COSHCON17 — The Young and the Active — The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, the umbrella group of all the nation’s COSH groups held its annual conference last week and I was privileged to be able to chair a very moving panel on “Lessons from Workplace Fatalities” with some of my heroes: family activist Katherine Rodriguez, whose father, Ray Gonzales was killed in a fire at BP Texas City in 2004, Tonya Ford, director the United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities, whose uncle Robert “Bobby” Fitch fell to his death at an Archer Daniel Midland plant in 2009, and Jonathan Karmel, author of Dying to Work: Death and Injury in the American Workplace.
The deadliest shipping disaster involving a U.S.-flagged vessel in more than 30 years was caused by a captain’s failure to avoid sailing into a hurricane despite numerous opportunities to route a course away from hazardous weather, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced during a public meeting Tuesday.
The cargo vessel S.S. El Faro sank Oct. 1, 2015, in the Atlantic Ocean during Hurricane Joaquin, taking the lives of all 33 aboard.
FAA: Make sure they're aimed at your house, not the sky
December 13, 2017
Each holiday season for the past several years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has received reports from pilots who said they were distracted or temporarily blinded by residential laser-light displays.
The FAA's concerns about lasers – regardless of the source – is that they not be aimed at aircraft in a way that can threaten the safety of a flight by distracting or blinding the pilots.
The 62,085 injuries to U.S. firefighters in 2016 reflected an 8.8 percent decrease from 2015, making this the lowest rate of injury since 1981 – the year the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) began analyzing firefighter injury data.
The latest data from the NFPA, released as part of the latest edition of its “U.S. Firefighter Injuries” report, show that the leading injury types in 2016 were: Strains, sprains and/or muscular pains (52.6 percent), and wounds, cuts, bleeding, and bruising (15.2 percent).
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has unveiled its annual Winter Alert campaign, reminding miners and mine operators of the increased hazards that colder weather creates at both surface and underground coal mines.
The Winter Alert campaign, which runs each year through March, emphasizes increased vigilance and adherence to safety principles during the winter months, when cold temperatures increase hazards for miners.
The American Industrial Hygiene Association’s (AIHA) Board of Directors has approved a slate of public policy priorities for 2018 and also established a permanent government relations working group.
New public policy priorities for 2018 fall under the following topics: hazards (such as beryllium, silica, and first responder exposure to opioids), assessments (including hazard banding, sensors, and teen workplace safety), and profession (IH Professional Pathways and title protection).
An arc flash at the Panda Power station in south Sherman, Texas, sent one employee to the hospital. Sherman Fire says It happened around 7:30 a.m. at 510 Progress Drive in Sherman. The Panda Sherman Power Project is a clean natural gas-fueled, 758-megawatt combined-cycle generating facility. The plant can supply the power needs of up to 750,000 homes.
Zach Spicer, a substation supervisor for DES, Dickson County, Tenn., suffered second-degree burns to his face and neck and third-degree burns Aug. 25 afternoon on his hands and forearm at the DES Old White Bluff Substation just as he prepared to teach a class.
He was accessing a breaker cabinet, high voltage side when contact or an arc formed, causing an electrical fault that released heat and energy.
A new compilation of articles published in the November issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, describes an effort led by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to develop and evaluate clinical decision support (CDS) designed to assist primary care clinicians’ with care of their working patients using CDS tools in electronic health records.
Methylene chloride kills. We wrote about 21-year old Kevin Hartley last June. He died last April 29 — Workers Memorial Day — while when he was overcome by methylene chloride while stripping a bath tub. Seventeen workers have died from over-exposure to methylene chloride between 2000 and 2015, and probably at least as many consumers. “Methylene chloride is too dangerous to keep on the store shelves,” said Dr. Robert Harrison of the University of California San Francisco. He says in a small room, just a half gallon’s worth of product containing that chemical can lead to a buildup of vapors that can prove lethal in less than an hour.
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