MATERIALS handling often focuses on storage and transport by equipment, including forklifts. However, employee behaviors and work practices, such as using poor lifting techniques, also contribute to many injuries.
Editor's note: "White powder" incidents continue to occur in the United States, largely at mailrooms. U.S. Postmaster General John E. Potter asked Congress in April for $51 million for security costs associated with a Biohazard Defense System, a Ventilation and Filtration System, and a mail sanitization facility to be located in Washington, D.C.
Editor's note: The ranks of safety and health consultants have exploded in recent years. Patricia Carlisle, CIH, who has been certified in the comprehensive practice of industrial hygiene by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene since 1990 and has been a private consultant for about 20 years, discussed competition, networking, and other consulting challenges in an April 21, 2005, conversation with Occupational Health & Safety's editor.
HOW many employers or employees were faced with the following scenarios in the last five years: a change in health plan vendors, a decrease in benefits coverage, or increased cost sharing for the insurance premium?
HOW are you managing the hazardous materials you use, store, and produce in your facility? Unless you have a multimillion-dollar budget and work in an organization with a cultural commitment to safety and risk management, you are probably managing ever-more-complex rules and requirements with smaller budgets, fewer resources, and less organizational commitment than the year before.
YOU wouldn't think Ed Smolinski has much in common with Sherlock Holmes. But upon closer examination, you would realize the president of Allied Environmental Corp. does bear a similarity to the famous fictional sleuth.
Editor's note: Safety directors should be aware of who's buying protective footwear, what types the workers are buying, and how much they are spending. Workers, for their part, must buy footwear suited to their hazard exposure and must watch for damage and obtain replacements when necessary, advise Mark Fancourt, who works in product development for Lehigh Safety Shoe Company (www.ejfootwear.com) of Vestal, N.Y., and Paul Russo, Executive Vice President of Global Sourcing and Marketing for Iron Age Corp. (www.IronAgeShoes.com) of Westborough, Mass. Fancourt and Russo discussed best practices for employer purchase programs and other issues on May 26 and May 31, 2005, respectively, with Occupational Health & Safety's editor. Excerpts from those conversations follow:
THE mission of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is to assure the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach, and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health.
FORTUNATELY, it's not every day that a 10,000-gallon holding tank fails or a forklift harpoons a drum of solvent sitting next to a floor drain. But no matter what spills, facilities need to be prepared.
A driver for a messenger service is injured in a company car in a traffic accident on his way to work.
IF you have more work than time, then the answer to the question above should be yes. Today, almost all administrative, management, planning, and tracking functions of safety can be tackled with readily available and, usually, reasonably priced off-the-shelf software.
THE safe operation of a forklift is a skill that requires the ability to anticipate accidents. When this ability is learned through "trial and error," it is only evaluated when property damage or serious injury occurs.
WORKING with electrical systems exposes utility workers to an average of five to ten explosions of energy every day. When working with these same electrical systems at height, there is no room for error.
IMAGINE this: An employee walks into a hazardous workplace environment and sustains a foot injury that could have been prevented. While the employee must now endure a painful injury and lost time from work, his employer is faced with a dip in productivity and exposure to a potentially damaging worker's compensation claim.
Editor's note: Ninety percent of safety managers understand the need for proactive behavior based safety recognition, but many of them find their recognition strategy is still the old school, says Bill Sims, Jr., president of Bill Sims Award of Excellence in Columbia, S.C.
NEVER before have communication interoperability and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement agencies been as critical as they are in this post-9/11 world.