View the Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/08/prweb1246914.htm
According to findings released last Friday, August 22nd by the U. S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) needs more oversight and needs to improve its management.
The CSB is an independent agency founded in 1998 whose principal function is to investigate chemical spills or other accidents related to chemicals to determine how similar accidents can be avoided in the future. 2007 found 900 some reports that the CSB investigated; 31 of those involved one or more fatalities. CSB has no authority to enforce, only to investigate and recommend
GAO recommendations were as follows:
GAO did acknowledge that CSB had made some of the recommendations outlined in the last report in July 2000 but also stated that CSB hadn’t gone far enough in making the necessary changes with regards to management and oversight. The report states: “CSB has not fully responded to recommendations related to its investigative gap, data quality, human capital, and management problems, and we found these problems continue.”
You can access the complete pdf of the report on the GAO website at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08864r.pdf
Seeking to define and solidify their goals and objectives for the future, the Department of Labor released its strategic plan for 2006 – 2011 this week.
According the the DOL website, these goals are:
Goal 1 – A Prepared Workforce
Develop a prepared workforce by providing effective training and support services to new and incumbent workers and supplying high-quality information on the economy and labor market.
Goal 2 – A Competitive Workforce
Meet the competitive labor demands of the worldwide economy by enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of the workforce development and regulatory systems that assist workers and employers in meeting the challenges of global competition.
Goal 3 – Safe and Secure Workforce
Promote workplaces that are safe, healthful and fair; guarantee workers receive the wages due them; foster equal opportunity in employment; and protect veterans’ employment and reemployment rights.
Goal 4 – Strengthened Economic Protections
Protect and strengthen worker economic security through effective and efficient provision of unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation; ensuring union transparency; and securing pension and health benefits.
The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) mandates that the DOL put together a six-year plan with an update to be put together every three-years. While it may look strange to have a fiscal plan the begins in 2006 released in 2008, the previous plan was released in 2003 and covered 2003-2008.
This plan will help the department and its employees define their priorities, plan their budgets and measure performances. You can download the entire document in pdf format or read the entire text online at the DOL website at: http://www.dol.gov/_sec/stratplan/
In a news release today, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) stated that they had published a “new medical treatment guideline for providing care to workers with chronic pain.”
For now the guideline which covers more than 200 recommendations is only available online at www.acoem.org but will be available next month in print format.
Put together in conjunction with multi-disciplinary panel of national experts and with input from the leading health and medical organizations the guidelines “focus on diagnostic and other testing and treatments for several chronic pain conditions, including: complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), neuropathic pain, trigger points/myofascial pain, chronic persistent pain, fibromyalgia and chronic low back pain.”
Some of the highlights of the report includes:
For further information and/or to request a copy of the guidelines, contact the ACOEM at 847-818-1800 or visit their website at www.acoem.org
The ACOEM is the pre-eminent organization of physicians who champion the health and safety of workers, workplaces, and environments.
Next time the doctor wants to give you a blood test to check your cholesterol and your sugar levels to test for diabetes, you might want to ask him to take a urine sample and check your arsenic levels as well. Turns out that the two might be related (arsenic levels and type 2 diabetes).
The study, released in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and available online at: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/300/7/814 found an increase in type 2 diabetes among individuals with elevated levels of arsenic in their urine samples.
788 adults aged 20 years or older were tested. Participants “with type 2 diabetes had a 26% higher level of total arsenic
(95% confidence interval [CI], 2.0%-56.0%… than participants without type 2 diabetes, and levels
of arsenobetaine were similar to those of participants without
type 2 diabetes.”
Millions of people worldwide are exposed to inorganic arsenic in drinking water. Many others are exposed through elevated arsenic levels in the workplace.
What has yet to be determined is the effect of low level arsenic on type 2 diabetes.
When the weather warms ups we open the window to let in the fresh air, but the problem is that what holds true about curiosity killing the cat also seems to apply to children. According to an article this morning in the Seattle PI, one local hospital Harborview Medical Center here in Washington “deals with more than 40 children who have fallen from windows in any given year“. That’s just one hospital, multiply that by the number of hospitals in America and the number becomes pretty important.
One of the biggest problems is the false sense of security that screens give children. There are potential laws in the works that would require contractors to install sturdier screen that wouldn’t pop out so easily (Minnesota passed such a law last year) but the weight of responsibility still needs to be on parents and guardians.
The Home Safety Council suggests the following:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a total of 5,488 fatalities last year in the workplace. That’s a 6% decrease over 2006 when the Bureau reported 5,840 fatalities. It was also the lowest in the history of BLS, since it started recording fatalities in 1992. That adds up to 3.7 fatalities for every 100,000 workers.
Other key findings…
Stumble It!
Overall, 90 percent of the fatal work injuries involved workers in private industry.
Fatalities declined in the construction industry, but construction continued to incur the most fatalities of any industry in the private sector.
Fatalities among private sector workers in transportation and warehousing sector, which had the second largest number of fatalities, decreased 3 percent from the number reported in 2006.
Fatalities were down 13 percent among private sector workers in the agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting industry sector in 2007.
The four occupations with the highest fatality rates were fishers and related fishing workers with a fatality rate of 111.8 per 100,000 workers, logging workers (86.4), aircraft pilots and flight engineers (66.7), and structural iron and steel workers (45.5).
Check out the full report online at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.nr0.htm for more information, including a detailed breakdown by industry, by event or exposure, by occupation, by state and by worker characteristic.
By the way, for the State of WA the number of fatalities actually increased from 87 in 2006 to 88 in 2007 with 36 of those in transportation, 6 in assaults and violent acts, 25 through contact with objects and equipment, 11 from falls, 4 from exposure to harmful substances and 0 from fires and explosions.
What is a “Confined Space”?
According to the OSHA Definition it is a space that has limited or restricted means of entry or exit, is large enough for an employee to enter and perform work in and which is not designed for continuous occupancy by the employee. These spaces may include, but are not limited to, underground vaults, tanks, storage bins, pits and diked areas, vessels, sewers, and silos.
A permit-required confined space is one that meets the definition of a confined space and has one or more of these characteristics:
If this applies to your business in any way then you will be glad to know that OSHA has an e-tool to help you…
e-PRCS assists you in developing your written program by prompting you for information about your particular work-site, confined spaces, and company policies and procedures. It consists of five separates sections: Overall PRCS Program Responsibility, Identification and Evaluation of Confined Spaces, Prevention of Unauthorized Entry, Entry Equipment and PPE, and Rescue and Emergency Procedures. e-PRCS also provides you compliance assistance and user help via help text buttons and links to compliance information on the OSHA web site.
Using e-PRCS, you can:
Downloadable in a compressed (zip) format, it comes in two different versions, one for users of Microsoft Access 97 and one for users who don’t have Microsoft Access 97.
Find out more and download the OSHA e-tool here.
For Confined Space Equipment, click here.
While much of what OSHA does revolves around construction and other blue collar workers, they haven’t forgotten those of us who spend our days in front of a computer screen. Ergonomics, carpal tunnel and other repetitive motion issues are the topic of a special section of the OSHA website with a collection of e-tools to help computer workstation employees sit correctly and avoid ergonomic problems.
Start by studying “Good working positions” complete with diagrams and photos along with descriptions and a detailed breakdown of each part of your body.
You can then move to specifics like the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse, desk, chair and telephone identifying the correct placement of each one.
There is also a checklist to walk through in making sure that your workspace is safe and comfortable. The checklist can be downloaded for you to check as often as you need.
Identifying the early onset of problems is also addressed as well as preventive measures. Finally, the website includes lighting, ventilation and glare issues.
Check out the OSHA Computer Workstation here.
Check out Ergonomic Supplies here.
I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that some 93% of home in America have fire detection alarms installed. Unfortunately, vehicles do not, which is partly the reason why there are more than a quarter of a million car fires each year (As reported by the National Fire Protection Association). This resulted in over 1 Billion dollars in damages as well as almost 500 deaths and some 12,000 injuries.
Summer weekends were the highest risk for vehicle fires and most are caused by mechanical failures, including overheating.
AAA has come up with an easy three-step procedure…
Stop – Pull the car to the side of the road and shut it off. Shutting off the engine shuts down the fuel pump which might otherwise add fuel to the fire.
Get out – Never stay in a burning or smoking vehicle no matter how small the fire or how little the amount of smoke. A small fire can spread fast and/or ignite gasoline, causing an explosion. Make sure that you also stay away from the flow of traffic. Getting safety away from a burning vehicle isn’t much good if you get hit by oncoming traffic.
Call – Use a cell phone or flag down someone to call 911. Stay clear of the vehicle and let the fire department handle the fire.
