Safety & Health Best Practices

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How humans and other animals detect odors is an intriguing topic. Each OHS pro should understand the basics of how to interpret chemical exposures.

The Great Resignation, Big Quit, and Big Strike are just a few of the terms used to describe the phenomenon of the large number of people who, during Covid times, took drastic actions to remedy dissatisfaction with their job.

Understanding macroeconomics is helpful as you advance in your OHS career. Macroeconomics is the big picture evaluation of how an economy works based upon numerous influences at the local, regional, and global levels.

Rich economies need women to work. But women present a special health and safety risk at work when they become pregnant. How do rich economies manage this risk?

This past November 2021, 193 countries attending UNESCO’s (UN’s science body) General Conference agreed to abide by common standards for open science.

Many OHS pros believe that going beyond OSHA requirements demonstrates the use of best practices. Going beyond OSHA, however, requires careful considerations.

Among the properties of chemicals such as molecular weight, solubility, reactivity, pH and such, vapor pressure (VP) is the most important property for worker health considerations.

In the earliest days of OHS, disputes of who was responsible for the payment of a workplace injury or illness was settled by litigation. Every US state eventually passed workers’ compensation insurance law to establish a no-fault system where responsibility for injury/illness payment nearly always falls upon the employer.

Anyone may call themselves an industrial hygienist and anyone may practice industrial hygiene. No license, certificate, formal education, or years of experience are required for someone to practice industrial hygiene in the United States. Whether IH is a profession, trade or practice is just semantics.

Long working hours are now considered by the WHO/ILO to be the occupational risk factor with the largest attributable disease burden. WHO/ILO advise, “Protecting and promoting occupational and workers’ safety and health requires interventions to reduce hazardous long working hours.”