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Nurse Carmelita Kinjo was eager to begin her night shift in the intensive care unit at the Veterans Administration hospital where she worked. As her thoughts turned to the evening that lay ahead of her and the patients she would tend to, she slipped on a wet floor. Someone had forgotten to replace the sign warning that it was wet. Kinjo fell backward, hitting her head and slamming into a wall.

Workers who were dismantling a mercury boiler in Portsmith, New Hampshire were exposed to high levels of mercury, according to OSHA inspectors who took action following workers’ complaints. In response, OSHA cited Manafort Brothers, Inc. of Plainville, Connecticut for two willful and six serious violations concerning mercury, respirators, protective clothing, and sanitary conditions. The construction contractor faces penalties of $329,548.

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.

In the early 1900s, a young dentist named Frederick McKay moved to a Colorado town where the residents’ teeth — though in some cases stained chocolate brown — had far less decay than was typical back then. He and other researchers eventually linked the phenomenon to fluoride in the town’s drinking water – a eureka moment that would usher in what is often called one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that the operator of a drone that collided with an U.S. Army helicopter failed to see and avoid the helicopter because he was intentionally flying the drone out of visual range and did not have adequate knowledge of regulations and safe operating practices.

Major or “large-loss” fires in the U.S. in 2016 cost $1.2 billion in property losses and resulted in 14 deaths and dozens of injuries, according to the latest edition of the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) “Large-loss Fires in the United States” report. Large-loss fires are defined as events that result in property damage of at least $10 million.

OSHA has cited Carl Cannon Inc., an automobile dealership, for serious safety violations after three employees died and two were injured at its Jasper facility. OSHA initiated an investigation in response to a flash fire. Inspectors determined that the employees were using a flammable brake wash to scrub the service pit floor when the fire occurred. As a result, three employees were fatally injured, and a fourth was critically burned. A fifth employee was treated for smoke inhalation and released.

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.