How do manufacturing companies know the best and safest way to design workplaces and assign tasks? Ideally, injuries and illnesses should be prevented, but historically companies have adjusted their workplace policies, practices and procedures after an injury or illness occurred. In a NIOSH-supported study at the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health, researchers tested the role of computer simulation in promoting workers’ well-being by designing safer work.

A garbage truck driver’s impairment was the likely cause of a deadly collision involving his vehicle and an Amtrak train at a crossing in Virginia, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The incident occurred on January 31, 2018, about 11:16 a.m., when a 2018 Freightliner refuse truck driven by 30-year-old Dana Naylor attempted to navigate a highway-railroad grade crossing in Crozet.

The American Industrial Hygiene Association announced the recipients of the 2019 AIHA Named Awards, which honor individuals who provide significant contributions to the industrial hygiene and occupational and environmental health and safety professions. The award recipients will be recognized Wednesday, May 22, during the Mark of Excellence Awards Breakfast at the 2019 American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

OSHA has filed a lawsuit against a Boston, Massachusetts-based contractor, alleging that the company retaliated against an injured employee by facilitating his arrest. The complaint filed last month with the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against Tara Construction Inc. and its chief executive officer, Pedro Pirez, states that the worker sustained a serious injury when he fell from a ladder on March 29, 2017. He reported his injury to his employers. OSHA found out about the fall and investigated.

Companies in two different states were cited by OSHA recently after workers suffered amputations at their facilities. In Iowa, an employee of O'Neal Manufacturing Services was injured while operating an unguarded press brake. In Texas, the injured employee of canned food company Bruce Foods Corporation had not been trained on lockout/tagout procedures. O'Neal Manufacturing Services was issued one repeat serious citation by Iowa OSHA, which assessed $64,670 in penalties.

What are potential obstacles to building an effective Process Safety Management (PSM) program? From what I’ve seen there are three related obstacles to building an effective PSM program. The first is engagement. It really takes commitment from everyone up and down the chain of command to build a best-in-class PSM program. Related to this is timely and relevant communication so that everyone from the shop floor up to the C-suite is on the same page. And the third obstacle is availability of decision-useful data.

President Donald Trump’s proposed 2020 budgets for occupational safety and health agencies is a mixed bag, and include increases for certain OSHA activities while decreasing the agency’s overall funding by $254,000. Key OSH-related items in the budget released earlier this month: Enforcement funding for OSHA will increase by $4 million. So will the number of full-time employees at the agency, by 33.

Health and safety incidents have become the leading financial loss drivers for businesses around the globe, with cumulative losses now outstripping the costs of more high-profile disruptions such as cyber-attacks or IT outages, according to the latest research. The British Standards Institution (BSI) 2019 Horizon Scan analyzed the risks and threats recognized by 569 organizations worldwide, and compared these against the impact of actual disruptions over the past year.

Since the early 1980s, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has conducted a grim census, tracking reports of deaths from crashes of all-terrain vehicles, or ATVs. Now the body count has risen above 15,250, according to the agency’s latest annual report, with more than one in five of the deaths suffered by children under 16.

– Safety Fest TN announces that registration is now open for Safety Fest TN 2019. The annual community event offers over 100 free safety classes, sessions, and demonstrations to residents and companies from April 29-May 3. This year’s training will be offered at Y-12’s New Hope Center, ORAU’s Pollard Technical Center, and other venues in Oak Ridge and Knoxville, TN. Registration and a complete list of classes can be found at www.safetyfesttn.org.