Just by putting “Congo miners” in the title here will have most readers flipping to the next page. I learned this lesson years ago writing an article about workplace safety, or the lack thereof, in China. “Why did you write this article?” asked a reader. “I don’t read ISHN for articles about China.” Another reader opined: “Everybody knows nobody values life in a country like China.”
Perhaps you read about the NIOSH study published in late August that found construction workers die of drug overdoses (not while on the job) at a rate six times higher than the general work population. Heroin was the main killer, followed by prescription opioids.
Dan Petersen, one of the great thinkers in the history of occupational safety, in a 2005 book, “Measurement of Safety Performance,” tore apart the traditional barometers of safety performance, the OSHA total case incident rate, total lost-workday cases, fatalities and other measures.
Is OSHA more irrelevant than ever? Many top OSHA officials, careerists, are working in an “acting” or interim basis: the agency’s career deputy assistant secretary position; the head of whistleblower protection; the director of training; and four of the ten agency regional administrators.
For years now many safety and health professionals have been preoccupied with building and sustaining cultures of trust and engagement. That’s key to raising safety levels. A hostile work environment under-cuts all of that work. It’s the last thing professionals want to deal with.
Eat, sleep, work, play and love are the five typical activities of daily living, according to Dr. Raymond Catton. Each has a connection to workplace safety. Let’s examine.
I’ve never given much thought to pedestrian safety because I’ve never been in harm’s way or seen pedestrians at risk. That’s until two months ago. In February I attended a conference in Houston.
Owens Corning has a unique safety-centric relationship with an art museum, the Toledo Museum of Art. Toledo is the home to Owens Corning, a $5.2 billion manufacturer of insulation, roofing and fiberglass composites with 17,000 employees in 33 countries.
Safety is a responsibility. A well-run safety program or safety culture really isn't possible unless management takes on safety as a job, and maintenance and quality and production and shipping and HR and all other departments are prepped to assume their particular responsibilities for safety.
Safety and health professionals (full-timers) and practitioners (part-timers) are in stable, generally positive positions entering the new year, according to reader research conducted by ISHN magazine in October, 2017.