What is the monetary value of a person’s life? Vanderbilt economist W. Kip Viscusi says putting a price tag on the value of a person’s life makes people and products safer. Viscusi defines the “value of statistical life” or VSL as the dollar amount that people are willing to pay to avoid an expected death tied to a faulty product or job-related accident. His current estimate of the value of statistical life is $10 million.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has announced the availability of $10,537,000 in state grant funding to provide federally mandated training and retraining of miners and mine operators working at surface and underground coal and metal and nonmetal mines.

For travelers, restrictions on baggage weight may mean packing fewer pairs of shoes. For airport baggage handlers, weight restrictions, combined with proper lifting, are important to safety and health but may not be enough to prevent work-related back injuries.

Riggio Valve is a family-owned small business in Bayonne, New Jersey, that performs rebuilding, welding, and machining services. Several years ago, owner and president Vin Riggio set out to improve his company’s workplace safety and health program.

Workers in the utilities sector are at a higher risk for serious injuries and fatalities (SIF) than other industries, such as construction, manufacturing and mining, according to a recent study by DEKRA Organizational Safety & Reliability. SIF is defined as life-threatening, life-altering and fatal incidents in the workplace.

A contractor employee involved in an electrical explosion at Tesla’s Fremont factory has filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing the carmaker of a pattern of unsafe work conditions. The accident happened June 5, 2017, resulting in second and third degree burns over 36-year-old Son Nguyen’s body.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) says its new Association Health Plans (AHP) rule will enable small companies to more easily afford to offer health insurance to their employees. The AHP – which stems from an Executive Order by President Trump, will allow small businesses, including self-employed workers, to band together by geography or industry to obtain healthcare coverage as if they were a single large employer.

The Trump administration wants to merge the Departments of Labor and Education into one entity that would be called the Department of Education and the Workforce, according to news sources. The proposal was announced at a cabinet meeting yesterday.

With triple digit temperatures heating up parts of California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona and temperatures in the 80s and 90s in other states, employers need to take measures to protect their outdoor workers from heat illness.

Death by Trench: Equipment World has just completed a special report on trench hazards and the dozens of preventable deaths that happen ever year. Most chilling is the piece on survivors who tell of the terror they felt being buried under tons of soil.