Fuel economy standards intended to combat climate change by reducing gas emissions are in for a rollback, if a proposal announced today by the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration goes into effect. Passed during the Obama administration, the standards were scheduled to become progressively tougher over time for new vehicles. The Trump administration proposal would freeze the standards at their 2020 levels for six years.

A work environment may not seem like a confined space at first glance, but the surprising truth is that confined spaces exist in many forms. They are found in nearly every industry. Without a doubt, confined spaces expose workers to very real dangers.

Every day 2,000 people are injured in a ladder-related accident. One hundred of those people suffer a long-term or permanent disability. And every day, one person dies; the numbers are continuing to rise.

The Trump announced yesterday that it is rolling back regulations on how power plants can dispose of coal ash – a move that environmental groups say will threaten drinking water. The coal industry petitioned for the change, which extends by 18 months the time that the industry can use unlined coal ash ponds and groundwater-adjacent sites for dumping.

Inhalation of toxic gases can kill you. It’s important that you perpetually monitor your breathing air to ensure that you and your employees are breathing air that is safe and free of such gases all the time.

If anything has come to define the human experience throughout history, it is a willingness to take risks, to face the unknown with a confidence that borders on arrogance and come out the victor.

Confined spaces such as tanks, containers and shafts represent a major danger. The good news is that you can significantly reduce the risks involved by understanding these environments and measuring air quality — before entering them. Here’s what you need to know.

The statistics are numbing. Drug overdoses killed 64,070 people in the U.S. in 2016. The death toll was up 21 percent over 2015. All indications are it will be even higher when the 2017 numbers are determined, according to the CDC. Overdoses are more than an epidemic; they’re a national crisis.

While most of the discussion of President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court focuses on the possibility that he will be the deciding vote to repeal Rowe v. Wade or that the will bend over backwards to help Trump out of the Russia investigation, there is clear evidence that Kavanaugh is overly friendly to corporate America, and hostile to workplace safety, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the environment.

Workplace burn injury and fatalities are frequently the result of the worker’s clothes catching on fire from two primary workplace hazards: flash fire and electric arc flash also referred to as “thermal incidents.”