Firefighting operations can inadvertently increase the chance of a combustible dust explosion if they: Use tactics that cause dust clouds to form or reach the explosible range; use tactics that introduce air, creating an explosible atmosphere; apply incorrect or incompatible extinguishing agents; use equipment or tools that can become an ignition source.
More than seven months after a train derailment and chemical spill forced more than 700 people from their homes in Paulsboro, N.J., the borough remains ill-prepared to respond to a similar or worse accident, officials told federal investigators, according to various news reports.
Consider the relative health risks in the selection of the type of wood used. Use for example the information in the publication ‘Less dust’ of the European social partners in the wood industr.
Last May, 28-year-old Adrien Zamora fell 40 feet from a scaffold while restoring an 11-story building in New York. It was his first day on the job, and he had not been given a fall protection harness or the necessary safety training. He left behind a wife and their two young daughters.
High, high above the desert floor and a gleaming Las Vegas downtown as the sun set Tuesday evening at ASSE’s Safety 2013, Cintas Corporation hosted a reception atop the Stratosphere Hotel, the iconic needle in the sky in Vegas. The keynoter was Dr. Richard Fulwiler, the former worldwide head of health and safety at Procter and Gamble.
Vendors of exposure and training monitoring and personnel location and PPE tracking software despise the name Big Brother to describe their expanding arsenal of analytics. But that’s how many employees look at what they consider an invasion of privacy.
The rap against setting a goal of zero injuries is that workers know it is an impossibility, and will tune out further safety messages. Three different safety experts at ASSE’s Safety 2013 gave us almost identical definitions: First, you start by asking employees, “Can you go a day without an injury?” Well, yeah, probably.” So the day does go by without an injury.” Next you ask:
Many safety pros are exasperated by their senior leadership’s slavish devotion to tracking OSHA recordables, lost-time incidents, severity rates and fatalities. In a way, you can’t blame them when their pay bonuses are based on these numbers, and the numbers represent pretty much all senior leaders know about safety.
