In this issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine we are beginning a new series of occasional articles called World at Work. These short articles are intended to give readers some of the same sort of understanding of jobs, workplaces, and their hazards that they would get from a workplace visit with a knowledgeable person. A good workplace visit is a fascinating and informative experience and we hope articles in the World at Work series will be the next best thing for our readers. An important feature of the articles in the series will be the illustrations of the workplace tasks and hazards. As well as still photographs we will increasingly be including short video clips. We can even include sound if it makes a point!

In the series we intend to feature important and common workplaces, as well as interesting and unfamiliar work settings, from all over the world. Articles will not necessarily appear every month, but we hope to keep up a regular flow. At the beginning most of the articles have been commissioned, but we welcome suggestions for articles in the series from anyone interested to contribute one. Please contact us to let us know which workplace you would like to cover, so that we can avoid duplication, and we will send instructions for how the article should be prepared. This is a good opportunity to share your expert knowledge about a particular workplace with colleagues around the world.

I hope you will enjoy this new series. Please send us your feedback about it. The first article, “Hazards and controls in aluminium potrooms” appears on page 989 of this issue.