[Occupational health and safety and gender differences: need for the identification of an adequate risk assessment]. / Salute, sicurezza sul lavoro e differenze di genere: necessità di una adeguata valutazione dei rischi.

Recent legislation has made mandatory to perform the risk assessment taking into account gender differences. This should imply to consider not only the simple differences due to biologic difference between male and female workers, but also what is more related to the social role they really play in the current society. This second aspect of gender difference has not yet been addressed from a technical point of view. The University of Pisa in cooperation with INAIL has recently started a project aimed at identifying technical tools to perform a risk assessment which took into account gender difference.

[Assessment of urinary cotinine in a group occupationally exposed to nicotine]. / Valutazione della cotinina urinaria in un gruppo di esposti professionalmente alla nicotina.

In a Tobacco processing company, located in central Italy, both air nicotine and, one of its metabolites, the urinary cotinine were assessed, as part of the evaluation of the effectiveness of recently implemented technical preventive controls. Urinary cotinine measurements ranged from 9,63 to 234,09 microg/gr creat. in non-smokers and from 178,79 to 2476,19 microg/gr creat. in smokers. Urinary cotinine proved useful as an exposure biological index especially in terms of population monitoring. On the contrary, the meaning of the measured values were less clear in single workers, because of significant both intra- and inter-individual variability.