Visiting the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (click here for full story...)

I went to the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (Työterveuslaitos).  This is the second longest word in Finnish that I am able to pronounce.  There I set up some more work to do for the rest of the year...

The office for this branch is right across the street from TAMK.  You can see that it had just snowed the night before.  Because it was somewhat warm that morning, it was really foggy.  As a side note, some of my students that are working on their Advanced Topics project are working on a project for security and terrorism.  Their original topic was HUGE and they would have needed several books to finish.  Instead I made several email inquiries and they are now writing their research on this building.  They have found and translated the best practices and regulations for Finnish building security and are comparing these to the emergency plans for this building (Hippostalo).

These are the main people that I am working with over at FIOH.  From the left they are Tomi and Arto.  We have been on a survey at a bakery testing dust levels.  I did some simple assistance for this.  The main thing that we are working on now is a multi-agency, international project for Best Practices for controlling dust in Construction.   What is different about this project is that it looks at how to protect occupants and other stakeholders as well as the construction workers.  I have already gotten support from NIOSH in America for the project and now they have asked me to help them with a comprehensive literature search for the project.  I will be working with a professor from the University of Eastern Finland on the project.  Also, I may observe a survey for this project at a construction site in Kuopio, Finland in the next few months.

This is the FIOH break room.  We had coffee while we made plans for how I could cooperate. Tomi and Arto are also good at giving advice about things to do in Tampere.  They think I should find some sort of huge, sling-style swing that is set up on the frozen lakes of Finland during the winter.  It sounds really dangerous, but they say it is great fun for the kids.