September 2008
The 50 Most Influential EHS Leaders
When we began the daunting task of trying to name the 50 most influential (living) EHS leaders, we worried that we would have difficulty coming up with that many names. Soon, we realized that we easily could name 100 leaders or more, particularly if we opened it up to international representatives. ...
A Practical Guide to Hand Protection
Gloves protect hands from injuries. If only it was as simple to say that if all workers, from medical to industrial and everything in between, would just wear gloves, then more than 1 million hospital emergency visits by U.S. workers per year (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) could be avoided. ...
What Does Safety Success Look Like?
The surface definition of safety success on most safety professionals’ minds is simply a reduction in the failure rate. We have been so busy avoiding failure that we need to remind ourselves what success looks like. The word “success” tends to surface every time the accident rates go down, but does the lack of accidents really equate to safety success? ...
The Evolution of Workplace Training
Those may have been simpler times, but they were definitely not safer times, nor more productive times. In fact, while it is often tempting to romanticize the past, an objective look at the history of the workplace tells a tale of continuous improvements, especially when it comes to safety. ...
Expanding Confined Space Awareness
Joe Gurican, who teaches a confined space awareness class, believes confined space deaths typically occur for two reasons. First, employers and workers fail to recognize and control the hazards associated with confined spaces, and secondly, they conduct inadequate or incorrect emergency response, resulting in the death of the initial entrant, the would-be rescuer or both. ...
R&D Drives Hand Protection Innovation
More than 1 million U.S. workers receive emergency treatment for acute hand injuries each year, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 110,000 workers with hand and finger injuries lose days at work annually, which is second only to back problems as a cause of lost workdays. ...
Avoiding an Accident Excuse Pile-Up
Last week, his leg fell asleep. Just the other day, a bug flew in his eye and caused temporary disorientation. And today, his newest excuse was that he had a sneezing spell and couldn’t keep his eyes open long enough to see the wall. ...
Hazardous Energy
These are not the words of J. Wellington Wimpy from Popeye. This is the sentiment, and career strategy, of a safety coordinator in California. This approach to the “profession” has become commonplace. ...
The Contribution of Supervisors and Middle Managers to Safety Performance
Safety ultimately is about what happens in the workplace. When leaders set the directive to change the culture and lead improvement throughout the organization, it becomes imperative to transfer safety leadership principles and practices down to the site level. ...
Going Beyond the Limits
A worker in a machine shop in Illinois is injured when a conveyor belt snaps and strikes him in the face. On the surface, this would appear to be a common workplace injury, especially in an environment where belts and pulleys are moving at great rates of speed. ...
Feeling Nostalgic
I'm a Leo. And if you know any Leos, you know we think the world revolves around us. We don't celebrate a birth day, we celebrate a birth month. We even celebrate a birth fortnight if our friends and family let us get away with it. ...
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