Heat stroke prevention, working safely while pregnant and an oil refinery fire in Texas were among the top occupational safety and health stories featured on ISHN.com this week.
A fire caused by a gas line rupture early this morning in Kentucky killed one person and injured at least others, according to news reports. The fire damaged a half dozen mobile homes as well as train tracks.
Don Gilliam, director of Lincoln County Emergency Management, said the 30” gas line breached shortly before two a.m in Hustonville.
ExxonMobil sent 66 of its employees and contractors for medical evaluation yesterday after an explosion and fire at one of its Texas oil refineries. News sources say an estimated 37 people sustained minor burn injuries.
The incident at the Baytown facility, which processes propane and propylene, occurred shortly after 11 a.m. Authorities issued a shelter-in-place order for approximately 5,000 area residents.
IPIECA, a global oil and gas industry association for advancing environmental and social performance within the industry, has released 2018 data on health leading performance indicators for employees.
According to IPIECA, “indicators for the health performance of the industry are a necessary part of effective health management and the promotion of improvements in health performance.
Whether you’re working around dangerous chemicals, electrical systems, or fire-prone areas, you need to make sure you’re wearing the right flame-resistant (FR) clothing. If a fire occurs, FR clothing will minimize the severity of the burns, improving your chances of survival.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) will be reviewing a recent policy change, after testimony at its public meeting on Tuesday from occupational health experts and worker advocates opposed to the agency’s decision to stop naming accident victims in its reports.
CSB Interim Executive Kristen acknowledged “a lot of passion around this subject,” and said that she’d asked the agency’s general counsel to review the policy and to report back with recommendations.
Trucking can be a hazardous profession for drivers – and that’s before the driver has even set foot in the cab or put the vehicle in gear. For good reason -- fleets focus much of their attention on minimizing risks on the road, but there are also risks when a driver is on his or her feet as well, due to the risk of a fall.
More than a hundred groups and hundreds of individuals from Pennsylvania have signed onto a letter to the state’s governor, calling for an official investigation into recent reports of rare cancers in counties heavily impacted by shale gas development over the last decade. The letter also calls for the Governor Tom Wolf to suspend all gas drilling permits until the investigation shows that fracking is not the cause of what appears to be an emerging public health crisis.
OSHA has cited both a contractor and the operator of a natural gas processing plant in Houston, Pennsylvania, following a fire that killed one worker and left three others badly burned.
The agency cited Energy Transportation LLC, the company contracted to clean lines and vessels at the plant, for violations of the process safety management (PSM) standard, and for exposing employees to flammable vapor and liquid while they off-loaded waste material from a vessel into a mobile tank.
The US Chemical Safety Board’s (CSB) investigation into an Oklahoma blowout that killed five workers blames the incident on a lack of regulations governing onshore drilling safety as well as shortcomings in safety management systems and industry standards utilized by the industry.
The CSB’s final investigation report into the Pryor Trust gas well explosion in Pittsburgh County calls on regulators, industry groups, the state of Oklahoma and companies to address such gaps.
RSS
