On Wednesday, Oct. 17, the 470 employees at Perdue’s further-processing operation in Bridgewater, Va., achieved two safety milestones. That’s the day when they reached four million consecutive production hours worked without experiencing an OSHA recordable lost-time case and one year without an OSHA recordable incident.
Workers who use hand and/or power tools can expose themselves and co-workers to personal injuries and illnesses such as: lacerations, crushes, burns, amputations; fractures and musculoskeletal disorders; skin and pulmonary illnesses; sight and hearing damage; and electrical shocks.
We live in a noisy world. Some noises can damage our hearing, leading to hearing loss, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), and difficulty communicating especially in background noise. Permanent noise-induced hearing damage is incurable.
An OSHA investigation into a fatal incident at an Ohio company has resulted in citations and fines against the company, Globe Metallurgical Inc.
OSHA inspectors determined that the employee suffered fatal burns after an explosion from a molten silicon spill.
President Trump this week signed into law comprehensive legislation aimed at slowing the nation’s opioid crisis. The 250-page bill called The Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act (H.R.6):
authorizes $36 million for each of fiscal years 2019 through 2023 to train and resources to first responders and other key community members on protection from occupational exposure to fentanyl and other opioids, and how to respond if an exposure occurs.
Today, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, as part of its investigation into the May 2017 Didion Mill explosion, issued “Call to Action: Combustible Dust” to gather comments on the management and control of combustible dust from companies, regulators, inspectors, safety training providers, researchers, unions, and the workers affected by dust-related hazards.
A new white paper from the Campbell Institute, presented by Joy Inouye, a researcher for the institute, for the media on Tuesday morning at the NSC Congress, details serious injuries and fatalities in the workplace.
Over the past two decades, the U.S. has seen enormous gains in workplace safety, according to the report, titled Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention: Perspectives and Practices.
The National Safety Council has been collecting and studying statistics for nearly 100 years, but the organization revealed a new section on Tuesday specifically for workplace statistics.
The database, now completely online, details injury facts, worker details and timelines, which help to understand why these injuries and fatalities occur.
The future of safety will look beyond numbers, said SAFEmap International CEO Corrie Pitzer, who gave Tuesday’s keynote during the National Safety Council Congress & Expo in Houston.
He spoke about three different levels of safety. He said Safety 1 is about seeking to eliminate human error, which is futile because, “in safety, we don’t know what we don’t know.”
Every year, one of the most-attended presentations on the expo floor at the NSC Congress & Expo is the announcement of the Top 10 most frequently cited workplace safety violations.
This year was no exception as Patrick Kapust, deputy director of OSHA’s Directorate of Enforcement Programs, presented the preliminary Top 10 for fiscal year 2018 to an overflowing room.