Today's Safety News

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While the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and other agencies investigate Saturday’s Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco International Airport, the local coroner’s office is trying to determine whether one of the two fatalities in the incident was caused by a fire truck that was rushing to the burning plane.

OSHA has partnered with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) - Construction Sector on this nationwide outreach campaign to raise awareness among workers and employers about common fall hazards in construction, and how falls from ladders, scaffolds and roofs can be prevented and lives can be saved. Here's how:

Devices to help making loading and unloading safer, protect cameras and hands and detect hydrocarbon fires are among the top products of the week as featured on ISHN.com:

Tragedies in Arizona and Las Vegas, midair near-misses at U.S. airports and the persistent increase in grain bin fatalities are among this week's top EHS-related stories from ISHN.com:

Endocrine disruptors - chemicals that interfere with the hormone system – are the focus of growing concern in Europe. Istas, the research arm of the Spanish trade union CC.OO, sounded the alarm in a recent report, while European NGOs launched the "EDC Free – Stop Hormone Disrupting Chemicals” campaign at the end of March.

The number of prescription painkiller overdose deaths increased fivefold among women between 1999 and 2010, according to a Vital Signs report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While men are more likely to die of a prescription painkiller overdose, since 1999 the percentage increase in deaths was greater among women (400 percent in women compared to 265 percent in men).

The man hailed by the media as the “Category 5 General” says despite recent natural disasters, Americans still haven’t recognized the need to be prepared at home. Lt. General Russel L. Honoré (Ret.), who’ll serve as the keynote speaker at the American Industrial Hygiene Association^® (AIHA) Fall Conference, led Task Force Katrina in the aftermath of the devastating hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast in the summer of 2005.

Working at heights carries risk. About five American construction workers are killed every week by falls from heights, 251 of them in 2011 alone. New data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) show you don’t have to fall very far for the fall to be deadly.

OSHA has announced a new National Emphasis Program to protect workers from the serious health effects from occupational exposure to isocyanates.

This true tragedy is taken from the files of NIOSH’s Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program: A 17-year-old female laborer fell about 26 feet from a residential roof to a stone patio. Nine days later she died from her injuries. The victim was working for a construction company replacing a residential roof. (How common is this work? You and friends may have done this yourself.)