CARLY Simon's hit song "Haven't Got Time for the Pain" is nearly 30 years old, but it certainly describes today's business environment. The constant demands of business--complicated by rising health care costs, an economic recession, layoffs, and an aging workforce--make it difficult to focus on preventable injuries plaguing workers and businesses.
NOISE-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a major occupational problem in the coal mining industry. In large part, even though noise control was specified in the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, this has occurred because the coal mining industry and equipment manufacturers have not placed as much attention on this hazard as they have on dust or roof control. In addition, engineering and administrative controls of noise are difficult to implement in a cost-effective manner.
EACH year, millions of people are injured in the workplace. One of the most difficult tasks facing employers is to identify the hazards associated with the products and equipment used by their employees. Such careful considerations will not only provide a safe work environment for the employee, but protect the employer as well, in that costs associated with workplace injuries (loss of productivity, worker's compensation) and litigation will be minimized.
SUCCESSFUL companies perceive ergonomics as a business process, not a program. They engage workers in the job improvement process and provide the guidance and coaching workers need to be successful.
WITH an estimated 1,000 eye injuries in U.S. workplaces every day, and with many of those injuries resulting from a failure to wear eye protection, obviously we have to do everything we can to get workers to wear safety spectacles and other personal protective equipment (PPE).
INDUSTRIAL accidents tend to occur where work is performed. Therefore, emergency equipment needs to be strategically placed where it can be most efficiently and rapidly used. However, decentralized, and often remote, placement of drench showers and eyewashes generates difficult challenges for safety and emergency personnel.
AN obvious risk comes with working in any industry that involves handling sharp objects: From glass manufacturing to sheet metal fabrication, construction to warehousing, assembly to repair, cuts and lacerations are bound to occur. It comes with the job, or so it seems. But to safety professionals, that thought is counter-intuitive; all injuries can be prevented.
IN one important sense, trenching and excavation accidents are unlike other construction accidents: The cause of nearly every trenching and excavation accident is a failure to comply with safety regulations and good practices.
THE decision facing most corporate managers is not whether to offer incentives to assist in the attainment of important business and safety objectives. For most of these folks, that's a given--incentives work, and they know it. Thus, the real decision comes down to picking the type of incentive that can produce the biggest bang for the buck.
OSHA's General Duty Clause requires employers to provide a safe and healthy workplace for their employees. While safety professionals are well-versed in industrial accident prevention, the concept of "intentional accidents" can present things in a different light.
AS safety professionals, all of us have a basic understanding of the effectiveness of our safety program--but what about our safety training specifically? Many people, unfortunately, see safety training as a compliance issue: something that has to get done, not necessarily something that is really going to change or impact safety performance.
AS a vendor of ergonomic office furniture, I find myself preaching to the choir whenever I'm working with health and safety professionals. They already appreciate the benefits of fully adjustable office workstations.
YOU probably know how important it is to protect your employees' hands with the proper glove. But do you ever stop to think about how you can protect the glove itself? Doing so could save your employees from injury, and it could save you money, as well.
THE federal government's bioterrorism preparations have moved forward significantly this year. The best example is Project Bioshield, an initiative President Bush unveiled in February to give the government blank-check spending authority to buy new vaccines. With an assured buyer, vaccine manufacturers will pursue the R&D necessary to confront smallpox, anthrax, botulinum toxins, and other bioterror threats, the project assumes.
Popular perception: Buy an AED, and your company is ready to save lives.
Harsh reality: Recently, a father of three died from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) while visiting a Tennessee county courthouse. Six months later, hoping to prevent similar, unnecessary deaths, the man's widow offered to donate an automated external defibrillator (AED) to the public building. She was informed by embarrassed public officials that they already had one--that the life-saving device had, in fact, been in the building at the time of her husband's death. Unfortunately, no one had been trained to use it.
OSHA's 29 CFR 1910.146, "Permit Required Confined Spaces," contains the requirements for practices and procedures to protect employees in general industry from the hazards of entry into permit-required confined spaces.