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.
CRITICS of safety incentive programs often fall prey to a simple error in logic: They argue that because such programs do not always work, then they never work. If that is true, then the following statements must also be true:
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.
ASTHMA is an illness characterized by intermittent breathing difficulty including chest tightness, wheezing, cough, and shortness of breath. It is a serious and sometimes fatal condition. Occupational asthma is defined as asthma caused by workplace exposures to biological agents.
THE Seven Deadly Sins (vanity, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth) are more than 17 centuries old but were not codified until the sixth century by Pope Gregory the Great. These sins were identified around the same time the Bible was being translated and are found throughout--from Genesis to Revelation.
ALL or nothing: This is what lockout/tagout (29 CFR 1910.147 in the OSHA catalogue) comes down to. "You"--with a gesture indicating the newbies as well as the old hands at work, because you cannot cut any slack for experience--"you are in, or you're out. You are with us, or you're against us. There's no middle ground."