Pergamon Safety Science Vol. 25, No. l-3. p. 1, 1997

Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in the Netherlands 0925.7535/97 $17.00 + 0.00

INTRODUCTION

Ann Williamson a* * , Anne-Marie Feyer b

a School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

b New Zealand Centre of Occupational and Environmental Health Research, University

of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

The collection of papers that make up this Special Issue has something of an Australian flavour. Just over half the papers are from Australian authors and detail work done in Australia. The papers were all presented at the Occupational Injuly Symposium held in Sydney, Australia in February 1996. This welcome opportunity was held under the sponsor- ship of the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission (Worksafe Australia) and the MM1 Insurance Group, Australia’s largest workers’ compensation insurer. It is not often that the community of researchers and practitioners working in Australia can overcome the “tyranny of distance” and have the chance to present their work in an international forum without having to travel several thousand kilometres to do so.

The papers in this issue reflect a wide variety of themes in occupational injury. These cover newer problems like injuries due to workplace violence and new solutions to old problems like improving creativity in engineers, developing better ways to measure perceptions of safety and a clearer understanding of how safety perception influences the culture of the organisation. The papers cover different approaches to dealing with safety including new policy approaches to dealing with hazardous substances and better ways of making warnings more explicit. Several papers look at new approaches to training and education including problems such as back strain and violence as well as a paper looking at alternative sources of occupational health and safety information, and education for small businesses. Two current issues in rehabilitation of injury are addressed by papers on estimating the costs of rehabilitation and on the very difficult issue of malingering. The papers also cover a range of different industries, from hairdressing to agricultural workers and even include injury researchers. As such the papers provide a broad overview of the state of current research on occupational injury.

Acknowledgements

A large number of people assisted in getting this volume together. All the papers included in this issue have been through the peer-review process twice. First to be accepted for the presentation at the symposium and the second time to be accepted for this Special Issue of Safety Science. We would like to thank all of our reviewers for their contributions to this issue. We would also particularly like to thank Rena Friswell for her admirable contribution.

* Corresponding author.