Washington, D.C. - The National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse has launched a multilingual section of its award-winning website (www.workzonesafety.org) to provide road construction zone safety resources in Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish and Russian to supplement its extensive English language materials. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) asked the Clearinghouse to create the section in growing recognition that roadway work zone safety is a serious global public health issue and to provide valuable information to other countries as they initiate major programs to repair and modernize their transportation infrastructure systems to meet the demands of a 21st century economy.

"We are enthusiastic about this opportunity to provide international, multilingual resources in an effort to facilitate communication and learning with the 'borderless' Internet community, especially information that can save lives and promote work zone safety for users around the world," says Brad Sant, American Road & Transportation Builders Association Transportation Development Foundation (ARTBA-TDF) Executive Director for Safety. The ARTBA-TDF manages the Clearinghouse facility, and the Texas Transportation Institute handles day-to-day operations.

The Clearinghouse is the world's largest online information resource. Its databases include information related to laws, regulations, standards, guidelines, research publications, training resources, traffic and road closures and links to useful Web sites. In the international section, resource titles have been made available in both English and the original language for ease of use. Translation links to the original documents are provided when available so that users who do not understand the language of the text may gain a basic understanding of posted materials.