Heat-related illness, climate change, an increase in construction fatalities and a delay in enforcing an OSHA standard were among the top EHS-related stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

OSHA is hoping that 25,000 employers and half a million construction workers participate in its National Safety Stand-down to Prevent Falls in Construction, which starts today and runs through Friday. Reaching that goal means reaching nearly one in ten workers in the industry.

A report released by the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) indicates that construction is the deadliest industry in the state, and that immigrants comprise half of all construction deaths.

OSHA will host a National Safety Stand-Down for Fall Prevention in Construction On June 2-6, in order to raise awareness about the hazards of falls – the leading cause of death in the construction industry.

A construction industry effort to eliminate New York’s century-old Scaffold Law is getting push-back from a new coalition of pro-Scaffold advocates which says it’s needed to protect the state’s construction workers.

The Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) has used reports produced by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as the basis of three short training videos that vividly illustrate some of the hazards of construction work.

Workers in the United States were killed on the job at three times the rate of their peers in the United Kingdom in 2010, according to a study published online Sept. 30 in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

After five consecutive years of decreases, construction deaths rose five percent last year, propelling the construction industry into the top spot in terms of work-related fatalities per industry in 2012.