Hollywood spent $110 million on this film, which isn’t unusual for a disaster pic. But this film, directed by Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “Lone Survivor”) and starring Mark Wahlberg, is different. The disaster, a spectacular exercise in film-making involving literally hundreds of special effects and digital artists, is secondary in the plot to the muddy, nuts-and-bolts work of a very dangerous blue collar environment.
A dozen workers die almost every day in the U.S. as a result of a traumatic injury on the job. In order to identify the factors that contribute to these fatal injuries, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducts investigations through its Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has issued a safety alert entitled “CSB Safety Alert: Preventing High Temperature Hydrogen Attack (HTHA)” focused on preventing accidents similar to the fatal 2010 explosion and fire at the Tesoro Refinery in Anacortes, WA that fatally injured 7 workers.
The “S” in NIOSH could stand for science, super, or spectacular but as we all know (and maybe sometimes forget) it stands for safety. Safety is a critical part of the NIOSH mission: safety and health at work for all people through research and prevention.
The voluntary international standard intended to improve workplace safety across the globe is expected to go into effect sometime in 2017 – a year later than first predicted.
During 1980-1989, Alaska had the highest work-related fatality rate of any state in the nation, with a rate of 34.8 deaths per 100,000 workers per year compared to the average U.S. rate of 7 deaths per 100,000 workers per year.
A firefighter in Kentucky is electrocuted after contacting overhead power line, Kentucky. A factory manager dies after bypassing lockout-tagout. A landscaper in Massachusetts working from a raised portable work platform is electrocuted when a pole saw contacts an overhead power line.
Just five occupational groups account for 80 percent of all fatal electrical accidents, according to Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI). They are:
All over America and across greater Houston, capital of the nation's petrochemical industry, hundreds of chemicals pose serious threats to public safety at facilities that may be unknown to most neighbors and are largely unpoliced by government at all levels, a yearlong Houston Chronicle (http://bit.ly/1VSg45P) investigation reveals.
Work on the Olympic Park and Village in Rio de Janeiro has been halted over fears for the safety of workers, Reuters has reported. With less than three months to go until the start of the games on 5 August, officials who reviewed work on a television tower in the Olympic park and digging work at the Olympic village have shut down operations at those and two other sites.
