Practical EHS Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
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.
When you create a workplace noise map using a sound level meter, you may get all of the information you need. However, if the results of your sound level measurements are borderline, or if other factors like variable noise or highly mobile workers are present, you may need to get a little more granular. You […]
Before you put a hearing conservation program in place, and while it is active, you’ll need to do some occupational noise monitoring. Your noise monitoring will determine whether your workers could be exposed at or above the action level; enable you to identify workers who need to be enrolled in a hearing conservation program; and […]
It’s important to identify and address potentially hazardous workplace noise. In addition to hearing loss, noise can increase stress levels, create safety issues, and contribute to a number of health problems. But how can you sort hazardous noise from harmless noise—or even from helpful and useful sounds?
We can’t say this loudly enough: occupational noise may be affecting your workers’ health and safety. Obviously, occupational noise exposures can lead to bilateral hearing loss—but did you know that noise exposure has other potentially serious effects on workers’ health and safety?
The advocacy organization Public Citizen (https://www.citizen.org) is suing the Trump administration, claiming the Department of Labor (DOL) and OSHA are illegally withholding records about workplace injuries and illnesses.
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) recordkeeping rule, employers that are required to keep and maintain an OSHA injury and illness 300 log must post their 300A annual summary in each establishment where employee notices are normally posted from February 1 to April 30. The 300A form summarizes the recordable work-related injuries and […]
This year’s influenza outbreak has sickened millions of people across the country, leaving employers struggling to cover for employees who are out sick and searching for ways to prevent others from coming down with the flu. But dealing with germ control and sick days is only the beginning—legal issues may come into play.
Kentucky recorded the lowest rate of nonfatal workplace incidents in its history. The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show Kentucky’s rate of recordable job injuries and illnesses dropped to 3.4 per 100 full-time employees in 2016. That’s down from a rate of 3.7 in 2015. In 1996, when the federal […]
Thirty percent of employees are injured on the job within the first year of employment—which is a major issue for employee turnover. Additionally, injured employees decrease morale and can lead to costly OSHA and legal fines if it comes to light that their injury is a fault of the company. Avoiding new employee injury is important […]
The federal government reported a total of 5,190 fatal work injuries in the U.S. in 2016, a 7% increase from 2015. It’s the third consecutive rise in fatalities, and the first time since 2008 that the number of deaths has topped 5,000. The fatality rate increased to 3.6 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, up from […]