THREE hundred feet in the air, stepping from girder to girder, the last thing I want running through my head is a question regarding the safety equipment I am using. Will the fundamental design of that equipment in fact save my life, or will it actually take it from me? Will I be home watching the ballgame with my family tonight, or will they be preparing for my funeral?
HOW should you go about establishing or revising a respiratory protection program for a small or medium-size business? Many managers and newly appointed safety administrators who call us looking for advice seem overwhelmed at the prospect of wading through reams of government documents and possibly misinterpreting the regulations or selecting the wrong equipment.
EACH year, thousands of people in the United States are blinded from work-related eye injuries that proper use of eye and face protection could prevent, OSHA says.
PREVENTION of work-related health complaints should be a top priority for occupational health professionals. Diagnosis and treatment of workers presenting with work-related problems represents an opportunity to prevent recurrences in those workers (tertiary prevention), to mitigate the effects of current work-related hazards in order to reduce the duration of the problem (secondary prevention), and to prevent the same problems in co-workers and those in similar jobs (primary prevention).
SHOWERS of falling ash and cinders blow onto TV crews reporting a fire. The next day, an arson investigator digs in the charred remains of that fire. A crime scene investigator takes blood samples and fingerprints for analysis from a brutal murder, while demolition crews work amid clouds of dust, concrete, and metal particles.
REQUESTS are increasing from safety professionals for technical information on every type of glove made. As an R&D professional for a major glove manufacturer, I find these questions are becoming more commonplace.
A good workplace safety policy begins and ends with the employee. It makes sense for the employer to establish a solid safety policy, but it is always up to the employees to adhere to the regulations before they come into work for their shifts. It's not a question of comfort or convenience--it's literally a matter of life and limb.
IN the realm of personal protective equipment, protective gloves offer the first line of defense against an array of hazards. Most often, they are used to protect the hands against scrapes, cuts, chemical, biological, and electrical hazards--with the goal of avoiding or limiting damage to the fingers, hands, wrists, and lower arms. In some instances, the correct hand protection also helps to guard against death.
SOME years ago, I built a harness for an ironworker who had an 80-inch waist and 54-inch thighs. He was bigger around than he was tall. I asked the Safety Director if a person this size should even be 6 feet off the ground.
PROVIDING flood control, navigation, and electric power to 8.3 million people throughout the southeastern United States requires the 13,000 employees at the Tennessee Valley Authority--the nation's largest public power company--to work at low to moderate heights.
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.
EMERGENCY response workers frequently are required to wear respiratory protection to prevent the inhalation of toxic air contaminants. However, it is known there is a wide range of tolerance to the stresses of work among the working population. An individual's size, age, and fitness are among the conditions that influence the performance of his cardiorespiratory system and ability to perform the heavy work often required in emergency response.
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.
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).
IN today's workplace, safety managers make tough choices every day that affect lives and their companies' bottom lines. Hand, eye, hearing, and bodily protection are key to any successful safety program. Another critical, sometimes overlooked, element in preventing workplace injuries is foot protection.
EVERY day, workers in many locales are injured--including quite a few who are left with permanent disabilities--because they did not wear adequate eye and face protection. Or because they wore inadequate protection, the result of being poorly trained or not trained at all.
AFTER a long period of dormancy, federal OSHA has picked up activity in the area of hearing loss prevention rulemaking. Activity is focused in the areas of recordkeeping and hearing conservation in construction.
THERE'S a lot of protection contained inside a glove these days. Corrosive or toxic material exposures, cuts, abrasions, and vibration are typical hazards these deceptively simple products ward off for employees.