Practical EHS Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Spring has sprung, so your employees may be dusting off the winter cobwebs and tackling strenuous home tasks, such as spring cleaning and gardening. In today’s Advisor, we give guidance on conducting effective training for off-the-job safety. Would it surprise you to know that fewer workers are injured or killed at work than away from […]
Organizations with strong safety cultures tend to experience low levels of risky behavior and low accident rates, turnover, and absenteeism as well as high productivity. To strengthen your safety culture, here’s a list of suggestions: Give away ownership. In the strongest safety cultures, everyone feels responsible for safety. A worker who notices another worker without […]
Authorized employees who service or maintain machinery and equipment need special training on lockout/tagout procedures. Today’s Advisor includes a training exercise that you can use to help train your workers. The information in today’s issue comes from BLR’s PowerPoint® presentation, "Lockout/Tagout—Authorized Employee Training." The objective of the following exercise is to evaluate authorized employees’ understanding […]
Hands are one of the twos—two hands, two feet, two arms, two legs, two eyes, and two ears. Any one of these (or both) can be injured on the job. But hands are particularly vulnerable, and not always easy to protect. Because the hands and fingers play a role in virtually every task, they are […]
Workplace safety isn’t a one-person job. It takes teamwork. How’s your safety team doing? Here are some key steps to make your teams more effective.
Three fatality reports from NIOSH illustrate the importance of emphasizing lockout/tagout rules. Reason 1 A 25-year-old worker at a concrete pipe manufacturing facility died from injuries received while cleaning a ribbon-type concrete mixer. The victim’s daily tasks included cleaning out the concrete mixer at the end of the shift. The clean-out procedure was to shut […]
Any powered equipment is potentially dangerous—even if it’s supposed to be shut down. Many needless accidents occur when somebody turns on a machine that’s supposed to be locked out. Lockout/tagout accidents are not only needless, but serious. They result not in small cuts or scratches, but often cause amputations, serious fractures, or death. Any energy […]
A pallet jack is meant to help workers handle heavy loads safely. Think how easily workers could be injured if they tried to move the same materials without the assistance of a pallet jack. However, if they don’t use the equipment safely, they can be injured just as easily. Pallet jacks clearly aren’t as dangerous […]
A University of Vermont–hosted safety site has published what it calls the “Fatal 5″—the primary causes of LO/TO-preventable injuries. Make sure these hazards aren’t present in your workplace. OSHA requires you to train employees to prevent lockout/tagout (LO/TO) accidents in the workplace. Have you explained how to avoid the "Fatal 5" to your employees? 1 […]
According to OSHA, some 3 million workers face the risk of injury or death from hazardous energy–related accidents. Compliance with lockout/tagout rules keeps about 120 of them alive each year and prevents some 50,000 accidents. Three men were performing maintenance inside an asphalt mixer. One of them was still inside the mixer when the power […]