Environmental Health and Safety

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Sleepy train engineers, robotic co-workers and distracted killers were among the top safety stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

The Organization for Standardization (ISO) has announced the release date for the global occupational safety and health management standard it’s been working on for five years. ISO 45001, Occupational health and safety management systems – Requirements, will be available starting March 12, 2018. The global death toll from work-related accidents or diseases is 600 people die each day, or more than 2.78 million a year.

The primary way to avoid hand and finger injuries is to ensure hands are kept out of the “danger zone” while a work task is performed. Evaluate each work task and ensure that it is being performed in the safest manner possible. Personal responsibilities to keep your hands out of the “danger zone” include:

Selecting the right tool for the job is as critical to preventing injury as it is to getting the job done right. Educate employees on the proper tool selection and the risks in improvising (i.e. using a screwdriver as a chisel). Stress the importance of operating tools according to the manufacturers’ instructions. Walk employees through the correct use and storage of the device to prevent accidents that could easily be avoided.

A pinch point is produced when two objects come together and there is a possibility that a person could be caught or injured when coming in contact with that area. Pinch points commonly impact fingers / hands, but can impact any area of the body. The injury resulting from a pinch point could be as minor as a blister or as severe as amputation or death.

Your hands and wrists are a complex system of bones, muscles and tendons, ligaments, blood vessels and nerves protected by layers of skin. A total of 27 hand and wrist bones are connected to the muscles by tendons. Ligaments join bones together and hold the joints in place.

Jasmine worked at a prison in central California that provided long-term housing and services for minimum, medium, and maximum custody inmates. She was 34 years old and had worked at the prison for six years. Jasmine was a correctional officer, and her job duties included security checks, patrolling the facility, and occasionally grid searches and digging for contraband in the soil.

In a startling new report released by the CDC, researchers identified 204–389 deaths among adults that occurred annually between 1999 and 2016 that could be attributable to occupational exposures -- and were therefore potentially preventable. The fatality figures cited represent an estimated 11-21 percent of all adult asthma deaths.

OSHA investigators have determined that Spirit Aerosystems Inc. exposed employees to airborne concentrations of hexavalent chromium nearly double the permissible exposure limit. Hexavalent chromium is a known carcinogen. The Kansas-based aircraft manufacturer faces proposed penalties totaling $194,006 for one willful and five serious violations.