Creating an effective program within your facility requires adequate supplies to respond to emergencies and personnel properly trained in performing basic first aid.

A fully automatic AED gives a shock automatically, if needed, without the user having to push a button. It also communicates clear, calm, step-by-step instructions that let responders know when a victim is about to be shocked.

Did you know you were adopted? Maybe not you personally, but your field of work as an “Occupational Health and Safety Specialist and Technician” was adopted by the public health workforce.

Skin care in the workplace has been moving to the forefront the past several years. Some areas of concern for employers include protecting workers from the sun’s harmful rays; insect carrying diseases such as West Nile virus and Lyme disease; poisonous plants including poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac; and transmittable diseases from body contact such as the H1N1 virus.

Summer is upon us and after the very long and cold winter experienced nearly everywhere this year, not a day too soon. Summer brings with it the age-old question for many safety directors: do you use plain water or electrolyte beverages for hydration?

Every year thousands of eye injuries occur in the workplace. Throughout the past few years, stringent regulation and an ever-growing concern for the health and well-being of employees has brought advancements in processes, safety procedures, and first aid protocols to treat the injured.

According to the OSHA Technical Manual, which prescribes workloads for workers under temperatures typically experienced outdoors during the summer months, to keep from exceeding the Threshold Limit Value (TLV) when the ambient temperature is above 86° F, the work regimen will consist of 25 percent work and 75 percent rest.

It was the summer of 1981 and I was a newly enlisted U.S. Army Military Police soldier. My basic combat training took place just outside Anniston, Ala., at a now retired Army base known as Ft. McClellan.

Ninety-five percent of officers in the New York Police Department (NYPD) Emergency Services Unit (ESU) who responded to the 2001 World Trade Center (WTC) disaster show no long-term decrease in lung function, reports a study in the June Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

With daytime temperatures in some parts of the southwestern U.S. already reaching into the 90s, the Department of Labor (DOL) is calling on TV and radio meteorologists and weather forecasters to help spread the word about OSHA’s new campaign to prevent heat illness.