Toms River, New Jersey, Personal Injury Blog

Residents of New Jersey may know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but they may not be aware that breast cancer affects men as well as women. The numbers are much smaller, of course, with some 2,200 men being diagnosed every year (compared to the 245,000 women who are diagnosed every year, according to the CDC). Still, there is concern around the fact that male breast cancer patients see lower survival rates than women.

A JAMA study reveals that men are less likely than women to be alive three to five years a diagnosis. Part of the reason is that men tend to be diagnosed when the cancer is in a later stage. Besides that, there are no concrete guidelines that men can follow for early detection. While manually examining the breasts for lumps is recommended, many men simply don't do it because of the image of breast cancer being a women's disease.

According to an American Journal of Industrial Medicine report, roughly 61% of people who work in the gas and oil extraction or mining industries are exposed to noise levels at work that rise to the level of hazardous. There are also chemicals used in those industries that can increase the risk of hearing loss. When individuals in New Jersey suffer hearing loss or other on-the-job injuries, they may be entitled to recovery through the state's workers' compensation system.

In mining, according to the report, 24% of employees who were exposed to noise experienced some level of hearing loss. Gravel mining, specifically, had the highest levels of hearing loss among workers at 36%. In iron ore mining, the number was 27%, and in nickel ore and copper ore mining, it was 24%. Noise-exposed employees in coal mining were twice as likely to lose their hearing as messengers and couriers, who are not as likely to be exposed to hazardous noise at work.

Drivers in New Jersey will want to be more careful around signalized intersections because the number of deaths due to red light running is increasing. In 2017, there were 939 such deaths: the highest it has been in 10 years according to a recent AAA report. Just over a third of the fatalities were the offending drivers while the rest were pedestrians, cyclists or occupants in the other vehicle.

The AAA report states that 85% of drivers understand that running a red light is illegal, yet one in three drivers admitted to doing it in the past 30 days. Moreover, two in five drivers responded that being pulled over for it would be highly unlikely. Most who run red lights are intentionally breaking the law; only a minority do so because of inattention or distractions.

Aggressive law enforcement and powerful public information campaigns have helped to lower drunk driving fatalities by about a third in just 30 years, but more than 10,000 road users still die each year around the county in motor vehicle accidents caused by a motorist impaired by alcohol. The legal intoxication threshold for New Jersey drivers is a blood alcohol concentration of .08%, but medical research reveals that motorists can be dangerously impaired with far lower BACs.

Most people will have a BAC of .02% after a single beer, glass of wine or shot of liquor, and a second or third drink will usually raise their blood alcohol level to above .05%. This would still put them below the legal driving limit, but their concentration, decision making abilities and reaction times would be severely hampered. Just a few drinks can also make drivers more adventurous and prone to reckless behavior, and their ability to track moving objects or handle more than one task at a time would be diminished