Preventing Bloodborne Pathogen Exposures

The best way to prevent exposure to bloodborne pathogens is to practice “universal precautions.” This means that employees should always treat blood and body fluids as if these materials are infectious, even if they don’t think the materials really are infectious.

In addition, instruct your workers to:

• Wash their hands and any exposed skin thoroughly with soap and water immediately following contact with potentially infectious materials.


• If blood gets in their eyes, nose, or mouth, flush thoroughly with water.


• Be careful when cleaning up accident sites where blood has been shed (wear gloves, use disinfectant cleanser to wash down surfaces, and wash hands carefully afterwards).

Instruct workers not to:

• Be careless about treating a co-worker’s bleeding injury, or when giving rescue breathing.


• Eat, drink, smoke, apply cosmetics, or handle contact lenses in work areas that could be contaminated or when their hand could be contaminated.
• Keep food or beverages in refrigerators, cabinets, or work areas where they could be exposed to potentially infectious materials.
• Touch, with their bare hands objects that could be contaminated with bloodborne pathogens, such as blood-covered surfaces or tools.

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Whatever safety meeting you need, chances are you’ll find it prewritten and ready to use in BLR’s Safety Meetings Library on CD. Try it at no cost or risk. Here’s how.

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Bloodborne Pathogens and Workplace First Aid

Some medical emergencies involve blood, and employees have no way of knowing whether the victim is infected with HIV or hepatitis. Some victims may not know themselves. It’s estimated that 25 percent of Americans with HIV and most people with hepatitis C are not yet diagnosed.

When giving first aid, employees should:

• Cover open cuts, scrapes, skin rashes, and broken skin.


• Cover their nose, mouth, and eyes (mask and safety glasses).


• Wear disposable gloves from the first-aid kit.


• Use a pocket mouth-to-mouth breathing device for rescue breathing.


• Wash their hands thoroughly with soap and water after removing gloves.

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Choose the Training That’s Right for Your Workers

BLR’s Safety Meetings Library provides the perfect materials for conducting frequent and engaging training on bloodborne pathogens as well as on all the other essential safety and health topics you need to cover to keep your employees informed and safe. This cost-effective resource provides highly effective, interactive safety meetings on every topic, as well as supporting handouts, quizzes, posters, and safety slogans.

All told, the CD provides you with more than 400 ready-to-train meetings on more than 100 key safety topics—a shrewd investment in this time of tight safety budgets. In addition to the meetings’ supplemental quizzes and handouts, you also get relevant regulations (OSHA’s CFR 29), a listing of the most common safety violations cited by OSHA, and case studies of actual OSHA cases and their outcomes.

Safety Meetings Library lets you choose from a variety of training approaches, including:

• Mandatory—Sessions that are OSHA-required


• Comprehensive—Sessions with broadest coverage of a topic


• 7-Minute—Short, simple, targeted sessions to fit tight schedules


• Initial—A session used as introductory training on a topic


• Refresher—Sessions that follow up on or reinforce previous training


• Tool Box Talk—More informal reinforcement of a topic


• PowerPoint®—Graphic presentations for comprehensive initial or refresher training


• Hands-On—A session in which there are training activities


• Spanish—Including Spanish language handouts and quizzes coordinated with English sessions

You can get a preview of the program by using the links below. But for the best look, we suggest a no-cost, no-obligation trial. Just let us know and we’ll arrange it for you.

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