The National Safety Council (NSC) announced on April 24 it awarded 50 Advanced Safety Certificate (ASC) Scholarships to U.S. veterans, and the Boeing Company provided the funding for the scholarships.
The ASC is the NSC’s safety curriculum based on best practices in the environment, health, and safety (EHS) field.
The scholarships support U.S. veterans pursuing EHS careers. Recipients receive:
- Free enrollment in the ASC program;
- Registration and travel accommodations for the 2025 NSC Congress & Expo in Denver to network with safety professionals and learn about emerging EHS topics; and
- Career and networking resources upon completion of the ASC program.
The ASC scholarships were created to strengthen and diversify the pipeline of skilled workers entering the EHS profession, according to the NSC. The program helps veterans obtain their ASC by covering all program costs and providing them with professional networking opportunities.
“NSC is thrilled to help these future safety leaders take the next step on their professional journeys,” NSC President and CEO Lorraine Martin said in a statement. “With Boeing’s support, the 50 veterans awarded these scholarships will continue to serve their nation by living out the NSC mission of saving lives, from the workplace to anyplace.”
The ASC curriculum includes a required 4-day Principles of Occupational Safety and Health course and electives like Fundamentals of Industrial Hygiene, Safety Inspections, and Ergonomics taught over an 8-day period.
IL OSHA provides operating guidelines for fire departments
The Illinois Department of Labor’s (IDOL) Division of Occupational Safety and Health (IL OSHA) announced on April 15 the availability of a sample incident command, accountability, and mayday standard operating guideline (SOG) for fire departments.
IL OSHA developed the sample SOG in collaboration with the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal (OSFM), Illinois Fire Service Institute (IFSI), Illinois Fire Chiefs Association (IFCA), and Mutual Aid Box Alarm System-Illinois (MABAS-Illinois).
IL OSHA requires fire departments that perform interior firefighting to have an incident command, accountability, and mayday policy, but IL OSHA doesn’t require the use of any specific SOG.
The sample SOG was developed with several goals:
- To provide a basic SOG (the sample SOG is three pages) that fire departments without an incident command, accountability, and mayday SOG can easily adopt and implement;
- To provide an SOG that could be adopted verbatim, adopted with modifications, or used as a tool to compare a department’s current SOG with the sample SOG;
- To strike a balance between firefighter safety and operational effectiveness; and
- To combat the “NIOSH 5” fatal factors of firefighter deaths and injuries on the fireground.
The “NIOSH 5” are the five factors identified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) that contribute to firefighter line-of-duty deaths, which include improper risk assessment, lack of incident command, lack of accountability, inadequate communications, and the lack of standard operating procedures (SOPs) or failure to follow established SOPs.
“I am thankful for the time and effort the working group took to put together this sample SOG,” IL OSHA Chief Erik Kambarian said in a statement. “During IL OSHA inspections, we continue to identify fire departments that lack these safety-critical guidelines. These sample guidelines fill that gap.”
Illinois has a state plan approved by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) covering state and local government workers only. Federal OSHA retains enforcement authority in private sector workplaces.