Category: Personnel Safety

EHS On Tap: E76 Preventing Heat Illness in the Workplace

On episode 76 of EHS On Tap, Karen D. Hamel of HalenHardy talks about preventing heat stress in the workplace. Karen D. Hamel, CSP, CIT, WACH, is a regulatory expert, trainer, and technical writer for HalenHardy. She has more than 27 years of experience helping EHS professionals meet regulatory requirements and industry standards and has […]

MA Contractor Facing $1.3 Million Fine After Trench Fatalities

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited a Wayland, Massachusetts, contractor and his processor and successor companies with 28 willful, repeat, serious, and other-than-serious safety and health violations following two trenching fatalities. The agency seeks a total of $1,350,884 in penalties. Atlantic Coast Utilities LLC/Advanced Utilities Inc.; its predecessor company Shannon Construction Corp.; their […]

Ask the Expert: Enforcing Safety Rules and Requirements With Contractors

In our latest installment of Ask the Expert, brought to you by the team of industry experts at EHS Hero®, we look at a recent question from a subscriber asking about enforcing safety rules and requirements with contractors. See what the experts had to say. Q: Can we or should we enforce our safety rules/manual/requirements […]

Back to Basics: Creating a Fatigue Risk Management System

Back to Basics is a weekly feature that highlights important but possibly overlooked information that any EHS professional should know. This week, we examine how to create a fatigue risk management system. Worker fatigue is a serious problem that can lead to dangerous work conditions, lower productivity, injuries, and even death. According to OSHA, employers […]

Joint Commission Issues New Workplace Violence Standards

The Joint Commission, which oversees accreditation of hospitals and other healthcare facilities, issued new and revised workplace violence standards that take effect January 1, 2022. The workplace violence prevention standards will apply to all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals and critical access hospitals. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and many states, along with private insurers, […]

Check Your Respiratory Protection Compliance

How’s your respiratory protection compliance? Last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) allowed inspectors to exercise enforcement discretion, especially in enforcing the agency’s annual fit-testing requirement, in response to respirator shortages. All those discretion directives have since been withdrawn. The time is now to check all components of your written respiratory protection program, […]

10 Ways to Kick Start Your Safety and Health Program

As part of its Safe + Sound campaign, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) shared a variety of resources aimed at helping businesses put together safety and health programs. According to OSHA’s page devoted to the topic, safety and health programs help businesses do the following: Prevent workplace injuries and illnesses Improve compliance with […]

Making Sense of Washington’s New Health Emergency Labor Standards Act

Washington State has adopted the Health Emergency Labor Standards Act (HELSA), a sweeping worker protection bill passed by the state legislature. The Act amends the state’s workers’ compensation and industrial health and safety statutes to provide automatic protections for certain workers and to impose new notification and reporting requirements on employers in the event of a public […]