Articles by Dave Johnson

The dark, misty highway made the digital boards hard to ignore. They are also visible from a greater distance. You notice them sooner. Which of course is the point of outdoor advertising. But I thought, this seems like another form of distracted driving.

The statistics are well known. Each day three or four workers are killed due to electrical related accidents, according to NIOSH. A Michigan burn center found that 34 percent of patients injured on the job received flash injuries.

Looks like we’re going to have to outfit workers with wearable devices to monitor their blood pressure and heartbeat to be on the alert when stress levels driven by office and assembly line political chatter get dangerously high strung.

Despite the potential for serious injuries and fatalities, gloves were not considered when arc flash standards for clothing were first developed in the 1990s. For years electrical industry safety experts wanted the same type of rating on gloves as they had for clothing and face shields.

NFPA states that hundreds of deaths and thousands of burn injuries occur each year due to shock, electrocution, arc flash, and arc blast — and most could be prevented through compliance with NFPA 70E: Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace®.

Businesses by and large would rather not know about employees’ mental struggles, and related so-called weaknesses and fragility, and employees don’t want managers and supervisors to know out of fear of losing their jobs. This is a dangerous silence all around.

On February 15, Labor-Secretary nominee Andrew Puzder withdrew his name from consideration after it became clear he lacked the necessary Senate Republican support to be confirmed. Puzder had drawn criticism for opposing the minimum wage and expanding overtime eligibility.

BNP Media’s Market Research Division, in conjunction with ISHN, conducted a survey of the 2017 safety and health plans of oil and gas and utility/energy professionals.

An executive coach says when he asks senior leaders what safety means to them, many pause and say, “Well, safety means everybody gets to go home.”  What, are we fighting a war?

Areview of the literature on the causes of arc flash and other electrical accidents most often points to worker carelessness as the number one problem. “Carelessness” may be too broad of a generalization.