Survey results indicate upcoming safety professional shortage

Contributed by Star Conrad, Director of Operations, Evergreen Safety Council 
Demand for occupational safety and health services will soon exceed the supply of trained and experienced professionals, according to results from a new NIOSH survey.

The national survey (.pdf file), commissioned by NIOSH in 2008 and performed by an independent firm, found that employers plan to hire at least 25,000 safety and health professionals over the next five years, but less than 13,000 new graduates are expected from academic programs. In addition, NIOSH said many of the projected vacancies likely will be filled by current employees or workers without occupational safety and health training.

The need for more trained professionals is especially great given the pending retirement of older safety professionals and new technologies that require specialized skills and knowledge, NIOSH Director John Howard said in an agency press release.

Other survey results include:

• Degree programs in occupational safety and health have experienced declines in university funding, especially those not funded through NIOSH.

• Employers want new graduates to have training in leadership and communication.

Are you looking to move into a Safety & Health career?  Evergreen Safety Council's Safety & Health Specialist certification series, as well as our more advanced Health & Safety Technician certification series can help.  Call or email Stephanie Dyck 800-521-0778 for more information and to request an information pamphlet today.

Safety & Health Solutions - October edition

Contributed by Star Conrad, Director of Operations, Evergreen Safety Council 
Evergreen Safety Council produces a monthly newsletter covering a variety of safety topics. Each month we will provide a link here to the online PDF.  Check out our new look!

Inside this Issue:
Lead Article – NIOSH: Preventing Work Related Injury
Washington Governor's Industrial Safety & Health Conference at 60
Preventing Eye Injury
Forklift Technology Updates
You can also sign up to receive an electronic copy via email or hard copy via the mail. This link will also take you to a full archive with over four years of past issues.

So pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit back and read all about what's going on in the world of safety & health.

We Need to Change Course

ASSE's President: We Need to Change Course

"For far too long, occupational safety and health has been dominated by a politically charged yes and no conversation about occupational safety and health that, as these statistics demonstrate, is not advancing worker protections," Terrie Norris said in response to the BLS preliminary fatality data from 2010.

August 31, 2011
The preliminary 2010 fatality numbers released Aug. 25 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a call for action and a clear sign that a "new paradigm" is needed to advance U.S. employers' safety, Terrie Norris, president of the American Society of Safety Engineers, said Aug. 30. The BLS report said 4,547 workers died from occupational injuries in 2010 compared with 4,551 in 2009. ASSE extended its condolences to the families of the 4,547 people who died last year.

"ASSE urges everyone concerned with worker safety not to accept as reasonable the preliminary results of this report that show little change in the number of workplace fatalities between 2009 and 2010," said Norris, CSP, ARM, CPSI. "Despite the dedicated efforts of ASSE's members, employers, workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the fact that this nation's fatalities are not significantly decreasing should be a call for action, not complacency, especially at an economically challenging time when some of the most dangerous industries are not at full employment. A statistical plateau of worker fatalities is not an achievement, but evidence that this nation's effort to protect workers is stalled. These statistics call for nothing less than a new paradigm in the way this nation protects workers."

"For far too long, occupational safety and health has been dominated by a politically charged yes and no conversation about occupational safety and health that, as these statistics demonstrate, is not advancing worker protections. This oppositional approach leaves too many of this nation's workplaces mired in efforts that do not achieve better safety but merely meet the most minimal standards for safety. That needs to change. Instead of a tug of war over compliance to prescriptive standards that cannot address each workplace, this nation's approach to workplace safety must encourage a specific dialogue about the most important risks in each workplace that engages employers, workers, and OSHA in a cooperative effort to address those risks, supported not only [by] enforcement but by NIOSH research and education resources."

"ASSE and its members are engaged in helping move this nation towards that goal. ASSE has supported the idea of an OSHA injury and illness prevention program (I2P2) standard with the knowledge that this standard, if done well, can begin to move OSHA's focus from prescriptive approaches to safety to risk-based and more cooperative efforts. We have established a Risk Assessment Task Force of members and others who will work to engage the occupational safety and health community in moving towards more risk-based approaches to managing safety in all workplaces. ASSE's Sustainability Task Force is intent on making sure the quickly growing voluntary fervor among employers to address sustainability encompasses worker safety and health now. Our federal occupational safety and health reform bill seeks to be a platform for compromise and addresses ways the 40-year-old OSH Act fails to advance workplace safety, including helping make the standard-setting process work, allowing the adoption of updated permissible exposure limits, and better defining who is qualified to do safety, among a variety of measures."

"The time has come for all stakeholders in occupational safety and health to come down off the plateau of acceptance and work together to find conciliatory ways that help make sure our economy, our jobs and corporate bottom lines can benefit from a safe and healthy workforce."

Reprinted from Occupational Safety & Health

A little light reading from the CSB and NIOSH

Contributed by Eric Tofte, Director of Training, Evergreen Safety Council

On April 13, 2011 the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has deployed a four-person team to the site of an explosion in a fireworks storage facility near Honolulu, Hawaii. According to media reports, the incident occurred in a bunker used to store confiscated fireworks at Donaldson Enterprises, Inc. on Friday April 8.

We know that every industry has its safety concerns; however the construction industry has many unique concerns. The National Institute of Occupation Safety and Health (NIOSH) has a dedicated page for construction safety. This page has excellent information on construction specific issues.

Law protects Washington state health care workers from hazardous drugs

A new law requires the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries to adopt requirements for handling hazardous drugs (.pdf file) in the health care industry.

Senate Bill 5594, signed into law April 13 by Gov. Chris Gregoire (D), mandates that L&I develop rules consistent with recommendations from NIOSH.

Washington is the first state to require health care employers to take precautions such as proper ventilation or using protective equipment to prevent exposure. Without these measures, workers may be at risk for harmful effects such as cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, and allergic reactions, L&I said in a press release.

In related news, NIOSH, OSHA, and accreditation and certification organization The Joint Commission issued a letter on April 4 to health care employers outlining appropriate precautions to prevent exposure to hazardous drugs.

Source: National Safety Council

A little light reading from OSHA and NIOSH

Contributed by Eric Tofte, Director of Training, Evergreen Safety Council
Did you know that According to OSHA that more than 145,000 people work in over 7,000 warehouses and the fatal injury rate for the warehousing industry is higher than the national average for all industries. OSHA has also developed a pocket guide for warehouse safety.

According to NIOSH workers are at risk of severe injury and death during machine maintenance and servicing if proper lockout and tagout procedures are not followed. NIOSH recommends developing and implementing a hazardous energy control program including lockout and tagout procedures and worker training to prevent such incidents. NIOSH has a LOTO publication for you to review.

Prevention Through Design

Contributed by Eric Tofte, Director of Training, Evergreen Safety Council
On November 18th NIOSH announced its Prevention Through Design: Plan for the National Initiative and stated:

In 2008, among U.S. workers, 5,071 died from occupational injuries, 3.7 million suffered serious injuries, and 187,400 became ill from work-related exposures [BLS 2008]. The estimated annual direct and indirect costs of occupational injury, disease, and death range from $128 billion to $155 billion [Schulte 2005].

While the underlying causes vary, a recent study implicates design in 37% of job-related fatalities [Driscoll et al. 2008]. Thus, to protect lives and livelihoods, stakeholders across all industrial sectors of the economy need a comprehensive approach for addressing worker health and safety issues by eliminating hazards and minimizing risks to workers throughout the life cycle of work premises, tools, equipment, machinery, substances, and work processes, including their construction, manufacture, use, maintenance, and ultimate disposal or re-use.

Safety Training Manages Workplace Risks

Contributed by Eric Tofte, Director of Training, Evergreen Safety Council
Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) training is an important part of managing workplace hazards and risks. Such training may involve instruction on identifying occupational risks and how to control them, learning about safe workplace practices and how to properly use personal protective equipment. The question comes up though – how effective is our training?

Well, thanks to the National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) a document to evaluate the effectiveness of training has been developed earlier this year.

How do your training programs measure up?

Nanotechnology Safety

Contributed by Eric Tofte, Director of Training, Evergreen Safety Council
Well being the safety geek I am, I look at different web site, such as the NIOSH web site. While in my readings I found information on safety dealing with nanotechnology. Nanotechnology—the manipulation of matter on a near-atomic scale to produce new structures, materials, and devices—offers the promise of unprecedented scientific advancement for many sec­tors, such as medicine, consumer products, energy, materials, and manufacturing. Nanotechnology has the power not only to improve existing technologies, but to dramatically enhance the effective­ness of new applications.

According to NIOSH although insufficient information ex­ists to predict the fire and explosion risk associated with powders of nano­materials, nanoscale combustible ma­terial could present a higher risk than coarser material with a similar mass concentration given its increased parti­cle surface area and potentially unique properties due to the nanoscale.

Some nanomaterials may initiate cat­alytic reactions depending on their composition and structure that would not otherwise be anticipated based on their chemical composition

Although this manual has nothing to do with fall protection, confined spaces and the like, I did find it interesting. So if you want more, check out the full document.

Fatality Narratives

The WA Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) Program publishes Fatality Narratives. These narratives are one-page reports that summarize work-related fatal incidents, list some requirements and recommendations that may have prevented the incident from occurring, and give a brief statistical summary. They are currently focusing on construction industry fatalities. These Narratives provide preliminary information about the incident to the interested community, similar to OSHA's Fatal Facts and MSHA's Fatalgrams.

To sign up for FACE construction narratives, NEW FACE agriculture narratives, and investigation reports for this link. We encourage you to explore other material on their website.
The FACE Program is partially funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) (Cooperative Agreement No.: 3 U60 OH008487-02S1) and the Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention (SHARP) Program at the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries. The contents of the Fatality Narratives are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views NIOSH.

We encourage you to use these narratives for formal or informal educational opportunities to help prevent similar incidents.

How is your fall protection program?

Contributed by Eric Tofte, Director of Training, Evergreen Safety Council
With summer here, outside projects become more prevelant once again and working at heights is sometimes part of the job. Working at heights is dangerous, but with the right training and equipment you can work safely from heights. Remember, here in the state of Washington you have to protect employees from falling if they are on a walking/working surface 4 feet or more above the adjacent level. So pay attention and don’t short-cut safety when working at heights.

If you want more information or training, give Evergreen a call. You can also check the NIOSH site on falls.