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.
Yesterday, we presented PPE essentials 1 and 2 for compliance with OSHA’s PPE standards. Today, we conclude with essentials 3 and 4, and a review of a BLR product that covers PPE from head to toe. (As a reminder, PPE essential 1 is hazard analysis and essential 2 is equipment selection.) PPE Essential 3. Employee […]
Your PPE program should be reviewed periodically to make sure it still meets your needs as well as OSHA requirements. When you review, look for the four essentials described in the Advisor today and tomorrow. OSHA requires the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) to reduce employee exposure to hazards when engineering and administrative controls […]
For more and more workplaces the cure for the upward spiral of employee ill health and healthcare costs is workplace wellness. The benefits can be significant. For years, worksite health promotion was one of those ideas that employers talked about in a "How could it hurt?" kind of way. But these days, the business case […]
Read about the three winners of the Wellness Council of America’s 2009 Well Workplace Gold Award. Although their programs differ, these employers share a solid commitment to and belief in the value of workplace wellness initiatives. The Milwaukee Public School System pays more than $200 million a year to provide free health insurance for employees, […]
Providing an adequate number of properly maintained portable fire extinguishers and training your employees to use them could save your organization from experiencing dramatic losses from a fire. The requirements of OSHA’s portable fire extinguisher standard (29 CFR 1910.157) apply to all employers, with two exceptions. The first exception applies if you have a written […]
Fire is an equal opportunity safety hazard. It can strike anywhere at anytime. Are you prepared to meet the challenge of keeping fire out of your workplace? OSHA requirements concerning workplace fire prevention are just about everywhere in the general industry standards. For example, fire safety is an issue in: §1910, Subpart E, Means of […]
Keep machine operators safe by making sure that no machine is operated unless guards and safety devices are in place and working properly. According to OSHA’s machine guarding standards (29 CFR 1910.211-219), machine guards must meet six requirements. They must: Prevent contact of hands, arms, or any other part of a worker’s body with dangerous […]
There are nearly 5 million permit-required confined spaces in workplaces across America and another 1 million nonpermit spaces. The three essential safety elements in those spaces are training, testing, and rescue preparedness. Confined space accidents happen more often than you might think. And the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says that these […]
According to safety consultant Emmitt Nelson, when everyone is on board with a zero-injury approach, the high costs of worker injury can be reduced to sums that previously existed “only in the dreams” of safety professionals. Emmitt Nelson is a safety consultant (www.nelsonconsulting.com) and pioneer of the zero-accident approach. He chaired the first Construction Industry […]
Read about how one Fortune 100 company set and achieved a goal to reduce the number and severity of workplace injuries by 50 percent in 5 years. The program was so successful, the company is already into its second 5-year challenge. Anyone who thinks changing safety direction and outcomes at a large company is impossible […]