Category: Injuries and Illness

Modern safety management goes beyond covering traditional workplace accidents to now being equally concerned with illnesses caused on and even off the job. This section will explain what you need to know to avoid both injuries and illnesses, and to track your progress in reaching this goal.

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Too Much Sitting Is Bad—But so Is Too Much Standing!

It’s been all over the news in recent years: Americans sit too much, and it’s killing us. We sit in our cars, we sit at the office, and we sit in front of our computers, television screens, video games, tablets, and phones—and while we’re sitting, our metabolisms are changing. Our waists are getting bigger, our […]

Why Buying Protective Gloves Is Always Worth It

The average penalty for failing to prevent a hand injury among your workers is around $8,000. The average workers’ compensation claim for hand injuries is over $6,000 and climbing. Lawsuits can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. You should ask yourself, why not buy a really good pair of gloves instead? […]

Workplace Violence Prevention: Risk Assessment Guidance

A 25-yearold social service coordinator for a Maryland-based health company was worried about one of her clients. He had a history of violence and severe mental illness. She recorded her misgivings in her work journal, noting that being alone with this particular client made her uncomfortable. But it was part of her job to transport […]

Workplace Violence Prevention: Guidance from Recent Settlement Agreements

OSHA is taking a close look at workplace violence in high-risk industries like healthcare and social services. Two employers that were inspected—and cited—for violence hazards agreed to implement changes to protect their employees from workplace violence hazards. Keep reading to learn what these employers have agreed to change and what Occupational Safety and Health Administration […]

Occupational Lung Disease: Preventing Tuberculosis

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly one third of the world’s population is infected with tuberculosis (TB), which kills almost 1.5 million people per year. In 2013, 9,582 TB cases were reported in the United States, and 383 of those cases were among healthcare workers. On July 13, OSHA updated […]

Occupational Lung Disease: Preventing Dust Exposures

At one time, crystalline silica exposures were a concern in construction and mining, and only older workers who had been exposed for long periods of time developed the disabling lung disease called “silicosis.” But workers in new industries and applications—fabricating granite countertops, hydraulic fracturing operations, and denim sandblasting among them—are suffering significant exposures. Also, silicosis […]

Preventing Amputations: Securing Objects and Materials

At a storage system manufacturing facility in Georgia, two workers suffered finger amputations in two separate incidents within a 3-month period beginning in November 2014. Yesterday, we looked at the first incident; today, we’ll look at the second incident, in which a worker was standing up a fabricated metal rack. The 353-pound rack tipped over […]

Preventing Amputations: Machine Guarding

At a storage system manufacturing facility in Georgia, two workers suffered finger amputations in two separate incidents within a three-month period. The first worker was using a power press to stamp small parts for metal racks in November 2014. The employer had not ensured that the press was guarded, and the worker’s hands entered the […]

High-Tech Safety: Traffic Management Systems

June 24, 2015, was a muggy Wednesday night in north Alabama. At the Federal Mogul manufacturing facility in Athens, 25-year-old Allen Michael Brown was outside the plant, trying to secure an empty barrel when he walked in front of a forklift. Brown was run over and killed by the forklift. Any time you have heavy […]

High-Tech Safety: Automotive Crash Prevention Technology

One of the persistent problems of fleet safety and fleet management is that so much of it is driver-dependent. Putting away cell phones and slowing down are proven ways to reduce the risk of crashes—but once a worker is operating the vehicle, the employer has no direct control over whether the worker actually does these […]