Practical EHS Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Safety is a process, and as such, needs to be managed. This section offers resources to create a viable safety program, sell it to senior management, train supervisors and employees in using it, and then track and report your progress. Look also for ways to advance your own skills in these areas, both for your current job, and those that follow.
When workers make mistakes with PPE, the consequences can be grim. In the health and safety professional’s “hierarchy of controls,” PPE falls in last place—behind engineering controls and work practice or administrative controls. The reasoning is that engineering controls address the hazard directly, and have the fewest potential failure points, so they are most protective. […]
Discipline can be a positive part of workplace safety if you apply it correctly. Discipline can be a key element in ensuring safety in your workplace. This may seem counter-intuitive because some people would tell you to avoid discipline so that employees do not have a disincentive to comply. However, if you use discipline consistently […]
Some safety professionals think safety and discipline are incompatible. Others disagree. Howard Mavity, a labor lawyer and partner in the law firm of Fisher & Phillips, says discipline is essential for safety, but employers just aren’t doing it. Mavity cites a firm study that found 56 percent of large general contractors were unsatisfied with how […]
Achieving breakthrough safety performance requires a number of critical elements. Yesterday, we discussed some of those. Today, we present some more. Author and consultant Alan Quilley believes four critical elements must be managed to achieve high-level safety results. All are interdependent and cannot be managed in isolation. These elements are: Company culture—basically, "the way it […]
You’ve been working hard to boost safety awareness and engagement in your workplace. You consider OSHA standards to be the bare minimum of compliance. And your injury stats are headed in the right direction. But it’s still not enough. How do you kick safety and health up to the next level? Robert Pater, founder and […]
Mismanagement of safety committees undercuts their effectiveness. Avoid these common mistakes. Mismanagement of safety committees undercuts their effectiveness. Avoid these common mistakes. SFM Mutual Insurance Company considers safety committees “the heart of an organization’s safety efforts.” But if committees are not handled properly, their effectiveness can be diminished. Failure to articulate a purpose and top-heavy […]
A well-managed, mature safety committee can serve as a valuable adjunct to your safety department. Depending on members’ training and experience and the amount of time they have to work on committee business, you can expect assistance with: Regulatory compliance Emergency planning Rewriting the company safety manual Writing and reviewing job hazard analyses Drafting safety […]
HAZWOPER rules (29 CFR 1910.120 Appendix B) delineate four levels of PPE required to protect workers under various site conditions. Here’s what you need to know. Level A Should be worn when the highest level of respiratory, skin, and eye protection is needed (i.e., for use with highly toxic releases, such as chlorine or ammonia). […]
It’s just dust. How could it be that dangerous? Because any combustible material (and some materials normally considered noncombustible) can burn rapidly when in a particulate or finely ground form. In simple terms, a dust explosion is a very rapid combustion or burning of the dust when it is suspended in air. In addition to […]
Combustible dust explosions have leveled workplaces and killed workers. Although there is still no specific combustible dust standard, OSHA regulates the hazard in other ways. OSHA included combustible dust in its definition of a hazardous chemical when it revised the hazard communication standard to include the requirements of the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and […]