June is National Safety Month, and the National Safety Council is calling on Americans to take notice of the fifth* leading cause of death – unintentional injuries. Every four minutes someone in the U.S dies from an unintentional injury. That’s 120,000 people a year.

The National Safety Council estimates that 23% of all car accidents each year involve cell phone use. That's 1.6 million crashes.

Have you ever noticed certain laws go entirely disobeyed? Back in the ‘70s when the speed limits were dropped to 55 mph across the United States, almost no one followed the law. Lately, I have noticed a similar phenomenon to the laws regarding hands-free cellular phone use and texting while driving.

Restricting the use of distracting devices in the workplace isn’t quite as simple as it seems at first blush but it needs to be done. According to the International Data Corporation of Framingham Massachusetts, there were more than one billion smart devices in use and that number is expected to rise above two billion by 2016; given the total population of the world that is an extremely high number of devices.

Excessive alcohol use causes a large economic burden to states and the District of Columbia, according to a new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Excessive alcohol use cost states and D.C. a median of $2.9 billion in 2006, ranging from $420 million in North Dakota to $32 billion in California.

Updates on the Texas fertilizer plant explosion and the Bangladesh factory building collapse, a preview of AIHce 2013 and an OSHA change in who may accompany its inspectors on “walkarounds” were all featured news on ISHN.com this week:

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) today unveiled an ambitious new plan aimed at eliminating alcohol-impaired driving crashes. The 19 recommendations contained in the plan call for stronger laws, swifter enforcement and expanded use of technology.

Americans drive while talking on a cellphone or texting more than their counterparts in seven European countries. A report showed that 69% of American drivers surveyed said they had talked on a cellphone while driving at least once in the previous month (31% said they did it “regularly or fairly often”), and 31% said they had read or sent text messages while driving.