Having a detailed fall protection plan is essential to providing a safe work environment for employees working at heights. While OSHA only requires a written fall protection plan for employees engaged in specific types of work who can demonstrate that it is infeasible or hazardous to use conventional fall protection equipment (See 1926.501(b)(2), (b)(12), and (b)(13)), CPWR feels that the use of a plan is beneficial to the safety of all workers at risk for a fall.

Anyone who has worked in construction knows that there is potential to suffer on-the-job injuries. The strain associated with heavy lifting or even repetitively performing the same activity, puts workers at risk of being injured every day. Exoskeletons are an emerging solution to this problem and reduce the risk of work-related injuries in highly manual environments, such as construction sites.

Created by Naked Prosthetics , this prosthetic moves with a person's hand mimicking a natural finger. “For us, function is about getting somebody back to work, back to life, back to doing what they want to do," said Bob Thompson, CEO of Naked Prosthetics. They created the product to help the vast amounts of construction workers who've lost partial fingers and wanted to get back on the job.

OSHA and its partners are hosting events throughout the country this week for the sixth annual National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction. Employers and workers will pause to talk about fall hazards, OSHA compliance, and industry best practices to prevent falls. The 2019 poster is available on OSHA's publications page.

Did you know that falls are among the leading causes of workplace injury and death each year? Even worse, 54% of the workers killed had no access to fall protection. Join us this week for the National Safety Stand-Down by understanding the risks and sobering statistics regarding fall fatalities.

A deadly crane collapse, what we think about mental health problems and alarming U.S. air quality data were among the top stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

OSHA's National Safety Stand-Down Week to Prevent Falls in Construction runs May 6-10, 2019, in conjunction with the North American Occupational Safety and Health (NAOSH) Safety Week. Anyone interested in educating employees in fall hazards, or other job hazards, can participate.

Gravity be warned. There’s a new Drop Cop® in town. Five of them, to be exact, with the release of Ergodyne’s newest tool-tethering kits. Ergodyne is launching five kits that contain tethering solutions for the most common tools in a worker’s toolbox.

Four people were killed and four injured on Saturday when a crane collapsed and fell from a downtown Seattle building, crushing several vehicles. Two of the fatalities were crane operators; the others were occupants of cars. The incident occurred at approximately 3:30 p.m., when the crane reportedly separated into two parts and fell.

A fatal fall, hazmat exposure and trenching hazards are among the workplace conditions that resulted in federal and state OSHA violations in recent cases.