Environmental Health and Safety Update

Warehouse Safety the Dangers of Modern Warehouses and How to Prevent Them

Loved ones coming together is what the holidays are all about, but first you have to get there. This holiday season is expected to receive more travel on the roads than in previous years due to the recession, which means that more safety measures need to be taken to avoid accidents. SafetySkills™ is providing these safe driving tips:

• Know the weather conditions and how to drive in them. 75 percent of all winter weather related deaths can be attributed to driving in dangerous weather conditions. Take SafetySkills™  Hazardous Driving Conditions online course to learn how to minimize your risk.
• Prepare you vehicle for winter driving. It is recommended to check the tire pressure, windshield wipers and fluid, and the battery to avoid car trouble and keep the windshield and windows clean for proper visibility. Stocking the car with self-sustaining technologies and supplies is also encouraged, such as a first aid kit, blankets, matches, safety flares, flashlight, fully-charged cell phone and bottled water.
• Stay alert. Driver distraction is becoming, in the words of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, an “epidemic” that caused 500,000 car accidents and 6,000 fatalities last year. Drivers need to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel at all times.
• Never drink and drive. 36 percent of all Christmas accidents on the road are alcohol-related. Those who become too festive for their own good should never get behind the wheel and should use a taxi service.
•  Plan for daytime driving. Three times as many fatalities occur during the night (6 p.m. – 6 a.m.) than during the day according to both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Safety Council (NSC).

“Driving this time of year is simply chaotic,” said Trey Greene, CEO of noodleStream.com. “The roads are busy and that mixed with the weather creates a dangerous environment for driving. Using these tips will help reduce the chance of car accidents and more importantly injuries and even deaths.”
To learn more about SafetySkills™ and to take our Hazardous Driving Conditions course, visit http://safetyskills.com/winter-driving.

OSHA’s Whistleblower Program offers protection from job loss or professional repercussions against any employee that has exercise rights under OSHA ACT.  Rights afforded by the OSH Act include employee participation in safety and health activities, such as complaining to OSHA and seeking an OSHA inspection, participating in an OSHA inspection, participating or testifying in any proceeding related to an OSHA inspection, and reporting a work-related injury, illness, or fatality. The whistleblower protection statutes administered by OSHA protect employees who report violations of various airline, commercial motor carrier, consumer product, environmental, financial reform, food safety, health care reform nuclear, pipeline, public transportation agency, railroad, maritime and securities laws.

OSHA has begun implementing reforms to the Whistleblower Program. A statement made by OSHA’s Assistant Secretary Dr. David Michaels reveals that “The new measures will significantly strengthen OSHA’s enforcement of the 21 whistleblower laws that Congress charged OSHA with administering.” Significant changes to the Whistleblower Protection Program will effect the restructuring, training, policies and internal systems.

The program will now report directly to the assistant secretary instead of the Directorate of Enforcement. Beginning of the 2012 fiscal year, 25 new investigators will be added to the program. OSHA will also hold a national whistleblower conference that will be attended by all investigators from federal and state plans. OSHA will also offer many other investigator training events to ensure that they receive all the mandatory training required by the end of the calendar year. The new changes will also bring modifications to the Whistleblower Investigations manual which was last updated in 2003. Alterations to the data collections system will also be made to ensure that all complaints will be handled in a more timely basis.

Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, employers are responsible for providing safe and healthful workplaces for their employees. OSHA’s role is to ensure these conditions for America’s working men and women by setting and enforcing standards, and providing training, education and assistance. For more information, visit http://www.osha.gov.

Some holiday shopping traditions start as soon as the Thanksgiving dinner is cleared off the table. Before the turkey is even digested the shopping mission is being plotted out. SafetySkills™ would like to kick off the shopping season with some important personal safety shopping tips.

• Do not carry all your cash and credit cards out with you, carry only what you will use that day
• Consider using a one time or multiuse prepaid credit card
• Lock all purchases in your trunk – do not leave them visible
• Carry your purse close to your body or your wallet in a front pocket
• Have your keys in your hand when you are heading out into the parking lot
• Make sure you park in a well-lit area
• Check the back seat and the area around the car before getting in
• If shopping with children, make sure you have a plan and a meeting spot in case you get separated
• Only buy what you can physically carry
• Make sure you have a cell phone available
• Wear comfortable shoes
• Be well rested
• Be courteous

Black Friday is considered the unofficial start to the holiday season but unfortunately it also brings out thieves, pickpockets and others that are looking to take advantage of unsuspecting shoppers. Though most people shop safely on Black Friday but it pays to be aware of what is going on around you and to have a plan if an emergency situation develops.  SafetySkills™ hopes that you stay safe and have a great holiday weekend!

SafetySkills™ is starting off November with showcasing another free course of the month. This month’s free course is Hazardous Materials Transportation, Introduction. This free course is available to individuals or companies looking for online safety training. To view the course, you must create an account. The account is free and the course is free and the certificate of completion is also free.  Why do we offer free training? Because we hope you find SafetySkills™ so effective and easy to use that you choose us for all of your compliance training needs.

More than 800,000 hazardous material shipments occur every day – 365 days a year. Commerce involving hazardous materials contributes more than $446 billion to the US economy annually. It is an important part of everyone’s daily life. Persons involved in the packaging, marking, labeling, and transporting of hazardous materials must be familiar with the proper handling and safeguarding of hazardous materials as prescribed in the Hazardous Materials Regulations, or HMR. This free course is designed to give HAZMAT employees a general awareness of the requirements of the HMR.

Hazardous Materials Transportation,Introduction can be used to fulfill the requirements of 49 CFR 174(a)(1) for the general awareness/familiarization training. After the completion of the course you will be able to summarize which packages and containers the HMR apply to, what training is required and what the possible penalties are for violating the HMR. Employers may also be interested in all the courses available in our Hazardous Materials (DOT) Training Series.

To check out all of our over 200 OSHA, EPA and DOT compliant courses, visit us at http://safetyskills.com/

This week is the Drive Safely Work Week sponsored by the National Safety Council and the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS).  In partnership with the U.S. Department of Transportation, the week is to remind employees to avoid driving distracted.  The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety states that distracted driving contributes up to 8,000 crashes every single day.

Many accidents could be prevented if drivers took this time to focus only on driving. Many drivers use this time to multi task, whether it be to answer emails, respond to texts, eat breakfast or put on makeup. A delay in reaction time due to multitasking can prove to be fatal. One of the most important rules to follow and stay safe is to plan ahead. The Foundation for Traffic Safety offer excellent tips and facts on distracted driving – http://www.aaafoundation.org/multimedia/distracteddriving.cfm

To get the whole office or company involved, have them take a few minutes to complete the SafetySkills Distracted Driver course. This course is designed to give the learner knowledge and skills needed to drive safely and avoid distractions that can lead to traffic accidents. When this course is over the learner should be able to recognize the causes of driver distraction and the appropriate actions for distracted drivers to take.  The Distracted Driver online course is part of the Driver Safety Training Series. This series includes Delivery Driver Safety, Driver Safety,Hazardous Driving Conditions,Hazards of Speeding and Road Rage.

To find out more about SafetySkills™, visit us at http://safetyskills.com.

1. The water in the water bottle has a funny shade of green
2. The plastic holding the liquid has melted around it
3. It has a funny shade of florescent green and you don’t remember Gatorade coming out with any new flavors
4. It sizzled on the ground when poured out
5. There are some funny letters and numbers written on the bottle that kind of remind you of high school chemistry class
6. The bottle was found hanging out around the chemical closet
7. You get this faint dizzy feeling when you take a whiff of it
8. You have no idea where this container came from
9. It says ice tea, it even kinda looks like ice tea but you think you burnt some of your nose hairs off when you went to take a swig
10. The last guy who drank out of that bottle hasn’t been seen in a couple of hours
11. The guy before him has been wondering around looking dazed and confused and demands to be called Lord Fluffinstuff

NIOSH takes an interesting look at this summer’s comedy “Horrible Bosses”

Horrible Bosses

Workplace violence in the real world

Horrible bosses. If you’ve had one, hopefully they were not as bad as those portrayed by Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, and Colin Farrell in the newly released movie of the same name. While the plot and characters are exaggerated and the comic elements may not be to everyone’s taste, the movie highlights the very real issues of work stress and violence. Each week in the United States, an average of 33,000 workers are assaulted on the job and 14 are murdered.

Courtesy of WarnerBros.

By and large, robbery-related factors account for the toll of homicide at work. The situations portrayed in the movie are not typical—worker-on-worker (or boss) violence accounts for only about 8% of workplace homicides. More than half of all workplace homicides occur in retail or service settings such as conveniences stores, taxicab services, and gas stations with the majority of these homicides occurring during a robbery.

While we don’t want to throw a wet blanket on a summer blockbuster, here are some real-world alternatives to “offing the boss” for the characters in the movie.

Management candidate Nick (Jason Bateman) has been logging 12-hour days and eating everything his twisted supervisor Harken (Kevin Spacey) dishes out, toward the promise of a well-earned promotion. But now he knows that’s never going to happen.*

Providing employees with training in nonviolent response and conflict resolution is believed to reduce the risk that volatile situations will escalate to physical violence. In this example, such training could benefit both boss and employee.Information on workplace stress can be found on the NIOSH Stress at Work topic page.

Dental assistant Dale (Charlie Day) has been struggling to maintain his self-respect against the relentless X-rated advances of Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), when she suddenly turns up the heat.

Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment. Charges of sexual harassment can be filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Accountant Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) has just learned that his company’s corrupt new owner, Pellit (Colin Farrell), is not only bent on ruining his career but plans to funnel toxic waste into an unsuspecting population.

The Whistleblower Protection Program prohibits employers from firing or in any manner retaliating against any employee for reporting violations of environmental, workplace safety, financial reform and various other laws.

These recommendations are to the fictitious situations presented in the movie. There is not one solution to workplace violence as the risk factors in each industry are different. In the taxicab industry, installing partitions and cameras have helped reduce the number of taxicab driver homicides. In New York City, armed robberies in taxicabs are down from 2500 per month to between 200 and 300 hundred per month and murders are down from 25 per year to 1 or 2 per year.

In convenience stores and gas stations measures such as using locked drop safes, keeping small amounts of cash on hand, and posting signs to this effect are used to deter robbery and thus homicide. Visibility, lighting and creating distance between workers and customers and patients can also act as a deterrent to violence in retail and healthcare. Nonfatal violence in the healthcare industry can be reduced by conducting a workplace security analysis and implementing appropriate environmental (e.g., arrange furniture to prevent entrapment of staff), administrative, (e.g., adopt measures to decrease waiting time), and behavioral (e.g., train employees not to carry keys, pens or other items that could be used as weapons) prevention measures.

NIOSH and its partners are part of a broad-based initiative to reduce the incidence of occupational violence in this country. NIOSH conducts, funds, and publishes research on risk factors and prevention strategies related to workplace violence. The NIOSH Workplace Violence topic page contains information on NIOSH research as well as links to external research programs, statistical reports, and public and private initiatives to address the problems of workplace violence.

We would like to hear from you. Has your workplace implemented violence prevention strategies? Are they working?

*Film synopsis from Warnerbros.com

—Dan Hartley, Ed.D.

Dr. Hartley is the NIOSH Workplace Violence Prevention Coordinator in the Division of Safety Research.

A picture perfect day with a cool breeze and warm sun shining down could make any outdoor worker’s day almost enjoyable.Unfortunately days such as those do not happen as often as we like. People who perform most of their job duties outside such as oil and gas workers, road crews and construction workers will sometimes have to prepare themselves for severe weather conditions. Severe weather awareness falls under OSHA’s General Duty Clause and it is important that employers and employees are aware of incoming severe weather and develop an action plan. Awareness is the key to safety.

A severe weather action plan will provide employees the best method of action when working on an outdoor job site in inclement weather. Most plans will have to be tailored to the weather conditions in the area such as hurricanes or tornadoes, but thunderstorms are a dangerous weather condition for most outdoor workers across the country. To learn more about severe weather action plans, please view the SafetySkills™ course at  http://www.safetyskills.com/occupational-health-and-safety-series/severe-weather-and-outdoor-work-safety. After viewing the course, employees will be able to demonstrate knowledge of severe weather hazards and how to react when severe weather strikes during work processes. Employees will learn to identify hazards associated with severe weather and standard protocols to follow during severe weather events. Proper knowledge of severe weather is key when developing the best safety plan for outdoor workers.

Watch this short video on fireworks safety to prepare you and your family this weekend. http://safetyskills.com/fireworks-safety-training