One of the more popular events at the American Association of Safety Engineers’ annual conference is the Executive Summit panel, which gives attendees a chance to hear how CEOs, presidents and vice presidents from a range of industries view safety.

The two-million-square-foot Kay Bailey Convention Center in Dallas, Texas is bustling with activity, with thousands of safety professionals in town for the American Association of Safety Engineers’ Safety 2015 sorting out their schedules and heading to various sessions.

Is your mind working for you or against you? That’s one of the questions being posed to attendees of Safety 2015 going on in Dallas, by a speaker who says positive intelligence can help people achieve their peak performance.

by Secretary Tom Perez- I am a big believer in basic fairness: if you play by the rules, you should have the opportunity to succeed. That’s true in life and also in business. The vast majority of employers understand this principle and abide by it every day with measurable success. But I think we can all agree that those businesses that break the law by cutting corners at the expense of their workers should not benefit from taxpayer-funded federal contracts.

Alfa Laval Inc. faces $477,900 in proposed penalties after OSHA inspections discovered dozens of serious workplace safety violations, five of which were identified in previous inspections. Federal investigators found five repeated and 45 serious violations on a range of health and safety issues at the company's Broken Arrow facility, including inadequate protection of workers from machinery, a lack of respiratory equipment and training for hazardous chemicals.

Drivers use the brake almost a million times per year, usually with no problem. But each year, approximately 16,000 preventable crashes occur due to pedal error when drivers mistake the accelerator for the brake. Pedal error crashes can present serious safety risks to the vehicle occupants, surrounding motorists, pedestrians, and property.

We estimated that about 1 in 10 nonsmoking, working women of reproductive age in the United States are exposed to secondhand smoke at work. Women working in the accommodations and food services industry (women working in hotels, restaurants, or bars) were more than twice as likely as women employed in other industries to be exposed to secondhand smoke at work.

Posted with permission from Fairwarning.org: A new study has found that firefighters have a greater than average risk of developing some types of cancer, and that black and Latino firefighters face the highest risk of all.