What if we could crowdsource our EHS data? A prime example focuses on the safety successes of the U.S. airline industry - no commercial U.S. airline has experienced a fatal crash since 2009! Their safety strategy has been so effective that the healthcare industry, which currently experiences 250,000 unnecessary patient deaths a year in the U.S., is attempting to follow its protocols. So, what has helped the airline industry achieve such immense safety feats and how can EHS leaders in industries outside of the airline industry take a page out of their book?

Lagging indicators are simply rates of injuries that have already happened. If we know how and why these incidents occurred, we can transfer this knowledge into our continual hazard analysis, improve our hazard controls, communicate them and begin to validate their use.

This will be a series of short articles designed to provide a different perspective—a paradigm shift -- in terms of how most of you think about industrial safety. And how most of you think about accidental injury causation in general.

We tend to view our own industry, whatever it is, as unique. We’re prone to see our industry as having characteristics that distinguish it from other industries. I am often told by clients, “this business is unlike any other.”

OSHA has cited and proposed fines of more than $87,000 against a Massachusetts-based granite countertop manufacturer after it failed to correct recurring safety hazards.

OSHA’s program to protect whistleblowers – workers who speak up when they witness a safety hazard or other type of industry wrongdoing -- may be failing to afford that protection, according to an NBC TV San Francisco Bay Area investigation.