Theme this year: toxic chemical exposure in the workplace
April 28, 2014
Today is Workers’ Memorial Day, on which individuals who have died on the job are honored in ceremonies all over the country. At the U.S. Department of Labor headquarters in Washington, D.C., Secretary Perez, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Dr. David Michaels and Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health Joseph A. Main will deliver remarks focusing on the hazards of toxic chemical exposure in the workplace – this year’s theme.
Just in time for Workers' Memorial Day (April 28), the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) has released its annual report on preventable deaths in the U.S. workplace.
OSHA rulemaking, temp workers around the world and the high fall fatality rate of communications tower workers were among the top EHS-related stories this week on ISHN.com.
After six workers were killed in a massive gas explosion at the Kleen Energy plant in Middletown, Connecticut four years ago, federal investigators tallied hundreds of violations at the site and issued $16.6 million in penalties against more than a dozen companies — the third-largest workplace-safety fine in the nation's history.
Maryland lawmakers introduced a bill this week that would require companies to meet safety standards as a prequalification for working on public projects in the state. House Bill 951 (with 22 sponsors) and Senate Bill 774 (with 13 sponsors) were introduced by Maryland Delegate Brian McHale (D-46) and Senator Karen Montgomery (D-14).
A volunteer firefighter and two contractors were killed Feb. 1 in the collapse of two cell phone towers in Clarksburg, West Virginia. News sources report that four workers were tethered to a 300-foot-tall tower while making repairs when the structure fell.
The CSB has released a new computer animation recreating the explosion and fire that killed seven workers at the Tesoro Refinery in Anacortes, Washington on April 2, 2010. The incident occurred when a nearly forty-year-old heat exchanger catastrophically failed during a maintenance operation to switch a process stream between two parallel banks of exchangers at the refinery.
The April 2010 fatal explosion and fire at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington was caused by damage to the heat exchanger, a mechanism known as “high temperature hydrogen attack” or HTHA, which severely cracked and weakened carbon steel tubing leading to a rupture, according to a CSB draft report released today.
One worker was killed and another injured when a 10’ unprotected trench collapsed December 5 less than ten minutes after the two entered it. Municipal District Services LLC, based in Cypress, Texas, was summoned to the scene to repair a water main that was accidentally damaged by a gas line technician.
A rule to establish standards for combustible dust that’s been in the works since 2009 is scheduled to move closer to completion in 2014, with a proposed draft regulation due this spring. Worker safety advocates and agencies like the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) have expressed frustration over OSHA’s failure to make faster progress in making a combustible dust regulatory change.