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The purpose of this study is to explore the determinants of needle stick injuries (NSIs) suffering in terms of occupational health and safety (OHS) coverage critically for health-care workers’ rights in Pakistan.

This is a qualitative study involving the designing of a questionnaire followed by the World Health Organization’s NSI prevention assessment tool and nationally published reports covering health-care workers’ OHS rights protection. A total of 17 public and private hospitals were surveyed with a two-stage sampling method. Descriptive and inferential statistics (one-way analysis of variance with multiple comparison tests) were applied and significant results were discussed (p = 0.05 & p = 0.01). The results were discussed critically in the context of the OHS rights of health-care workers.

Analysis revealed the following significant relationships: job type and safety behavior; age group of health-care workers and safety management; injection usage per day and safety behavior; past year’s needle sticks injuries cases with safety behavior and occupational exposure; work shift and work experience with safety knowledge, safety awareness and work experience with safety management. It was also found there is no specific OHS law in the country for health-care workers.

This study is limited in terms of sampling size and quantification of NSI burden among health-care workers.

Improved OHS management practices among health-care workers can control NSIs that ultimately ensure their workplace OHS rights. Health-care workers need OHS coverage in terms of awareness about potential workplace hazards and job training accordingly. Findings from extensive studies of a similar kind can give useful policy directions for workplace health management in health-care setup at the national level.

This study highlights the importance of OHS coverage for health-care workers in hospitals. It reports different determinants of NSIs suffering causing health-care worker’s rights violations at the workplace in Pakistan.

The presence of heavy metals in milk causes many acute and chronic physiological dysfunctions in human organs. The present study aims to investigate the heavy metals in cow's and buffalo's milk of two major cities, Karachi and Gujranwala, Pakistan to estimate metal intake by humans from this source.

In total, 48 milk samples from 2 cities were drawn from animals' udder to avoid contamination. Each sample was digested with nitric acid at 105 ^oC (degree Celsius) on a pre-heated electric hot plate to investigate the metals by atomic absorption spectroscopy (flame type). Air-acetylene technique analyzed chromium, cadmium and lead, and the hydride method analyzed arsenic in the milk samples.

The results revealed the highest mean lead concentration (19.65 ± 43.86 ppb) in the milk samples, followed by chromium (2.10 ± 2.33 ppb) and arsenic (0.48 ± 0.73 ppb). Cadmium was not detected in any sample, assuming cadmium's occurrence was below the detection level. The concentrations of all the metals in the samples of the two cities do not differ statistically. Lead concentrations in the buffalo's milk were higher than in cow's milk (p < 0.05). However, the concentrations of arsenic and chromium between buffalo's and cow's milk do not differ statistically. The present study reveals a lower level of metals in the milk than those conducted elsewhere. The mean concentrations of all the metals met the World Health Organization's (WHO) safety guidelines (1993).

Although cadmium causes toxicity in the human body, cadmium could not be measured because cadmium's concentration was below the detection level, which is 1 ppb.

This study will help reduce the toxic metals in our environment, and the sources of heavy metals, particularly from the industrial sector could be identified. The feed and water consumed by the milking animals could be carefully used for feeding them.

This study will help reduce the diseases and malfunction of human organs and organ systems since these heavy metals cause toxicity and carcinogenicity in humans. Arsenic and chromium cause cancer while lead causes encephalopathy (a brain disease).

The study reports heavy metal concentrations in the two attributes of four independent variables of raw milk samples that were scarcely reported from Pakistan.