Dear Mr./Ms.,

I am a graduate student in School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. As a student
specialized in
Industrial Hygiene, I work on a project of occupational health and safety
concerns for workers in
toy industry. This is for my summer internship.

All my questions are in general. I am not investigating any specific company. My
interests are in
?traditional? hazards, such as physical, chemical, biological and ergonomic
problems. Following
are some examples of my questions.

1. I know common industrial hygiene problems in toy factories are machine
injury, chemical
exposure, noise, heat, dust, and ergonomics. And fire is always a potential
hazard. Did I miss
anything?

2. I want to know what most common injuries are and how they happen. I know that
workers get all
kinds of injuries in toy making processes, such as amputations, crushing, burns,
electric shocks,
etc. For an instance, burning is very common in injection molding. I want to
know how they get
burned. Are they burned by touch metal machine surface that is hot, or by
picking up finished
plastic parts by improperly protected hands, or by splashed melt plastic? How do
workers get
cutting finger or breaking arms in die casting?

3. I want to know what chemicals are most relatively important/dangerous in toy
factories. I have
a list of chemicals used in toy factory (from ITIC guidance document). I think
that acetone and
TCE are most commonly used. I saw a document mentioned benzene poisoning. I
assume that benzene is
used as paint/glue solvent. How common it is used? How common lead is used in
die casting?

Please help me forward this message. Thank you very much for you time. I look
forward to your
response. Please respond to saliu@....

Sincerely,
Sa Liu