The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration today announced a final rule to improve protections for workers exposed to respirable silica dust. The rule will curb lung cancer, silicosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and kidney disease in America's workers by limiting their exposure to respirable crystalline silica.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety announced today a historic commitment by 20 automakers representing more than 99 percent of the U.S. auto market to make automatic emergency braking a standard feature on virtually all new cars no later than NHTSA’s 2022 reporting year, which begins Sept 1, 2022.

Every year, thousands of workers across the United States are killed on the job — 4,679 in 2014 alone. Thousands more are seriously injured. Many of these deaths and injuries are entirely preventable when employers put in place basic safety measures. Some even result from company policies and practices that encourage and reward behavior that creates unacceptably risky conditions.

Falling 25 feet to the ground from a roof, being struck in the head by a steel beam as it is transported across a worksite, or getting hit by a vehicle moving supplies–these are only a few examples of why the construction industry has the greatest number of both fatal and nonfatal traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) among U.S. workplaces.

While heart disease death rates have declined overall in the United States, there are dramatic differences in those rates among U.S. counties, including weaker declines found south of the Mason-Dixon Line, according to new research in the American Heart Association’s (AHA) journal Circulation.

After evaluating the available scientific evidence, NIOSH has determined that it is insufficient to support developing a size-specific recommended exposure limit (REL) for silver nanomaterials. In the absence of information to support a size-specific REL, worker exposures to silver dust, fume, and soluble compounds should be maintained below the NIOSH REL of 10 µg/m3 as an 8-hour time-weighted average.

Scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have developed a novel technique that makes it possible to measure silica dust quickly and easily at the mine site. Silica dust exposure can causes silicosis, an irreversible, but preventable, occupational lung disease.

In 2013, IOGP published IOGP 452, Shaping safety culture through safety leadership. The aim was to raise awareness among senior figures in the oil and gas industry of the way their behaviors shape ‘safety culture.’

Recommendations to improve patient care, safety, and help prevent opioid misuse and overdose As part of the U.S. government’s urgent response to the epidemic of overdose deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued new recommendations for prescribing opioid medications for chronic pain, excluding cancer, palliative, and end-of-life care.

South Progress LLC apparently isn't making much progress in protecting its employees from fall hazards. OSHA inspectors, acting under the agency’s Regional Emphasis Program on Falls in Construction*, found South Progress employees doing framing work without fall protection at a residential community in Santa Rosa, Florida.