ONE of your employees--let's call him Joe Supervisor--is working on a job site where a backhoe is digging the foundation for a new office building. The soil is being loaded into large dump trucks. As you can imagine, the noise level from the backhoe and the trucks is almost deafening. Of course, Joe knows all about the consequence of hearing loss from exposure to noise; that's why he's wearing ear plugs.
PUNCTURE resistance has become the latest darling in safety footwear features for many manufacturers. Is it really a necessary component, or is it just an extra feature that offers little to no real value?
SINCE September 11, 2001, hospitals across the United States have invested in equipment to facilitate safe operations and communication during a crisis involving airborne infections or nuclear/biological/chemical (NBC) contaminants. The extent of this investment varies from one region of the United States to another and from one hospital to the next, but this much is clear:
SINCE Sept. 11, 2001, there has been an ever-increasing demand for civilian escape masks that are capable of protecting untrained users from chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) inhalants. The anthrax attacks around the country also furthered this demand. To respond to this concern and demand for personal protection, a number of companies began to market escape mask products to the general public and other untrained user populations.
IN the world of hazardous materials, the Internet is the emerging tool of choice for providing material safety data sheets to employees and product purchasers downstream in commerce. Incorporated with an MSDS database, the Internet can be a cost-effective and efficient tool for Hazard Communication compliance and enhanced employee safety.
CORPORATE America is often accused of focusing only on the bottom line, making profits. As anyone who has ever operated his own business will tell you, without profits, your business organization will soon cease to exist and a major void of earned income that supports families, businesses, and charities will result, causing them to suffer major impacts that threaten their very survival, as well.
CHEMICALS and a bustling workplace can lead to a lethal combination. Keeping track of what is being used, how it is being used, and the disastrous effects that may occur if it is used incorrectly can seem overwhelming. Chemical hazard communication is a difficult topic to manage, but there is hope out there.
WE sometimes hear the expression, "His life is hanging by a thread." This becomes true literally for those who fall while protected by a "fall arrest system." By definition, this "system" consists of an anchorage connector, a body harness, a lanyard, deceleration device, lifeline, or a suitable combination of these.
WHAT exactly is "OSHA First Aid," and what do you need to do to comply with regulations for your industry?
CARBON dioxide is the fourth most common gas present in the earth's atmosphere, with an average ambient concentration (in fresh air) of about 350 ppm. Carbon dioxide is one of the most common byproducts of living organisms. With every exhaled breath, we produce and release CO2 into the atmosphere (with an average concentration in exhaled breath of about 3.8 percent).
ONE of the biggest barriers to effective use of hearing protection devices (HPDs) as the last line of defense against noise in the workplace is that there has never been a good way to test performance. How can we trust PPE if we don't know how well it works? Laboratory rating systems do a good job of measuring the protective capability of HPDs to block noise, but study after study has shown that real people working in real noise conditions rarely achieve the levels of protection that would be expected based on the laboratory testing reflected in the noise reduction rating (NRR) label on the HPD package.
DID you know that OSHA considers a brick a hazardous material if is cut or sawed during construction? And that a highway patrol officer enforcing Department of Transportation regulations considers over-the-counter primer a flammable liquid? Hazardous materials aren't always visible to the untrained eye, yet they are present at just about every construction site in the United States.
Editor's note: Changing the way employees' hours were scheduled and providing recognition for their efforts have been successful strategies for Virginia Blood Services (www.vablood.org) of Richmond, Va., says VBS Vice President of Organizational Development Eleanor Boens. The independent, non-profit organization serves the state's two largest hospitals and many other hospitals in Virginia.
Editor's note: Don't overlook the message you send to employees by deploying automated external defibrillators. They can be a powerful symbol of a company's commitment to its workforce and its culture, as Teradyne Inc.'s Loren Eaton, vice president of human resources, and Andy Porter, manager of corporate communications, pointed out in a Feb. 9, 2006, conversation with Occupational Health & Safety's editor. Excerpts from the conversation follow.
SEND in your best-trained people to clean up aging facilities that were once part of the nuclear weapons-production complex. The two "K Basins" and their contaminated contents pose a potential threat to the nearby Columbia River. The Basins are like indoor swimming pools, each holding more than a million gallons of radioactive water. Tens of thousands of irradiated fuel assemblies that once filled the cores of nuclear reactors are stored in the Basins.