Articles Tagged with ''hazardous material''

When Time is of the Essence, after an exposure to a hazardous chemical substance, any delay, even for a few seconds, can result in serious injury. OSHA and ANSI require that Emergency Showers be located within 10 seconds walking distance from hazardous site location.

Scientists have known for decades that drinking water contaminated by fertilizer nitrates can pose a threat to infants by undermining the ability of their blood to carry oxygen. The condition, known as ‘blue baby syndrome,” led federal regulators to impose an environmental standard of no more than 10 parts per million, or ppm, for nitrates in public water supplies.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has released an eight minute safety video entitled “Fire in Baton Rouge” detailing the agency’s Key Lessons stemming from the 2016 fire at the ExxonMobil Refinery that seriously injured four workers. The video includes a new four minute animation explaining the events leading up to the incident.

Gulf War veterans with low-level exposure to chemical weapons show lasting adverse effects on brain structure and memory function, reports a study in the October Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

The Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration (TOSH) is investigating last week’s explosion at an Eastman Chemical in Kingsport, Tennessee that released potentially toxic chemicals into the air.

The unique needs of first responders and related workers must not be forgotten as the nation combats the opioid epidemic. This was the core message of comments AIHA recently submitted to the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. Workers who may be exposed include first responders such as law enforcement, DEA agents, and EMTs, as well as crime lab analysts and others.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) – the federal agency charged with developing new knowledge in the field of occupational safety and health and helping to transfer that knowledge into practice – is currently active in a number of areas, including:

An unmanned, half-mile long train “bomb train” carrying tank-cars full of highly explosive crude oil barrels toward a city where it is doomed to derail on a curve, killing everyone in its wake. Luckily, Denzel Washington and Chris Pine show up to save the city at the last second. Everyone lives happily every after.

Workers who were likely exposed to dispersants while cleaning up the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill experienced a range of health symptoms including cough and wheeze, and skin and eye irritation, according to scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Their study appeared online Sept. 15 in Environmental Health Perspectives and is the first research to examine dispersant-related health symptoms in humans.