January 2011 Blog Posts (42)

From the CDC website:

"In 1974, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) jointly initiated the Standards Completion Program (SCP). The intent of this program was to develop occupational health standards consistent the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 for substances with then-existing OSHA permissible exposure limits (PELs). As part of the respirator selection process for each draft…

I cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge twice a day Monday – Thursday (once on the way to work and once on the way home) and it's a pretty impressive structure. I've often seen workers climbing, working on and painting this bridge.

Al Roker decided to do more than just watch workers; he decided to join them in climbing a similar structure, the 600-foot high George Washington Bridge. To do so, he donned a…

Residential construction has traditionally been a different breed when it comes to fall protection, compliance and enforcement. Because they aren't as big as the larger construction companies, because there are so many of them and because they are scattered, often in more remote locations, they have been hard to monitor and enforce fall protection standards on. The problem is that the lack of proper directive results in about 40 deaths a year.

As of December 16, 2010 OSHA is trying to…

10. Your dryer exhaust

You clean the lint trap every time you put a load in the dryer to make sure that your dryer isn't working too hard and wasting energy. That's good! When was the last time that you cleaned the lint in the exhaust hose?

According the the US Consumer Product Safety Commission website "in 1998, clothes dryers were associated with 15,600…

9. Under the sink

It really isn't very smart, we collect all the most dangerous chemicals and put them down low where kids can get to them.

The truth is that most of us keep bleach, and all kinds of dangerous cleansers and detergents under the bathroom and kitchen sink. Children as young as those barely beginning to crawl can open these cabinets. To them it just looks like lemonade, ice-tea or Kool-Aid.

The Fix

1. Obviously the first thing to…

8. Radon

Pop Quiz… What are the three leading causes of lung cancer? Most of us know that smoking and secondhand smoke cause lung cancer. What most of us don't know is that radon is also in the top three. According to the EPA it's the second leading cause of lung cancer and responsible to 21,000 deaths each year.

What is radon gas and where does it comes from? Radon is an odorless, tasteless, invisible gas that is essentially a radioactive gas. Because it is 9 times heavier…

Many people don’t know what MRO means, but every facility, no matter what the size, performs MRO in some way. MRO is an acronym that stands for Maintenance, Repair and Operations. These are the repairs and maintenance you perform to keep your facility in good working order. Every minute a piece of equipment is shut down means lost productivity, late production schedules and lost revenue. A good MRO team, no matter how big or how small, plays an important role by minimizing downtime and…

7. Purses

PURSES?!?!? Really?

Yes! Believe it or not, your purses, ladies at one of the top potential dangers for your kids. Why? Two reasons

1. What's inside
   
   Purses tend to accumulate all kinds of stuff from prescription drugs to pen knives and many other items that you wouldn't want your kids handling. Stuff that should be locked up, not set out on the coffee table, within easy reach, but that's exactly what usually happens.…

Skiing and Snowboarding Safety Tips

Fresh snow in the mountains, fun on the slopes and feeling the powder beneath your skis. This is National Ski safety week Jan 17-23, 2011. Hitting the slopes or headed to the mountains and enjoy the snow sounds great as the 2011 winter sports season gets into full swing. It is wonderful as long as we can enjoy it safely.  

STATISTICS ON SKIING/SNOWBOARDING

Fatalities - According to the National Ski Areas…

6. Mold

It has been said that one of the most unhealthy places for you is actually in your home, at least when it comes to the air that you are breathing. One of my pet peeves is cleansers in spray bottles. Who came up with this nightmare? "Let's put a whole bunch of nasty chemicals in a bottle, tell people that it's what they need to use to kill germs and then put it in a spray bottle so that every time they use it they are vaporizing most of it into the air that they breathe!"…

Please see the attached photos. Today a "re-usable" SafeWaze SafeClaw

Anchorage Connector failed during inspection by a contractor's competent

person. The anchor was purchased on Monday and was in its second day of use.

The competent person was cleaning the concrete dust off of it to place it in

another hole and one of the "wedges" slipped off of the end. This

particular one is Model #4075, and it is from batch #59.



I received information that this type…

5. Outdoor Play Equipment

According to kidshealth.org "each year, more than 200,000 kids are treated in hospital ERs for playground-related injuries." Considering the fact that playground and outdoor play equipment is built and designed in order to allow our children to have fun, that's pretty sad. Even sadder is the fact that most of these injuries could have been avoided.

The Fix

1. Adult supervision. It starts…

4. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

Carbon Monoxide (CO) is the leading cause of accidental deaths in America.

According to emedicinehealth.com:

"This odorless, tasteless, and colorless gas is known as the "Silent Killer." The Centers for Disease Control estimates that carbon monoxide poisoning claims nearly 500 lives, and causes more than 15,000 visits to hospital emergency departments annually."

Where does CO come…

3. Windows and balconies

Falls account for a high percentage of deaths in construction and a big part of our business has to do with fall protection. Unfortunately falls also account for a large percentage of fatalities in the home as well.

Anyone who's had kids has experienced the shock of suddenly seeing that child who can't even walk yet standing on top of a dresser or a table. It's enough to make you think that we did indeed evolve from monkeys. We suddenly become aware…

At a recent combustible dust webinar last October, attendees to the educational event learned about ten combustible dust incidents that occurred annually from the early 1980s until 2005 in the U.S.A. This data was obtained from the…

2. Standing Water

A friend of mine lost his granddaughter when she drowned in a 5-gallon bucket of water.

As sad and heartbreaking as this is, what's even sadder is the fact that this type of accidental drowning is all too common.

We all love the pool when the weather gets hot, we love the sound of running water from the fountain that we installed but we need to be aware that even a couple of inches of water can be fatal. In the case of my friend, all it took was a…

Each week I publish an electronic weekly safety newsletter, the Construction Safety Update.  To view our most recent addtion, please follow this link; http://mim.io/ba298.  Please subscribe to the newsletter if you find the information relevent.  For the past 25 years I have worked in the field of safety and currently work as the Corporate Safety Director for a large contractor in Miami.

In addtion to the newsletter, I also have 3 safety…