Workplace Health

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On Tuesday, July 19, 2022, United States legislators, labor leaders, PPE manufacturers, and safety experts met at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. to advocate for heat safety and the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act. 

While outdoor environments may deal with more extreme temperatures, heavy equipment and frequent movement in industrial workplaces can lead to high, potentially dangerous temperatures in industrial facilities.

As temperatures and the risk of heat illness rise in Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration reminds employers and workers not to ignore the dangers of working in hot weather – indoors and out.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) will offer free, confidential black lung screenings to coal miners in August 2022. The screenings provide early detection of black lung disease, a serious but preventable disease in coal miners caused by breathing coal mine dust.

With the summer months quickly arriving, we are looking forward to BBQs and lots of good times outdoors. But it also means that some of us will be working in the sun and heat, performing our jobs with occupational safety hazards not found in the cooler seasons.

By maintaining good indoor air quality, individuals can protect their health and well-being.
Lowering emissions, removing pollutants and adopting new building designs may help individuals improve the air in a structure. Clean indoor climates increase workers’ productivity, which benefits business owners. 

Industrial hygiene began as a medical specialty in the early 1900s. Scope creep among OHS pros is occurring now and will expand in the future, too. The challenge for OHS pros, and others, is to know when to expand or establish limits of OHS capabilities.

Wearing a hard hat or helmet is essential when there is a risk of head injury, but this equipment can also increase a person’s body temperature. We lose most of our body heat through our heads. Managers need to do everything they can to protect their workers in the field, keeping them as cool and comfortable as possible.

The internet is full of outdated, incomplete, and even wrongheaded advice, and the news is full of dire predictions that the world is getting hotter and heat illness is getting more frequent. So what’s a concerned safety manager to do?

The U.S. Department of Labor announced that its Occupational Safety and Health Administration has published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to revise its standards for occupational exposure to lead.