With the devastating April 2013 explosion in West, Texas still fresh in the minds of Americans, OSHA is hoping that a just-initiated partnership with the Agricultural Retailers Association and The Fertilizer Institute will help prevent future tragedies involving ammonium nitrate – the culprit in the West, Texas catastrophe.

The ASSE and AIHA weigh in on OSHA’s proposed silica rule, a worker dies from heat stress and good news about air pollution in the U.S. were among this week’s top EHS-related stories as featured on ISHN.com:

Danray Products LLC offers 52" and 62" steel lathe chuck shields for lathes or similar machines. These heavy-duty 12-gauge steel lathe chuck shields serve two basic functions: (1) they provide a safeguard between individuals and point-of-operation or rotating hazards, and (2) they protect individuals from flying chips, sparks, coolant, lubricant, and other particles.

OSHA has cited HP Pelzer Automotive Systems Inc. of Thomson and staffing agency Sizemore Inc. for 22 safety and health violations following a July, 2013 initiated in response to a complaint alleging hazards at the automotive manufacturing facility. Proposed penalties total $207,100.

Simtronics, an IST company, is pleased to announce that its MultiFlame series DF-TV7-T and DM-TV6-T are the first triple IR flame detectors on the market to be certified up to safety integrity level SIL3. The devices recently underwent stringent functional safety assessments by third party agency LCIE Bureau Verita and were found to be in compliance with IEC 61508:1-7.

If you live in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Washington D.C. or Pennsylvania and have school age children, they may see a theatrical performance in the coming months that will educate them about fire and electrical safety while it entertains them.

The CSB has released a new computer animation recreating the explosion and fire that killed seven workers at the Tesoro Refinery in Anacortes, Washington on April 2, 2010. The incident occurred when a nearly forty-year-old heat exchanger catastrophically failed during a maintenance operation to switch a process stream between two parallel banks of exchangers at the refinery.

A Florida rehabilitation offering help to people struggling with drug addiction and alcoholism exposed its workers to a variety of hazards, according to an OSHA investigation.