Safetyguy08's Blog – September 2011 Archive (21)

As a safety professional you know the importance of checklists. Without them things that should get done often don't. With them everything that needs to get done, whether we are talking about entering a confined space or a lockout/tagout audit, is one by one checked off to make sure that nothing has been overlooked.

The problem is often making sure that the checklist that you are using is, in fact, complete and that nothing has been left off of it.

That's where…

Lethal Weapon Three (I believe)… Danny Glover is being suffocated by the plastic sheeting that is being used to protect the new addition that he's having built over his garage so he grabs the nail gun that's laying there and nails the bad guy (His pun, not mine!).

While it makes for exciting movie viewing, it's anything but fun when it happens for real. Tens of thousands of workers are injured each year by nail guns.

OSHA & NIOSH, in response to this growing safety hazard…

A new YouTube video by Hexarmor Products is the newest addition to the series of videos by Hexarmor showing how cut resistance, puncture resistance and laceration resistance is measured.

The ASTM F1790 is the standard most frequently used in the United States as a way to measure the cut resistance of safety products. HexArmor tests all of its products using the ASTM F1790, and then applies the ISEA rating…

Sept 25-Oct 1st is National Fireplace/Chimney Safety Week

September is here and many of us with fireplaces/stoves or even fire pits will be out cutting and gathering firewood for the cool days ahead. The fastest way to cut down dead trees and get that firewood is with a chainsaw. However owning and operating a chainsaw comes…

Anyone who's been in the safety business for any length of time knows that step one when dealing with any particular hazard or safety issue is to try to engineer away the hazard before you start looking at PPE and other possible solutions. In a nutshell what this means is that rather than purchase respirators for all your workers because a specific chemical is harmful, it is best to try to find alternate chemicals that could be used that aren't harmful. The same principle applies to any…

A new white paper by Miller Pierce (http://millerpierce.com) "Top Ten Trends in the Safety Industry" provides and quick but extremely informative read for anyone involved in the field of safety.

It's a quick 4 pages that identifies each trend, briefly explains it and provides for each one a "bottom line" that explains what this means to safety professionals,…

Does anyone remember how we used to work and do research before the internet? For safety professionals, the internet is an incredible resource. There is no need to create your own forms, no need to rewrite all the material and no need to reinvent the wheel.

Case in point, a FREE DOWNLOAD from www.safetyrisk.com that allows you to assess the risk factor associated with a…

With a quarter of a million workers in the USA involved in the manufacturing of concrete as well as everyone else who uses concrete, the unique health and safety challenges of concrete remain a very real problem.

The hazards are many and varied:

1. Cement Dust
   
   Cement dust is something that can cause its own set of health problems. It can cause irritation to the eyes, the throat, the nose and the lungs. It can also cause skin damage, from mild…

Driving in heavy fog is like driving with a blindfold on. Statistically it's the most dangerous driving hazard in existence. No matter how important the trip is, it's not worth gambling your life. Rain in most of our area recently has caused some foggy conditions. We are transitioning toward fall with colder morning and evening temperatures with the addition of any moisture can…

When speaking about occupational health and safety, we rarely think to include workplace violence. It has, however, ranked in the top four most common causes of death in the workplace for the past 15 years. In 2010, for example, out of the reported 4,547 fatalities in the workplace, 506 were attributed to workplace homicides.

According to the new OSHA webpage on workplace violence, some "2 million American workers…

Sometimes good things don't necessarily come in small packages. In this age of miniaturization, button batteries have become more and more common as replacements for the larger size batteries that have been around for decades. That's all fine and good except that parents don't realize that they are inadvertently leaving these batteries within easy reach of small children and that these button batteries are a potential health hazard.

Many remotes, for example, now…

So OSHA stopped by, they had a look around and found one or more things that you've now been issued a citation for. What now? It isn't enough to just go fix the problem and then go to lunch. There's a procedure and a protocol that has to be followed, not only for fixing the problem but for documenting the process as well. This is what OSHA calls "abatement"

Abatement is defined by OSHA as "the correction of the safety or health hazard/violation that led to an OSHA citation."…

OSHA just released the new Site-Specific Targeting agenda for 2011. The SST program is one of 14 current national emphasis programs and is designed to target non-construction business that are classified as high-hazard because they have above average work-related injuries, illnesses and fatality.

While the target hasn't really changed since last year's SST, the number of employees in the place of business that they are going to specifically going to be looking closely at has. The…

As we've already mentioned, September is National Preparedness Month. In a previous post, I talked about being prepared and having all the necessary supplies on hand (See "September is National Preparedness Month"). In addition to having a disaster kit and emergency supplies on hand (both at home and in the car), it's important to have a family emergency plan in place.

You and your…

There as long been a debate going when it comes to safety compliance as to whether it is best to motivate people into compliance using psychology or enforcement. In other words what works better, showing people the reasons behind the rules and explaining the fact that it's for their own and everyone else's good or simply telling them "do it or else!"

We've talked in the past in this blog about sending people with paid when a safety violation occurs rather than sending them home…

This year marks the third year that the Occupational Health and Safety magazine has had its annual New Product of the Year Award.

This year's winners are:…

Today I wanted to highlight a couple of comments that were made to recent posts that you may or may not have seen.

One is from a Police Officer who commented on the Back to School Safety Tips post. He provides some valuable insights and information, as well as a great link:

Thank you for your safety posting. As a parent and police officer, I…

This month marks the 10 years since 9/11. This month is also National Preparedness month.

Being prepared not only makes sense, it is a duty for each one of us. When an emergency strikes responders cannot help everyone and resources are stretched to the max. Being prepared allows official responders focus their time, energy and resources on the most needy (handicapped, wounded, elderly, children, etc…).

Being prepared means being educated and it means having emergency supplies…

Anyone working in residential construction has, by now, been made fully aware of the new mandate to OSHA inspectors to enforce the new fall protection standard. We've blogged about this new standard a few times in the past months.

While residential construction workers may feel like it's a pain to have to jump through all these hoops in order to be compliant, especially if they've been doing what they've been doing for many years with no problems, they have to realize that the numbers…