OHSA’s Hazard Alert discusses the health hazards associated with hydraulic fracturing and focuses on worker exposures to silica in the air. It covers the health effects of breathing silica, recommends ways to protect workers, and describes how OSHA and NIOSH can help. Workers and employers need to be aware of the hazard that silica dust poses.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found that a National Airlines Boeing 747 freighter crashed on takeoff from Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan, because the five large military vehicles it was carrying were inadequately restrained.
Work-related injury and death rates higher than in other industries
July 14, 2015
Workers involved in nearly every step of the modern food industry are at increased risk of occupational illness/injury and death, compared to other industries, reports a study in the July Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).
The American Industrial Hygiene Association® (AIHA) has released two new educational materials focused on formaldehyde, specifically formaldehyde emissions from laminate flooring. The two documents, Laminate Flooring Outgassing: Technical Guidance and Formaldehyde: Is It a Problem in My Home?, were created by AIHA’s Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Committee Task Force on laminate flooring formaldehyde outgassing.
The numbers are staggering. The Ebola epidemic that began in West Africa in early 2014 has so far claimed more than 11,000 lives out of 27,000 reported cases. Battling this scourge: more than 1,200 experts in various disciplines, dispatched to Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and surrounding countries by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its partners.
Although a worker in Yorkshire, England still suffers physically and mentally from a severe chemical burn at an oil refinery, co-workers were able to get him quickly to an emergency shower, and after that, to a hospital for treatment.
Restaurants, movie theatres and big box stores that serve food like Costco and Target will get an extra year to add calorie information to their menus. In announcing the extension – to December, 2016, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the extra time is necessary “for the agency to provide further clarifying guidance to help facilitate efficient compliance across all covered businesses and for covered establishments to come into compliance with the final rule.”
Eight people have died in construction-related accidents in 2015 thus far, according to the city’s Buildings Department, as many as in all of 2014; the year before, three died. Not since 2008, during the height of the last building boom, has the number of construction accidents been so high, when a rash of episodes, including two falling cranes, claimed 19 lives, according to an article in The New York Times.
Although hardhats are a fixture in construction work and are intended to keep construction workers safe, they do not always prevent accidents that lead to traumatic brain injury (TBI) on construction sites, according to the Brain Injury Society.
A John Deere & Co. pipefitter who was fired after reporting several safety violations to OSHA would be reinstated with back pay, under the terms of a lawsuit filed by the agency. On three separate occasions, the worker filed complaints about the company’s Moline, Illinois facility with OSHA, each time resulting in violations against the company.
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