With over one million workers entering confined spaces each year, it’s essential that safety managers invest in developing a confined space entry (CSE) plan of action, which can help identify and alleviate present risks.
A Tulsa, Oklahoma safety services company doesn’t just talk the talk. Having just achieved one million man-hours without a recordable injury, JCL Service Company apparently walks the walk, too.
Both divisions of the JCL company—JCL Safety Services and JCL Risk Services—reached this safety milestone by completing over one million man-hours without any of the following injury-related incidents occurring: days off work, restricted work, transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or an injury resulting in death.
COSHCON17 — The Young and the Active — The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, the umbrella group of all the nation’s COSH groups held its annual conference last week and I was privileged to be able to chair a very moving panel on “Lessons from Workplace Fatalities” with some of my heroes: family activist Katherine Rodriguez, whose father, Ray Gonzales was killed in a fire at BP Texas City in 2004, Tonya Ford, director the United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities, whose uncle Robert “Bobby” Fitch fell to his death at an Archer Daniel Midland plant in 2009, and Jonathan Karmel, author of Dying to Work: Death and Injury in the American Workplace.
The 62,085 injuries to U.S. firefighters in 2016 reflected an 8.8 percent decrease from 2015, making this the lowest rate of injury since 1981 – the year the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) began analyzing firefighter injury data.
The latest data from the NFPA, released as part of the latest edition of its “U.S. Firefighter Injuries” report, show that the leading injury types in 2016 were: Strains, sprains and/or muscular pains (52.6 percent), and wounds, cuts, bleeding, and bruising (15.2 percent).
R.C. Bigelow ("Bigelow") is a family-owned company headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, that produces and markets blended teas. The company was founded in 1945 by Ruth Campbell Bigelow, who started her company with "Constant Comment" blended tea, which remains popular today. The R.C. Bigelow facility in Boise, Idaho, is one of two bagging, packaging, and distribution facilities. The company employs approximately 60 workers at the Boise facility and 320 corporate-wide.
OK, now that the dust has settled, what do we think about the performance of OSHA Assistant Secretary nominee Scott Mugno after listening to his testimony at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday (and Tweeting it)? Two days after the hearing, there hasn’t been much press coverage.
Business Insurance headlined its article “OSHA director nominee faces tough questions at confirmation hearing,” noting Ranking Member Patty Murray’s concern that “Your record that stands against everything OSHA should stand for.”
It appears a welding accident lead to a deadly fire in Clovis, New Mexico. Three people were killed one was seriously injured. “This is one of the largest losses of life we’ve seen,” said Clovis Police Captain Roman Romero.
The three deceased are John Sandoval, 54; Robert Elebario, 51; and Billie Grabowsky, 52.
Rogelio Hernandez was the only one who survived the fire. He was treated at Plains Regional Medical Center in Clovis.
“I asked him what happened and what does he remember, and he said they were just in the shop welding a piece of pipe to a car and they noticed the gas can nearby had caught a spark,” explained Rogelio’s niece, Casandra Hernandez.
Welders are at particularly high risk for eye injuries. A Canadian study reported that welders represented 21% of all eye injury claims. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), welders, cutters, and welding machine operators held about 521 000 jobs in 2000. The welding process exposes workers to a number of sources of mechanical, radiant, thermal, or chemical energy.
What activities and circumstances are proximal to a welding-related occupational eye injury? Researchers categorized and described the activity, initiating process, mechanism of injury, object and/or substance, and the use of protective eyewear from the narrative text data reported for each injury.
Welders in a shop in Augusta, Georgia, were welding a plate onto the outside of a non-pressurized waste water collection tank in preparation for installing a hand rail. The atmosphere was tested surrounding the tank, but the inside was not. The welders didn't know what the gas buildup was, but the air in the tank was combustible. One of the victims in the explosion that occurred at the DSM Resins plant in September, 2017, was working inside a tank when the explosion happened.
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