN, ISSN, identification number, NIOSH division priority area, performing organization, and source name. Search limitations by dates and specific publication types are options. Familiarity with the publication types is advantageous as they are listed in an abbreviated format. For instance, searches can be limited to F‐FACE, which is the fatality assessment and control evaluation reports for fire fighters. Another abbreviation, CISS, required research on the main NIOSH web site to determine that it referred to the Common Information Service System, a database on mining information being incorporated into NIOSHTIC‐2.
A search box appears on the results list offering the option to search within the results. A second option is a New Search button that would seem to indicate a new search could be initiated from this screen rather than requiring the user to return to the original search screen. However, that was not the case – the search combined the first search terms with the new search terms. Selected citations can be printed or downloaded. Each citation contains basic bibliographic information with abstracts of 150‐300 words, keywords, and links to full text provided when available. Citations can be viewed as a brief view, an expanded view or a full view. The expanded view provides the abstract and keyword information while the full view provides additional identification numbers and codes. While full‐text links are provided, article retrieval may be based on subscription access.
Subjects covered include toxicology, occupational medicine, chemistry, earth sciences and materials science. The wide‐ranging information appeals to academia, industry, labour and public interest groups. Publications range from bulletins that convey important public health information with recommended protective measures to alerts for quick action to reduce health risks in the work environment for a specific problem. Examples of research topics include the development of virtual reality technology to simulate workplaces to better study injury risk factors; the evaluation of the effectiveness of ultraviolet germicidal irradiation to prevent the transmission of tuberculosis in health care settings; and the current state of noise control technology for the mining industry. This is a valuable resource for occupational safety and health resources from an agency that is an authority in the field.
