Buildings Commissioner Robert D. LiMandri, shown here, explains the concept at a conference tomorrow. The city has made major changes to its construction safety requirements since last year's tower crane collapse.
Every leader, manager, and safety professional I know hopes to see a higher level of worker awareness. But despite these wishes, there doesn’t seem to be a bull market in “awareness.” In fact, the opposite seems to hold. As external stressors pile on, people become more distracted, oftentimes so beset by personal worries—the economy? job security? retirement? effects on family relationships?—they have difficulty focusing even on simple day-in, day-out activities. So their default automatic pilot Safety programs become glitchy. And this doesn’t even begin to account for unusual events that really require split-second scoping out, decision-making, and immediate action.
A posh hotel besieged with panicked employees running for their lives and commandos ringing the buildings. We saw this crisis unfold live; it reminds us that now is the time to refresh employees’ awareness of evacuation and preparedness procedures and their own roles. Do it now!
Halfway through my bachelor’s degree in Environmental, Health, and Safety Management, I made the switch from Operations supervisor to Environmental, Health, and Safety Specialist. Through the course of the next two years, my view of the safety field as one that merely identifies hazards using OSHA and other tools made a 180-degree turn when I realized how versatile you have to be in order to be successful in safety.
How many departments in your organization have requirements for visual inspections? How many of the codes, regulations, and legislative mandates demand that visual inspections be performed on a regular, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual basis? Think of the requirements for slings and wire ropes, aircraft parts, hazardous waste containers, and every commercial vehicle and load—the list goes on and on. Yet how many of those same codes have a single line that requires the inspectors (your employees) to be able to see and see correctly?
An investigation began after OSHA inspectors witnessed employees working on a scaffold without using fall protection equipment at a worksite in El Paso.
Do everything you can -- and there's a lot that you can do -- to get through this difficult time. You and your employer(s) will be stronger for it.
"A lack of fall protection and training leaves employees just a slip or a misstep away from a deadly or disabling plunge," said Robert Kowalski, area director of OSHA's office in Bridgeport, Conn., which conducted the inspection.
Part of the aim of the partnership is to develop educational training programs relating to fall protection, silica, and equipment operation hazards.
The publications were developed to educate employers and employees on preventing injuries and illnesses from hazards associated with deck and spud barges.
When a confined space disaster strikes, an urban search and rescue team responds. Vital to its success is its medical personnel's approach.
The company, which performs industrial painting on bridges and other construction projects throughout the state of Illinois, has been inspected by OSHA 16 times and cited for safety and health violations more than 100 times since 1976, according to the agency.
”No one’s sure why that happens, but it's thought to be influenced by limited food choices on the night shift, eating at the wrong times of day, and having limited time and energy for exercise,” the study says.
The focus of the pact is on reducing construction and general industry hazards, including but not limited to falls, electrical operations, ergonomics, bloodborne pathogens, fire safety, egress/exit routes, and evacuation plans.
The wiki allows anyone to access and contribute or modify content, using simple on-line tools.
Contractors and vendors met in San Antonio last week to talk about technologies for underground utility work. Britain's HSE says a company's recent conviction after a worker suffered burns should remind other excavators of the hazards.
The American Industrial Hygiene Association recently sent a letter to President Obama offering support for his proposal to create more than three million new jobs for American workers.
Training citizens in CPR and letting EMS personnel use AEDs in the field without physicians' online oversight improved response time and increased bystander-initiated CPR, according to research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The decision was made in September 2008 to archive the look and content of the U.S. Labor Department’s site as the Bush administration was drawing to a close, Government Computer News reports.
Registration is now open for the 2009 Oregon Governor's Occupational Safety and Health (GOSH) Conference, to be held March 9-12 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. The largest conference of its kind in the Northwest will feature more than 30 full-day workshops and 115 single-topic classes. It is designed to educate managers and workers about safety and health issues.