Category: Special Topics in Safety Management

Safety is a process, and as such, needs to be managed. This section offers resources to create a viable safety program, sell it to senior management, train supervisors and employees in using it, and then track and report your progress. Look also for ways to advance your own skills in these areas, both for your current job, and those that follow.

Free Special Report: 50 Tips for More Effective Safety Training

Tree care worker

Taking Care of Tree Care Workers: OSHA Recommendations

Tree care operations are among the most hazardous in the U.S. workforce. Nationally, landscape service workers make up less than 1 percent of the workforce but constitute 3.5 percent of all workplace fatalities, according to the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, and 75 percent of all fatalities are related to tree removal or […]

Safety Culture 2018

Safety Culture 2018: The Human Dynamics of Cultivating a Total Safety Culture—A Q&A with E. Scott Geller and Steve Roberts

Safety excellence requires a strong safety culture. But what is an ideal “Total Safety Culture” and how can we best achieve one? What are the roles of Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) and Human and Organizational Performance (HOP)? We’re finding out today in a Q&A with E. Scott Geller and Steve Roberts from Safety Performance Solutions, Inc., […]

Safety and accident in construction

A Look at Struck-By Injuries in Construction

Struck-by object is one of OSHA’s Construction Focus Four topics (along with falls, electrocution, and caught-in-between), collectively the four hazards that year-to-year result in more than half the fatalities in the construction industry.

Worker with protective headphones

EHS on Tap: E37 Now Hear This—Hearing Conservation Beyond PPE

It’s one of the most instantly recognizable hazards when you step onto many worksites—noise. A lot of us tend to think, well, just use some PPE, and that’s that. However, there’s much more to a hearing conservation program than meets the eye, or, shall we say, meets the ear. What are some of the things […]

Crane at construction site

OSHA’s Crane Proposal Built on Evaluations of Operators

OSHA’s recent proposal to add a permanent requirement that employers ensure the competency of crane operators through evaluation is intended to correct a prior requirement—which is not yet in effect—that certification alone of crane operators is sufficient to demonstrate operator competency. Compliance with the certification-only standard, which was issued in 2010, is currently required by […]

Coal miners

NIOSH Report Addresses Rise in Black Lung Disease

Remarkably, coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP), better known as black lung disease, afflicting coal miners in Appalachia appears to be on the rise, reports the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

Hazard analysis

6 Action Items from OSHA Guidance on Workplace Hazards

OSHA reports that Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs is one of its most popular guidance publications. The agency originally published this document in 1988 and issued the first update in October 2016. In that revision, OSHA stated that much had changed over the preceding 28 years in the nature of work, conditions in […]

OSHA’s Evaluation Criteria for Crane Operators Meets Opposition

OSHA’s proposed amendments to its Cranes and Derricks in Construction: Operator Qualification standard (May 21, 2018, Federal Register (FR)) contains what some employers seem to be interpreting as two contradictory positions. The proposal adds a requirement that employers must conduct evaluations to ensure that the equipment operator possesses “the skills, knowledge, and judgment necessary to […]