WHAT is your company's agenda when an employee cuts himself while handling a knife (or any other incident that induces bleeding)? What happens if an employee contracts Hepatitis B (HBV) or the HIV virus while rendering first aid or CPR to a critically injured employee?
THE American public buys more than five billion over-the-counter drug products each year. A June 2003 national survey examining use of OTC medications indicated more of us are reading labels and checking out possible side effects, but we still have far to go, the National Council on Patient Information and Education noted last fall when it launched its latest consumer education campaign, "Be MedWise Prescription for Taking OTC Medicines."
SLIPS and falls are one of the leading causes of workplace injuries in the country. In fact, the National Safety Council reports more than 300,000 injuries occur each year as a result of slips, trips, and falls in the workplace, averaging almost $7,000 per accident in lost compensation and medical costs.
DEVELOPING standards to protect workers' well-being is a great way to get started on the path toward a healthy and injury-free workplace. But as any safety expert will tell you, it takes dedication, perseverance, and a desire to make sure every employee is as safe as can be while on the job.
IN the world of occupational heat stress, including professional sports such as American football, employers and employees must find some accommodation between reasonable productivity and reasonable heat stress illness prevention.
THE final rule on recording hearing loss (HL) was published in the Federal Register on July 1, 2002. It is a revision of 29 CFR 1904, Occupational Injury and Illness Recording and Reporting Requirements, as they pertain to recording HL. Details are reported in the Federal Register (Vol. 67, #126, pp. 44037-44038). Major provisions are the following:
ARE you in charge of creating a lockout/tagout (LOTO) program for your company? If so, beyond being familiar with the standard, you must fully understand the process of creating and implementing a successful LOTO program that will ultimately save time, injuries, and possibly lives.
WEARERS of hard hats will look and feel better as helmet manufacturers continue to develop products that improve comfort and ease of use.
THE revised ANSI Z359.1 standard coming out this year is not meant to be the last word on fall protection programs and equipment, because the Z359 committee already plans to append at least three sections to it.
WORKERS depend on their five senses--sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch--to keep them alert to their surroundings and to any danger present. It's important to note that four of the five sense organs are housed in the head. The brain (the organizer of all that data collected by the senses) is also located there.
THE attack on the World Trade Center and the anthrax scare have forced the government and private industry to increase safety and security precautions. The anthrax scare, in particular, has prompted greater safety controls in the mailroom.
THE updated standard for fall protection, ANSI Z359, will contain two important guidelines for rescue. A portion designated Z359.0 will provide facility managers a plan to build and maintain rescue operations, while Z359.3 is a new standard dedicated to the construction, use, and training required for fall protection rescue equipment.
IT is a beautiful sunny day in the Midwest, and a construction crew is setting the decking on bridge girders located over an interstate highway. Their horizontal lifeline (HLL) system is attached to each girder with a steel cable height of approximately 42 inches (waist height) and 2-inch squared steel posts supporting the steel cable system.
THE hard hat has become the symbol of the construction industry. With this widely supported "branding" of construction as a safety-conscious industry came substantive reductions in injuries and illnesses--a 47 percent reduction, from 15.3 per hundred full-time construction workers in 1976 to 7.9 in 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
IN theory, warnings are an important means for accident prevention. They reveal hidden hazards so the user of a product or facility can avoid injury. Unfortunately, warnings frequently, and some would say usually, fail to affect behavior.
FOLLOWING Sept. 11, 2001 the question "How safe are we?" has entered our minds repeatedly. Previously, the idea of a potential terrorist attack included the use of weapons used in warfare or homemade bombs, such as in the first WTC attack.
THE industrial environment has changed substantially since OSHA first defined confined space entry (CSE) regulation in the late '70s, and gas detection regulation has not kept pace.