It has always been an issue, but not that much of a problem, until now. What I am talking about is the growing number of zeros, after the decimal place, used to describe exposure limits and measurements.

Perhaps you missed this dispatch from Reuters news service earlier this year: “The round-the-clock availability that cell phones and pagers have brought to people’s lives may be taking a toll on family life, a new study suggests.”

Have you been forced at some point to decide between safety or compliance — versus safety and compliance?

In this month’s column I offer critical distinctions between positive reinforcement, reward, and recognition; and explain the standard BBS instruction for giving recognition can be undesirable.

It’s easy to be “led down the garden path” as a safety practitioner. Let me explain. Or rather, I’ll let Thomas Sowell do the explaining. In 1995, Sowell wrote the best-seller, Vision of the Anointed (published by BasicBooks, a member of the Perseus Books Group).

Psychology is going positive — something to consider in your efforts to motivate workers to think and act safely. You see, for much of its history, psychology has focused much attention on the negative. Hmmm… might we say the same about safety programs? But I digress.

I am haunted by four recent unfortunate events. One is a catastrophe reported nationwide by the media, another is an incident which is big news in our local newspapers, and the other two misfortunes are not known publicly, but traumatic all the same.

A week after the bodies of the 12 miners were pulled from the Sago mine in West Virginia, Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) announced he would convene an oversight hearing into mine safety practices and enforcement.

Do you notice that nearly all consultants or EHS professionals writing for ISHN have letters (acronyms for titles) after their name? If you want to advance in the EHS field, you’ll need letters after your name, too.