OSHA and the Beryllium industry have reached a settlement regarding changes in OSHA’s Beryllium standard for general industry. The changes, which mostly focus on clarifications of “ancillary requirements” dealing mostly with regulated work areas, hygiene (cleaning of workers and equipment) and medical management, will be phased in in two major stages.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has dispatched a four-person investigative team from to the scene of yesterday’s explosions and fire at a Husky Energy oil refinery in Superior, Wisconsin. Eleven people were initially reported injured in the blast, which occurred as workers were shutting the refinery down in preparation for a five-week turnaround.

New construction safety training legislation establishes a program to provide equal access to construction site safety training (SST) for workers in New York City. This training is in addition to existing federal, state and local requirements.

A company’s failure to realize that welding work was being done near flammable materials was behind a fatal explosion, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), which has released its final investigation report into the February 8, 2017, blast at the Packaging Corporation of America’s (PCA’s) DeRidder, Louisiana, pulp and paper mill.

Q. What is a fume plume? A. A fume plume is the clearly visible column of fume that rises directly from the spot of welding or cutting. Welders and cutters should take precautions to avoid breathing this area directly. Ventilation can direct the plume away from the face. (Fume removal is most effective when the air flow is directed across the face of the welder, rather than from behind.)

Ventilation is a means of providing adequate breathing air, and it must be provided for all welding, cutting, brazing and related operations. Adequate ventilation depends on the following factors:

Welding processes release harmful fumes made up of solid particles that are formed when the vaporized metal condenses and oxidizes. These particles travel to and become accumulated in the gas-exchange region of the lungs, where it can produce a range of adverse effects.

A new report from the American Lung Association (ALA) finds 133.9 million Americans at risk from air pollution – much of it ozone pollution that is worsening significantly due to warmer temperatures. The ALA’s 2018 "State of the Air" report found that the four in ten Americans (41.4 percent) who live in counties with unhealthful levels of either ozone or particle pollution are at greater risk for premature death and other serious health effects such as lung cancer, asthma attacks, cardiovascular damage, and developmental and reproductive harm.

The federal agency that trains, tests and certifies the physicians who read X-rays and diagnose the deadly coal miners’ disease black lung said it was not consulted by Kentucky lawmakers in the 14 months they considered a new law that mostly limits diagnoses to pulmonologists working for coal companies.

With wildfire seasons in North America increasing in intensity and duration, researchers are focusing their attention on the health impacts from smoke exposure. A new study in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the Open Access Journal of the American Heart Association (AHA)/American Stroke Association, finds that smoke from wildfires may send people – particularly seniors – to hospital emergency rooms (ERs) with heart and stroke-related complaints.