In February of this year, OSHA published an amendment to several sections of 29 CFR 1910. These changes address workers’ exposure to hexavalent chromium (Chromium VI), and include three new sections. This new ruling became effective in March, and the first compliance deadline is November 27, 2006.
ASSE’s Safety 2006, June 11-14 in Seattle, was a hit. Attendance records were broken (3,941 attendees), conference sessions were well attended, and expo vendors seemed giddy with the quality of sales leads. The show was high energy. Not a lot of decaf being consumed in this coffee-laden town. Here are some observations and notes from Safety 2006…
Non-compliance with emergency eyewash safety standards is a serious issue in today’s workplace. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), this lack of compliance contributes to a reported 2,000 injured U.S. workers each day.
A thorough understanding of the existing culture must be accomplished. This can be realized by canvassing a large sampling of the total workforce to measure what perceptions, practices and conditions related to safety currently exist. A cultural survey can surface what is working and what is not. The information obtained can provide direction for change.
Building a safety culture in your organization does not happen overnight. At the root of a safety culture is behavior, and changing human behavior requires education. Changes occur on two levels: getting the individual to stop doing some things and getting the individual to start doing other things.
Environmental, health & safety (EHS) professionals have been tasked with managing chemical inventories and resulting residues from production processes for decades. Efforts to reduce a chemical’s overall environmental impact have involved using less of a toxic material, or looking for a less hazardous alternative.
Pound for pound, flammable liquids can explode with more force than dynamite. For example, five gallons of gasoline is estimated to explode with a force equal to 415 pounds of dynamite. Let’s look at proper procedures for handling, storing, transferring and using flammable liquids in an industrial workplace, and review how containers should be selected and maintained.
Managing sharps and other medical waste in the non-healthcare business setting has been an issue for years. On-site medical clinics bear little difference from off-site doctors’ offices and therefore face similar management issues regarding used syringes, expired medications and body fluid cleanup.
According to a recent study by Dutch researchers, regular exercise might be even more important than ergonomic devices in treating work-related upper body complaints and repetitive stress injuries.
OSHA’s new Mobile Workforce VPP Demonstration for Construction, unveiled July 21, is a nationwide Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) initiative aimed at meeting the unique needs and characteristics of the construction industry.
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