Preliminary estimates from the National Safety Council indicate motor vehicle deaths dipped slightly – 1% – in 2017, claiming 40,100 lives versus the 2016 total of 40,327. The small decline is not necessarily an indication of progress as much as a leveling off of the steepest two-year increase in over 50 years.

A team of surgeons were flown to the site of a construction accident in North Texas earlier this month, in order to amputate the leg of a worker who’d gotten caught in a trenching machine.

We need to talk. Every year we use Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to talk about our love for respirators and personal protective equipment (PPE). We’ve had some good times frolicking through the standards and maintenance requirements. But today we need to address what happens when it’s just not working anymore.

A New York State paper milling company has agreed to improve safety and health conditions at its Carthage facility and pay $175,000 in penalties, under a settlement reached with OSHA. Carthage Specialty Paperboard Inc. was cited for 62 safety and health violations in June 2017.

Two train accidents within 13 weeks of each other – one in New Jersey and the other in New York – had the same root causes, says the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB): the undiagnosed sleep apnea of the trains’ engineers. Sleep apnea is a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts. It can result in a sufferer feeling tired even after a full night's sleep.

A United Airlines flight made an emergency landing yesterday after the protective cowling on one of its engines detached from the plane and fell away. Terrified passengers on board Flight 1175 from San Francisco to Honolulu reported a loud bang when the incident occurred, followed by severe shaking.

Law enforcement officers (LEOS) are three times more likely to sustain a nonfatal injury than all other U.S. workers, according to a first-of-its-kind study that examines nonfatal injuries among the group on a national scale. Assaults and violent acts are the top cause of such injuries (36%), followed by bodily reactions & exertion from running or other repetitive motions (15%), and transportation incidents (14%).

A Minnesota energy company says it will contest the $21,000 in fines leveled against it by the state’s OSHA for an incident at the company’s Becker power plant that left three workers with severe burns over large portions of their bodies.

Although Crock-Pot objected to one of its products being used as the cause of a fatal, if fictional, home fire, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) says the episode of the NBC TV show “This is Us” depicting the blaze provides valuable lessons. In the highly-rated drama, a defective slow cooker sparks a fire in the kitchen of a home that quickly spreads to curtains and then to the rest of the house. The family members are trapped in second floor bedrooms.

A New York City construction worker who was permanently disabled on the job has settled a lawsuit for $1.5 million against a construction company and three real estate companies that owned the site. News sources report that 44-year-old James Morrow was partially blinded in one eye at a Manhattan construction site on Aug. 29, 2014.