International Maritime Health 2008, tom 59 nr 1-4

The awareness of the effects of the environment on human health is growing. The  sea is a major component of the environment. Health problems of seafarers related to  sea voyages and their skin diseases have been known and studied since a long time,  also in France...

Earlier studies and statistics have shown that merchant seafarers from the South East Asia had considerable lower accident rates when compared with seafarers from Western Europe. The purposes of the study were to investigate whether the earlier observations were sustained if further sources on occurrence of accidents were used and to identify specific causes of excess accident rates among certain nationalities...

To register and analyze data from all crew injuries reported to the medical center of a cruise ship with a median crew of 630 during a three-year period and to determine high risk areas, equipment and behavior...

The aim of this article is to describe possible risk factors in the work environment that can affect the health of staff of the Royal Norwegian Navy (RNoN). The article presents the main results from a subproject related to a major surveillance of the health and work environment in this population. The project was performed as a response to general concerns regarding harmful work environment and negative health effects for these employees...

Eczema associated with bryozoans is a form of occupational dermatosis caused by a living animal, involving contact eczema, occasionally associated with photosensitivity and concerning fishermen on a quasi-elective basis. This affection can prove to be extremely disabling, frequently generating disastrous social consequences, since the eviction of the responsible allergen is very often synonymous to occupational reclassification, a measure which fishermen, highly attached to their profession, have great difficulty in accepting...

The aim of this survey was to compare the level of professional stress among seamen – crew members - who work on French oceanographic vessels to the one of technicians and engineers from the oceanographic institute, who board the ships to operate special equipment during sea voyages...

The study carried out aboard a cruise ship in the years 1993 – 1998 involved ship passengers of various nationalities including 3872 Germans aged 23 – 94 years and 1281 Americans aged 25 – 94 years. Both nationality groups were divided into two age subgroups: till 64, and 65 – 94 years. The German younger age subgroup (mean age 53,2 years) consisted of 59% of the passengers, whereas the 65 – 94 years subgroup (mean age 72 years) was made up of 41% of the ship`s passengers...

A serious diving accident can occur in recreational diving even in countries where diving is not very popular due to the fact that diving conditions there are not as great as in some tropical diving locations. The estimated number of injured divers who need recompression treatment in European hyperbaric facilities varies between 10 and 100 per year depending on the number of divers in the population, number of dives performed annually, and number of hyperbaric centres in the country...

Fatigue has been noticeably under-researched in the maritime domain  compared to other transport sectors. In a review of the literature 11 databases were  searched in order to assess recent developments in the field and distil those issues of greatest concern and challenge to the seafaring community...

The present concept of stress is related with the necessity of triangulation in research. Triangulation means collecting evidence of stress from at least three sources: a) precursors – perception and feeling (moderating factors), b) direct consequences, c) state of health. Is it possible to implement triangulation in the investigations of workrelated stress at sea...