The following winter driving tips were posted on the Weather Channel web site.   Driving in Snow and Ice The best advice for driving in bad winter weather is not to drive at all, if you can avoid it.  Don’t go out until the snow plows and sanding trucks have had a chance to do
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Nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses among private industry employers declined in the United States in 2010 to a rate of 3.5 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers. Nearly 3.1 million injuries and illnesses were reported among private sector industry employers in 2010, down from 3.3 million reported in 2009. The health care and social assistance industry sector (case rate of 5.2) had more reported illnesses and injuries than any other sector, and public sector employees are injured at a rate that is approximately 60 percent higher than the private sector rate. [continue reading]

The U.S. EPA released the final health assessment for trichloroethylene (TCE) to the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) database. The final assessment characterizes TCE as carcinogenic to humans and as a human noncancer health hazard. According to the EPA, this assessment will allow for a better understanding of the risks posed to communities from exposure to TCE in soil, water, and air. It will provide federal, state, local, and other policymakers with the latest scientific information to make decisions about cleanup and other actions to protect …

Numerous standards promulgated by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) contain requirements for employee training. Typically, these standards state “the employer must provide training to affected employees,” or similar language. Obviously, full-time employees need to be trained, but some other categories of employees should not be overlooked. Newly hired employees must be trained in all
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The U.S. Occupational, Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) initiated its national Heat Illness Campaign to educate workers and their employers about the hazards of working outdoors in the heat. OSHA is leveraging relationships with other state and local partners, employers, trade organizations, unions, community groups, educational institutions and healthcare professionals, to disseminate training materials across
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A new National Emphasis Program (NEP) for the Primary Metals Industries was announced by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on June 2,2011. The NEP is intended to identify and reduce or eliminate worker exposures to harmful chemical and physical hazards in facilities that produce metal products. The goals of the NEP include
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During a recent audit, I discovered that many of my colleagues and I had been taught to apply the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) confined space standard (29 Code of Federal Regulations 1910.146) incorrectly. The question that came up was related to identifying “what is a confined space,” which I find to be
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Although safety professionals have long acknowledged that the promotion of safety is an important component of a safety management system, many organizations have had limited success in promoting safety throughout their own companies. For example, one way many companies attempt to promote safety is through the use of slogans. Safety slogans such as “Think Safety”
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The workplace should be one place an employee can expect to feel safe. Maintaining a safe workplace should, therefore, be a primary goal of any business owner. The easiest way for an employer to prevent injuries in the workplace (and the associated costs that inevitably come with them) is to ensure that every eventuality is
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The clichéd phrase “incidents and accidents are unavoidable” is not acceptable to today’s safety management professional. Everything happens for a reason, including incidents and accidents. For years, safety professionals have been striving to detect, prevent, and eliminate incidents. We tend to assume that the majority of safety incidents are caused by untrained or inexperienced workers.
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