Auditors and Quality Managers across all manufacturing and service industries use ISO and OHSAS standards to put their Environmental and Health and Safety Management Systems into practice. These standards help implement effective and efficient EHS requirements, or VPP Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems. In this blog I review and summarize the two standards, their aims and obligations.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, International, Health & Safety, Environmental risks, Environmental, EHS
Yes, we did. We said that noise, as a by-product of industrial processes, is one of the most pervasive occupational health concerns, contributing to approximately 16% of the disabling hearing loss in adults on a worldwide scale. Ten million people in the U.S. alone have a noise-related hearing loss and twenty-two million workers are exposed to potentially damaging noise each year. In 2007 the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimated that approximately 23,000 cases of occupational hearing loss were reported as causing hearing impairment and that this alone accounted for 14% of occupational illness that year.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, OSHA, Employee Rights
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Health & Safety, Hazcom, Transportation
In September I blogged about OSHA’s Airborne Contaminant Standard, which sets ambient air limits for over 400 workplace air contaminants to protect employees from exposures to airborne chemical and particulate contaminants in workplace air. In October, OSHA issued an extensive Request for Information (RFI), asking for comments on a variety of approaches to setting these limits in the future. In the RFI, OSHA notes that most exposure limits date from 1971, and so they don’t reflect four decades of advances in understanding of chemical toxicology. OSHA is attempting to build on legal requirements for standard-setting developed by court cases since 1971, and to update—the agency doesn’t say finesse—some of the limitations. The RFI asks over 50 questions, and solicits comments no later than April 8, 2015.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Health & Safety, OSHA, Environmental risks, Environmental
We drive by the “Be Work Zone Alert” billboards all the time, reminding us to slow down and drive safe through road construction zones, with compassion-provoking reminders like, “Be alert, our mom’s at work.” And indeed, rather than feel annoyed at the roadwork construction that delays our driving progress, let’s continue to be mindful of the real risks that the workers face every day on the job.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, Training, EHS, Transportation
Although most “workplace violence” incidents are low-level psychological or physical altercations between co-workers, Canadians have just been tragically reminded of the dangers of murders by interlopers. Government buildings are the likeliest targets for terrorism, and financial and retail buildings the likeliest targets for non-political criminals, but all workplaces face at least some of these most severe risks. There’s no way to eliminate these risks, but commonsense workplace security measures can reduce them. This note discusses approaches to evaluating and reinforcing security against external threats – which are important subsets of broader workplace violence prevention efforts.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, Employee Rights, Workplace violence
To ensure that operations at gas pipelines, gas pipeline facilities, and LNG plants and facilities are in compliance with a range of conditions, operators of such plants and facilities must provide the US Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) with 60 days’ advance notice of construction-related events. This advance notice allows time for reviews and inspections to identify any potential compliance issues and avoid costly design changes or delays.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Health & Safety, Environmental risks, ghg, fracking, hydraulic fracking, Oil & Gas
Once a year in our office, someone walks through the halls ringing an old-fashioned school bell. We immediately stop what we are doing, crawl under our desks and brace ourselves, and wait. A few moments later, one of our earthquake marshals comes by to tell us that it is safe to leave the building, and we carefully make our way down the stairs to the designated meeting spot. After checking the staff list and verifying that everyone made it out “safely,” our marshals let us return to our work. It wasn’t an earthquake—this time.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, Environmental risks, Environmental
Most Occupational safety and Health Administration (OSHA) electrical safety and machine guarding standards apply to protect employees from electrical and kinetic energy hazards during routine operations. But OSHA also requires protection during equipment servicing and maintenance, lest employees be injured by “unexpected” equipment energization, start up, or release of stored energy. OSHA’s Control of Hazardous Energy Standard—more often called the Lockout/Tagout or “LOTO” Standard after its primary compliance requirements—requires employers to establish and implement safety procedures to control such hazardous energy.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, OSHA, Employee Rights, Environmental risks, EHS, Hazcom
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has long required all employers to report work-related accidents that result in three or more deaths or serious injuries (what OSHA calls "catastrophes"). On September 18 OSHA published changes to these requirements that expand employers’ reporting requirements effective January 1, 2015 (I blogged about OSHA’s proposal here).
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, OSHA, Employee Rights, Environmental risks, Environmental, EHS
