Flooding caused by heavy rainfall is one of the possible causes of a fiery train derailment earlier this year that killed and injured horses and leaked high-hazard, flammable chemicals into the environment, including a nearby river.

Occupational health and safety professionals may not immediately see the link between employee engagement and safety, but it exists. If an employee doesn't feel engaged with their work, they also may not be sufficiently motivated to stay safe. Here's a look at why safer employers are engaged workers and vice versa.

Although the U.S. has had considerable success at preventing and controlling rabies during the past 80 years, exposure to rabid animals sends approximately 55,000 Americans to hospital emergency departments each year. Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, said that vaccination programs for dogs and the availability of post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, the vaccine and medicine people get to prevent rabies if they may have been exposed to a rabid animal, have contributed to a 95% decrease in annual rabies deaths in people.

Work being done to prepare for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo is raising concerns about worker safety. A report entitled, “The Dark Side of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics,” published last month by the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) union, claims that laborers – many of them foreign workers – are being overworked and discouraged from reporting poor employment conditions.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says it has completed a major upgrade to its primary data system that will increase functionality and allow for more intuitive navigation. The agency’s Mine Data Retrieval System (MDRS) enables operators monitor their compliance with MSHA regulations. The system provides access to comprehensive mine location, status, ownership, employment, production, accident/inspection/violations history, and health sampling data.

A Maine contractor who was indicted on manslaughter charges after the death of an employee – his own half-brother – maintains that he is not culpable because his workers are not his employees and he cannot compel them to use fall protection. Shawn D. Purvis, owner of Purvis Home Improvement Co. in Saco, pleaded not guilty to the charges in April.

Automated equipment has transformed industrial production over the last 30 years and has been instrumental in accelerating production and efficiency in the sectors of manufacturing, construction and machining. This dynamic shift from human workers has resulted in the relegation of repetitive and labor-intensive tasks to machines while simultaneously freeing up humans to conduct higher level tasks. As industries begin to rely more heavily on automation, the general viewpoint is that increased automation is beneficial from both a productivity and safety perspective.

With many communities experiencing flooding caused by heavy rainfall in recent months, the American Lung Association (ALA) is reminding people that property damage isn’t the only thing to worry about. In addition to containing dangerous substances like sewage, oil and gas, floodwaters can cause mold, which may affect your respiratory health long after the water has receded.

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 term artificial intelligence, usually referred to as AI, first came into use in the 1956, when computer scientists began to predict that machines had the potential to be programmed to “think” and learn from experience, just like human beings. It was in the 2010s that AI became more of a reality, thanks to the availability of practically unlimited storage capacity on computers, along with faster, cheaper processing power, and a flood of big data.