Housekeeping and safety: An epidemiological review

In order to illustrate some basic principles of epidemiology and to suggest how they can be applied to occupational safety studies, articles published between 1967 and 1997 concerned with the association of housekeeping and order to safety in the workplace were reviewed. Population studies were identified through electronic databases and manual searches. Five of the studies were descriptive or exploratory, and cited several factors, including housekeeping, associated with company safety. Four studies were quasi-experimental and showed improvements in safety following changes in various behaviors and conditions, including housekeeping. Design weaknesses were found, significantly compromising the validity of these findings. These included the lack of external comparisons, history and selection bias, and failure to control for confounding. Control for other variables was only done partially through the design, and no attempt to use multivariate statistical models was made. The comments presented in this review should be seen as a base for guiding future studies in occupational safety. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.