OXYGEN deficiencies, explosive atmospheres, and exposure to toxic gases and vapors injure or kill hundreds of workers every year during confined space entry procedures.
BEEP Beep Beep . . . beep beep beep. These are often the sounds first responders hear from their radios as they try and communicate with one another during an emergency. In most cases, these personnel are in high-risk situations, surrounded by smoke and fire, hordes of people, or the risk of chemical or biological exposure.
IT'S a good idea to monitor OSHA's Standard Interpretations site on a regular basis. You can easily find the site by clicking on the "interpretations" link right from OSHA's www.osha.gov homepage.
SINCE it first rose to popularity in the early 1990s, behavior-based safety (BBS) has become an established and widely respected tool for safety improvement. While not without its critics, BBS has clearly had its successes.
PEOPLE's reaction to being hit with cold water has been used in comedy routines for as long as anyone can remember. Providing it's not you being doused, it can be really funny. But cold water, when used in emergency showers and eyewashes, is no joke.
HAS your organization hit a plateau in safety? Are you looking for ways to improve the safe performance of your people? Performance Safety provides effective solutions with optimal participation from your employees.
OSHA's 29 CFR 1904 took effect in January 2003. It make hearing loss is recordable if it meets these criteria
HOW often do we as health and safety professionals ask ourselves, "I wonder if there is a psychosocial component to these indoor air quality complaints?" In fact, environmental health & safety professionals are not qualified to make judgment calls regarding the psychological basis of reported or displayed symptoms among employees.
"WHAT is a smoke detector?" Such a question would draw raised eyebrows and possibly snickers in an average gathering of office employees. "What is an AED?" Unless you're in the business, a techie, a safety director, an EMS responder, or a medical professional, you may have no idea the initials AED stand for automated external defibrillator.
THROUGHOUT industry, from chemical and petrochemical processing to wastewater utilities and pulp and paper mills, workplaces have the potential to be exposed to toxic gases, combustible gases and vapors, and oxygen deficiency.
IN the open, sandy desert of a foreign country or in the confines of a maintenance work area, Master Sergeant Chad Lingerfelt strives to operate a safe work environment. As a ground safety manager for the U.S. Air Force, Lingerfelt supervises personnel who dismantle, clean, and reassemble aircraft all over the world.
DEVELOPING and implementing a comprehensive industrial hygiene strategy can be daunting even under the best circumstances. Ensuring proper characterization, prioritizing actions, performing monitoring, and interpreting the results requires process knowledge, technical skills, sufficient personnel, and of course, money.
AT 10:18 a.m., the rumble and roar of a Tuesday morning earthquake has just collapsed a 10-story downtown building housing offices for more than 600 people. You jump when the silence is shattered by the dispatcher toning out a report of a missing 4-year-old child, last seen playing in her backyard.
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).
PROSPECTS couldn't be brighter for the automated external defibrillator market than they are right now. Liability concerns have receded thanks to "Good Samaritan" laws; new AEDs are lighter, smarter, more capable, and as much as 25 percent cheaper than older models; a battery of important authorities, from OSHA to the General Services Administration, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and the Building Owners and Managers Association International, are urging widespread deployment.
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.
MOST experts agree safety incentive programs can be effective tools for helping to motivate and encourage employees to achieve behavioral changes on the job. Most often, such programs are aimed at reaching multiple goals.