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It’s leap day!! If you are born on a February 29th, then you will really only celebrate your birthday once every four years. What if you took a 40-hr HazWOPER course that ended on February 29th or an 8-hour HazWOPER refresher training on leap day? Does this mean that you only have to ‘celebrate’ your refresher training once every leap year? Recently the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) commissioned a survey of the Occupational Safety and Health workforce and published their findings in a document called the National Assessment of the Occupational Safety and Health Workforce. NIOSH reports that the need for OSH professionals will greatly outweigh the supply in the very near future. Whether you are considering a new career in Occupational Health and Safety or you are looking for a next step in your H&S career, there are many options available for all levels of health and safety professionals from technicians in the field to researchers developing new technologies. If you work at a site with corrosive materials present, how available are emergency flushing stations? Can these stations be accessed within 10 seconds? Has anyone ever showed you how to use it…blindfolded? Like a fire extinguisher on the wall, you hope you never need an emergency eyewash station, but you’d better be able to get to it and it had better work when there is a need. It’s important to know that chemical burns and damage start immediately upon contact. The sooner the rinsing starts, the less damage will occur. If you have a giant stack of the best personal protective equipment (PPE), but don’t use it, or just as important, don’t use it properly, are you trying to become an OSHA statistic? Knowing how to protect yourself from occupational hazards is a critical part of your job. When providing guidance on the selection and use of PPE, it is critical for occupational safety and health experts to understand not only the technical issues surrounding the use of PPE as an exposure control method, but also the regulatory compliance burden placed on the employer. I recognize that “just” complying with OSHA standards is not equivalent to meeting industry best practices, but is important to understand the what might be considered the ‘back-bone’ of PPE programs in the US. This blog lists who buys what and which standards the required PPE is to meet. When are hard hats required to be worn? The Simple Answer: If you are working where ANYTHING MIGHT fall, drop, fly, splash, or land on your head OR your head could come into contact with ANYTHING that MIGHT injure you, like moving equipment, chemicals or electricity, you need to be correctly wearing a properly fitting, ANSI-approved hardhat. Learn more about hard hats and the rules that protect your head on the job! “In our society and legal system it seems that, yes, someone (or many) has to tragically die before change and regulation are considered.” In this case, the tragedy was 343+2. 343 firefighters perished in the September 11, 2001 tragedy. Less than six years later, the lives of two additional NY firefighters were claimed during the demolition of the 9/11-damaged Deutsche Bank Building. These contributing conditions created by the asbestos abatement project have been recognized by several authorities, and in an effort to maximize safety, New York City enacted a number of new laws to ensure that asbestos abatement projects are conducted safely. When recalling our onsite environmental, health and safety work following 9/11, Emilcott’s health and safety staff often discuss that respirators were either not worn or improperly worn by many first responders and subsequent waves of workers and construction crew members at Ground Zero. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 seems like a good time to re-examine the issue of preparedness. Have you ever driven by a crew constructing a new house or installing a new roof? Have you noticed a guardrail system in place to keep workers from falling when working on the upper levels? Or have you seen a personal fall arrest systemsthat will lock and hold a falling worker like a seatbelt in your car? Most likely you have not seen either of these fall protection systems in place for residential projects! Nearly one residential construction worker dies each workday as a result of falls. OSHA believes that no job is worth a life. For workers employed by a mid-sized contracting group or a small crew engaged in house painting or outside repairs, OSHA has published a new directive which mandates the use of fall protection for all residential construction workers at heights of 6 feet off of the ground. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Fall Protection Policy for Residential Construction went into effect on June 16, 2011. |
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