Category: Injuries and Illness

Modern safety management goes beyond covering traditional workplace accidents to now being equally concerned with illnesses caused on and even off the job. This section will explain what you need to know to avoid both injuries and illnesses, and to track your progress in reaching this goal.

Valley Fever, Coccidioidomycosis

California Now Requires Valley Fever Training

Construction firms and other employers in California must begin training employees in Valley fever risks and control measures under a new state law. Employers must offer initial worker training by May 1, 2020.

It’s National Protect Your Hearing Month—How’s Your Hearing Conservation Program?

October is National Protect Your Hearing Month! In workplaces where noise levels exceed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) action level of 85 A-weighted decibels (dBA) as a time-weighted average, employers must put a hearing conservation program in place. In addition to reducing noise levels and noise exposures, selecting appropriate hearing protection, audiometric testing, […]

Office safety and ergonomics

Four Steps for Improving Workplace Ergonomics

It’s no secret that ergonomics programs often struggle to make an impact. All too often, they start off with a flurry of training and assessments and then fizzle out when people realize that there’s more talking about ergonomics than implementing ergonomics improvements. The ergonomics program starts to feel like more cost than benefit to management, […]

Ear plugs, hearing protection

Oil and Gas, Mining Workers Vulnerable to Hearing Loss

Hearing loss is prevalent in workers in the mining and oil and gas extraction sectors, researchers have found. At least 25% of workers in many industries and as much as 30% of workers in others had hearing loss, according to a recently published report.

Flu season ahead

Could Machine Learning and Wearables Improve Flu Forecasting?

The effort to curtail the impact of influenza just got a shot in the arm with a research award from a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to a company that’s testing a machine learning model to improve flu forecasts based on data gathered from wearable devices.

Safety inspection, citations

Don’t Follow the Pack, Lead the Way with Leading Indicators

We hear all the time about the importance of leading indicators in the health and safety profession but getting started and building a program around leading indicators can be difficult, especially if you don’t have the data you need. Do you know the right leading indicators for your organization? Are you measuring these leading indicators? […]

Pesticide application, glyphosate

EPA Considers Glyphosate Cancer Warning as Misbranding

In a short letter, the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) informed registrants of pesticides that a statement on the label of a pesticide product warning that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans” is “false and misleading” and will be considered misbranding and in violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Therefore, […]

Valley fever risk

Are Heat Stress and Valley Fever on the Rise?

Concerns are growing about two occupational health issues: the increased incidence of heat stress and valley fever, a fungal lung infection caused by exposure to dust storms and excavated soil. Cases of valley fever may be spreading beyond the southwestern United States. Some federal agencies and nongovernmental groups claim the rise in heat-related illness and […]

Suicide prevention

Suicide in the Workplace: A Troubling Trend

Could any of your employees be considering suicide? Could they be planning to do it at the office or on the jobsite? It’s a prospect no one wants to consider, but workplace suicides can and do happen.