In one split second…

An employee was pulling cable under a building when a venomous snake bit him. Startled, the worker jerked away from the snake and stood up. As he did so his head met with a long rusty nail that penetrated his skull and lodged in his brain. He fell forward and struck his head against a pipe. Two years later the man’s speech is still slurred, and he has balance problems.

If he’d been treated immediately for the snakebite, he would have been fine in a few hours. If he’d been wearing a hard hat instead of a cloth company cap, the rusty nail and the pipe would not have dented his head.

You can read the whole story here.

Now go back to your business and think about how many times workers crawl under or over or through obstacles without head protection. Maybe the worker is next to heavy equipment for only a few minutes, just to deliver a tool to the operator. Or maybe it’s a construction site, and you’re not that worried about a wall going up and then crashing on top of two or three workers. Never happened before. You can think of a dozen of so such events that have never happened where you work.

Be a champion for proper head protection at work. Doesn’t matter because you’re a contractor and aren’t required by law to follow safety rules set by OSHA? You’ve gone without head protection for thirty years, so nothing’s going to happen now? It gets hot out here. Who wants to have a heavy-duty hat on his head?

You know the answers. Support  safety, especially head safety. When a worker suffers a severe head injury, your company suffers.

Submitted by Griffith Publishing
Producers of HealthWorks publications since 1991

Source: Occupational Health & Safety

A workplace flu epidemic

Consider what would happen if your workforce is suddenly reduced because workers are ill, afraid they might become ill, or are recovering from illness. The Centers for Disease Control recommends staying in a self-imposed quarantine until 24 hours after the fever has left without fever-reducing medications. Most people who contract the disease but are not hospitalized have a fever from two to four days.

What about the situation that could develop if your workers become ill but stick it out on the job? Your business could quickly become a breeding ground for the disease. Another way to foster growth of the virus is from your workers traveling to meetings and bringing H1N1 back with them. Restricting travel—especially to countries such as Mexico, India, Chile, Thailand, and Canada where high rates of flu-like diseases are being reported—is recommended as one effective way to help keep your workforce free from the disease.

Whatever your workers may be facing, the reality is that as a business owner your first obligation is to provide a safe place for them to work. You don’t want to encourage workers to stay on the job when they have flu symptoms because that could start up an epidemic at your business. Such an event could even set you up for a costly lawsuit.

Educate your employees about being safe during a flu epidemic. Plan ahead for projects or assignments that could be done at home. Above all, be sure the H1N1 virus is unwelcome at your place of business.

Copyright © 2009 by Griffith Publishing. The comments provided on these pages can be used by any business to promote health and safety in their workplace. The use of these materials for resale, consulting, or any commercial use is not allowed without specific, advance permission from Griffith Publishing.

Latex or vinyl—do we really need gloves at all?

Perhaps you’ve watched a fast-food worker, wearing latex gloves, making your sandwich and then been appalled to see that same worker, take your money, ring up your order, hand you your change and order, and start the whole process over again—never changing gloves.

The New York Times recently reported that 20 years after disposable gloves became common in the food service industry, it is not clear they have made any measurable difference in the transmission of illness. Yes, the gloves can prevent most of the millions of bacteria teeming on a worker’s hands from being transmitted to your food, but only if the gloves themselves are clean. Hence the problem!

One survey of thousands of American restaurant workers showed that more than a third said they didn’t always change their gloves between handling raw meat or poultry, and touching readyto-eat food.

Disposable gloves are also being reexamined, because it turns out that a lot of people are allergic to latex. Rhode Island, Arizona, and Oregon have banned latex gloves from restaurants because of customer complaints and workers’ compensation claims arising from latex allergies.
Some restaurants have therefore turned to vinyl gloves. But these are now shown to contain a chemical that is carcinogenic. As a result, Japan has already banned vinyl gloves from all its restaurants.

Latex gloves not effective? Vinyl gloves not safe?

We’re not talking about healthcare workers with their high risk of exposure to disease oganisms in bodily fluids, but when it comes to our food preparers, perhaps the time has come to institute a radical alternative. Let’s consider a return to abandoning gloves in favor of educating food workers in the use of plenty of hot, soapy water between tasks.

Idaho and the flu epidemic

Never before have Idaho businesses faced the very real possibility of a specific disease threatening their workforce.

In July of this year, the worst case scenario for the flu epidemic in the U.S. in 2009-10 was a picture of 90 million Americans infected with influenza and nearly two million deaths. The report was given by Dr. Jennifer Ashton, medical correspondent for CBS News, on “The Early Show.”

Most schools have been affected in the Treasure Valley, with some reporting 30 percent of students absent due to flu-like symptoms. In Idaho, fewer than a dozen deaths from H1N1 have been confirmed, and all of the victims had underlying conditions that contributed to their death. The number of affected Idaho residents by the H1N1 virus is expected to climb even as H1N1 vaccines are being provided to high-risk groups.

The virus known as “novel H1N1” is a new version of typical H1N1 influenza. (The “H” and “N” stand for the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins in the virus.) H1N1 is a subspecies of the Influenza A virus that has mutated into a variety of flu strains, probably including the Spanish flu virus that killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide from 1918 to 1919. The current virus may have originated as “swine flu” but is not spread by pigs but from person to person without any contact with swine or swine-related products.

At top priority to receive the vaccine are people at higher risk of health complications from H1N1 infection, and those more likely to transmit infection to the most vulnerable. They include the following:

• Pregnant women.
• Household contacts and caregivers for children younger than 6 months.
• Healthcare and emergency medical services personnel.
• All people from 6 months through 24 years of age.
• People age 25 to 64 with health conditions indicating a greater risk of medical complications from influenza.

Business owners and supervisors are urged not to ignore worst-case scenario numbers but take the steps to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

submitted by Griffith Publishing

Might as well toss the money into the sewer…

Sleepy workers?

Might as well toss money spent on training and materials into the sewer.

One in three workers said they’d fallen asleep or had been very sleepy at work within the past month. This is the result of a survey of 1,000 people by the National Sleep Foundation.

Researchers have found that sleep-deprivation costs U.S. businesses more than $136 billion every year. A study in Japan three years ago indicated a loss of $30.7 billion a year due to weary or sleepy workers in that country.

In the U.S., sleepy workers are twice as likely as rested ones to be involved in a job-related injury.

The average wake-up time in the U.S. is 5:35 a.m., and average bedtime is 10:53 p.m. Another hour would result in far more productive workers.

Of course, businesses do not have the authority to control the amount of sleep a worker has had before showing up for the shift. They can take steps to make it easier for workers to remain rested throughout the work day. Eliminating 12-hour shifts, providing nap time on the job, and educating employees about the risk of showing up for work dead tired are examples of measures that a business can take to reduce the number of sleep-hungry workers who show up for work.

Note: If you are a health and safety director, manager, or business owner, you have permission to use any HealthWorks blog to promote health and safety among your workers. For consultants or producers of health and safety materials, please call Griffith Publishing at 800 359-9503 to request the use of these copyrighted items.

Brought to you by Griffith Publishing

How close to an unguarded edge is safe?

Is this worker safe?

Here’s a question for the safety director:

Is it true that as long as your workers are at least six feet from an unguarded edge, you’ve met the OSHA requirement and don’t need additional fall protection measures?

This convenient rule of thumb happens to be a myth. Patrick Nies, writing for the latest edition of OSHA’s Region X newsletter, says that the belief in a six-foot margin apparently stems from an OSHA rule requiring fall protection when the worker is six feet or more above a lower level.

However, Nies points out, just having a six-foot distance from the edge doesn’t adequately protect employees from falls that can result in OSHA citations and penalties.
According to Nies, “OSHA’s Subpart M Fall Protection standard (29 CFR 1926.500, 501, 502 & 503) does not establish a safe distance from, or an acceptable proximity to, an edge.”

In some cases such as with nearly flat roofs, warning lines and monitors can take the place of guardrails or personal fall protection equipment even when the lower level is more than six feet below the worker.

As with other OSHA guidelines, common sense is expected of the supervisor and worker in such situations. An unprotected edge, even if the edge is more than six feet away can be dangerous if, for example, the surface is wet or if the slope is steep. Exact dimensions for requiring edge protection are not given by OSHA, but penalties are likely if the danger of falling or sliding off the edge of a surface are obvious.

Falls at work accounted for 14 percent of all work-related fatalities in 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Checklist center coming up

OSHA is part of the Department of Labor. The DOL’s logo is shown above.

A whole industry of businesses publish and post lists and rules and explanations from OSHA.

Our contribution is to develop a library of OSHA’s best checklists. These will be genuine OSHA checklists, not derivatives or rewrites.

Today we introduce a comprehensive and well designed set of checklists under the heading, “computer workstations.”

More to come.

–brought to you by Griffith Publishing

Incremental improvements can go a long ways…eventually!

Incremental.

Maybe it’s just a buzz word, but measuring your company’s progress in health and safety on an incremental basis may be worth considering.

Put in simple terms, incremental management for health and safety means identifying key areas most likely to be the site of injuries or mishaps at your work place and setting up procedures to reduce the risk and measure progress in achieving the goal.

One trucking business, for example, was able to use this method to determine that a corporate-wide emphasis on wellness was able to reduce its costs of workers’ comp, disability pay, healthcare and absenteeism. Regular reporting by each department helped the company’s manager to focus on small but consistent improvements in these areas.

Brought to you by Griffith Publishing

Note: If you are a health and safety director, manager, or business owner, you have permission to use any HealthWorks blog to promote health and safety among your workers. For consultants or producers of health and safety materials, please call Griffith Publishing at 800 359-9503 to request the use of these copyrighted items.

You’re teaching, but who’s listening?

They’re on time, notebooks and pencils ready, looking alert. But how long will your workers actually pay close attention to what you’re telling them about health and safety?

For decades we have known that adults can listen for up to twenty minutes, but in today’s fast-paced world, even that short time period is shrinking. Your youngest workers, probably veterans at texting and skype,* may have impaired capacity for
instructions that take longer than a few minutes.

How can you be sure that vital points are getting across to your workers? Here are some tips for making your health and safety information register with your workers.

• Use short sessions and even shorter teaching modules for each topic.
• Let your workers demonstrate procedures such as lock-out tag-out, or treating a severe nosebleed.
• Give short quizzes.
• Divide into small groups to discuss problems
• Show short videos (five to ten minutes) on the topic you are presenting.
• Pause for questions and provide brief answers.
• Include problem-solving exercises, not just questions with definite answers.

Whatever techniques you use, be sure to watch your audience. You can see when a change in pace is needed by maintaining eye contact with the people listening to you,

*Skype is software for calling other people on their computers or telephones.

Brought to you by Griffith Publishing

Note: If you are a health and safety director, manager, or business owner, you have permission to use any HealthWorks blog to promote health and safety among your workers. For consultants or producers of health and safety materials, please call Griffith Publishing at 800 359-9503 to request the use of these copyrighted items.

Standing for hours is hard on workers

Even standing perfectly motionless requires considerable muscle activity and prolonged standing can lead to serious medical problems.

Standing for hours in one position reduces blood flow to the muscles of the legs, back, and neck. A diminished supply of blood, in turn, causes general fatigue and pain in affected muscles. Swelling of the legs leading to the development of varicose veins is common among workers who spend hours standing on the job. The joints of the spine, hips, knees, and feet “lock” into position when a person is standing still for longer than a few minutes. This immobility can lead to degeneration of the tendons and ligaments and produce
rheumatic disease.

Employees with work that requires extensive standing are often at the lowest end of the pay scale where their plight is easy to ignore. Low-income employees are also less likely to complain about work conditions because they’re glad to have a job.

The most important way to prevent injuries from too much standing is to create a work environment where all workers feel it’s okay for them to report uncomfortable work positions. Many alternatives exist to a standing-only job, and most cost little or nothing to implement. Here are some suggestions:

1. Give the worker a choice. Set up work so that the person can do the job in a variety of positions, including sitting or standing.

2. Provide adjustable work stations. Workspace such as tables that can be elevated for standing and lowered for sitting give workers a break from standing in one position.

3. Give every worker a seat. Even if work cannot be done from a sitting position, a seat should be provided nearby to take the pressure off continual standing.

4. Flexible foot support. Foot rails or foot rests give the worker an opportunity to shift weight from one foot to the other.

5. Educate the worker. Let your workers know the importance of work breaks and changing positions while working as well as the health hazards of too much standing in one position.

Any restructuring of the pattern of work so that individual muscles and joints are not strained to the point of discomfort will lower the risk of painful injuries caused by standing too long at work. Keys, controls, and displays as well as items needed for the job itself need to be placed so that twisting and straining are minimized.

When standing on a concrete floor can’t be avoided, wearing cushioned, well-fitting shoes and placing a rubber mat under the feet can prevent injury.

Workers most likely to suffer injury from too much standing at work include assembly line workers, teachers, library staff, school supervisors, printers, and sales or counter workers.

Brought to you by Griffith Publishing

Note: If you are a health and safety director, manager, or business owner, you have permission to use any HealthWorks blog to promote health and safety among your workers. For consultants or producers of health and safety materials, please call Griffith Publishing at 800 359-9503 to request the use of these copyrighted items.