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Workers welding stainless steel and other alloy steels containing chromium metal at a Wisconsin bulk storage tank manufacturer were exposed to hazardous levels of hexavalent chromium, which can cause lung cancer and respiratory, eye and skin damage.

“The problem for me became very severe and my head nurse actually called me into her office to discuss it… it had gotten to the point where I was so chronically sleep-deprived that I was falling asleep while I was trying to report off to the on-coming shift. So, I’m sitting there talking about very complicated medical issues, and in the middle of a sentence, I would nod-off."

A new toolkit released jointly by OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety is aimed at helping health care industry employers protect hospital staff from respiratory hazards on the job.

Four workers killed by a lethal gas in November 2014 would be alive today had their employer, DuPont, taken steps to protect them, an OSHA investigation found.

Report from the European Trade Union Institute: An important international meeting on toxic products opened in Geneva on 4 May with, as one of the main items on its agenda, the inclusion of chrysotile in the Rotterdam Convention. In spite of the deleterious effects of this form of asbestos, lobbying by producer and importer states has so far enabled this carcinogenic substance to remain outside the purview of this instrument.

OSHA has updated its free heat illness app with some new features for iPhone users. The app, which was launched in 2011, allows workers and supervisors to calculate the heat index for their worksite, and, based on the heat index, displays a risk level to outdoor workers.

What is even more frustrating with this delay is the fact that there has been agreement by both the largest domestic player in the beryllium industry and the United Steel Workers Union in agreeing to a proposed exposure limit to beryllium. It remains to be seen if other stakeholders will agree to this compromise exposure limit until the proposal is returned to OSHA and open for public comments.

On International Workers’ Day, the Berkeley, CA-based health publisher Hesperian is celebrating by releasing a one-of-a-kind resource on workers’ health and safety. More than a decade in the making and drawing on the experiences of workers and health educators from every continent, this book aims to provide essential information to workers themselves, those who are the best placed and the most highly motivated to prevent the devastating factory disasters that all too often dominate the news.

Gas sensors measure the concentration of gas in their vicinity, and are used across various end-use industries. There have been numerous developments in gas sensing technology, primarily on account of the advent of embedded electronics, and enhanced manufacturing techniques. Gas sensors prove to be highly effective in measuring gas concentrations in the event of a leak.