September 2006
- Choose the Right Welding PPE
- Recording Gas Exposure with Today's Gas Monitors
- Protection: Make Sure Their Eyes Have It
- Glaring Issues of a Successful Program
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Cover Story
By Erica Osley, Christine L. Mello
EACH day, about 2,000 U.S. workers suffer a job-related eye injury requiring medical treatment, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). In addition, roughly one-third of these injuries require treatment in hospital emergency rooms, with 100 injuries resulting in one or more days of lost work.
Features
By Bob Davis
WHEN you consider the many regulations and guidelines that health and safety officers and first responders are faced with, it is amazing they maintain the ability to detect such a wide variety of hazardous pollutants and toxic agents. There is no lack of regulations governing how to monitor chemical compounds, and the list grows longer all the time.
By Dave D. Wagner
WE live and work in the 21st century--the age of information and the Internet. The prevalence of data and the desire to obtain more information, and get it faster, consume our personal as well as our professional lives.
By Jerry Laws
Editor's note: End users' confusion about multiple classes of protective apparel will ease as they become familiar with new editions of NFPA standards for responders' protective apparel, says Jeffrey O. Stull, president of International Personnel Protection Inc. of Austin, Texas.
By Art C. Bouzounis
THE promotional products business has witnessed much debate over whether safety incentive programs are successful--or even necessary--in the workplace. Opponents claim that rewarding or motivating employees to achieve positive safety records actually encourages covering up injuries and falsifying records.
By Mike Berriochoa
CHEMICALS and the potential risk of exposure to their vapors go hand in hand, making worker protection a complex challenge for many firms. For CH2M HILL, a prime contractor on the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site in Washington State, the complexity of this challenge is compounded by large volumes of radioactive waste intermixed with the chemicals.
By Larry Garner
THE welding industry is rated number one among all industries for the highest number of eye injuries. Based on a Prevent Blindness America report (www.preventblindness.org), eye injuries accounted for approximately 15 percent of total injuries and accounted for more than three times the number reported in the construction industry.
By Ira Ozer
THERE are two conflicting factions of safety professionals: those who believe it is important to motivate and reward people to achieve specified safety results by offering tangible incentives, such as merchandise and travel, and those who believe that tangible incentives are not necessary because safety results are part of their job and regular compensation.
By Casey Hayes
MOST people agree cultural diversity in the workplace utilizes our country's skills to their fullest, while also contributing to our overall growth and prosperity. However, many of the workers employed in the commercial and industrial sectors continue to rely mostly, if not totally, on their native tongue.
By Travis Rhoden
ACCORDING to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, about 2,000 workers have a job-related eye injury that requires medical treatment each day. One-third of these injuries are treated in hospital emergency departments, and more than 100 result in one or more lost work days.
By Jerry Laws
Editor's note: The promise of AEDs has not been fully realized for several reasons, most notably our failure to train potential users in a way that truly prepares them for the experience, contends Frank J. Poliafico, RN, director of the Initial Life Support Foundation (www.ilsf.info, 610-566-2824) of Media, Pa.
By Linda J. Sherrard
"HERE, look through these--look at the glare on that glass building," he said, handing me a stylish pair of top-of-the-line polarized safety sunglasses. "Now, look through these.
By Rob Miklas
QUICK fairy tale: A recently promoted case study lauded a large national service company's comprehensive safety incentive program, which awarded safety vouchers that could be redeemed for rewards. The program succeeded in raising safety awareness, promoting safe work practices, and lowering claim counts.
By Tony Goff
WELDING is dangerous enough when it takes place in an enclosed welding shop with the combination of heat, burning metal, and the optical rays given off by the process. On an open manufacturing floor or maintenance shop, the welding risks to those who are nearby and unprotected include:
Departments
By Jerry Laws
SUCCEEDING at safety is easy, if you follow the formula used by managers and workers at Louisiana-Pacific Corp.'s Engineered Wood Products plant in Golden, British Columbia, to achieve 1 million hours without a recordable injury on June 19, 2006.
By Marc Barrera
THE Internet can make many aspects of life easier, such as managing inventory, safety compliance, and worker's compensation claims; but the prospect of remembering more passwords isn't one of them.
By Julius E. Rhodes, SPHR
AS our organizations continue to look for ways to advance in the marketplace, we need to constantly examine how we view our roles as individual contributors. As a result, it is ultimately our responsibility to continually assess the direction in which we are heading so we can positively contribute to the success of the organization and meet our own developmental needs.