Safe Workplace and Safety News

SafetySkills™ Direct makes six of their training courses available free to groups of 100 or fewer employees. It is called the Basic Safety Awareness Series. It consists of six environmental health and safety courses. Safety Skills Direct states that they make these courses available for free to help small businesses protect their employees from common workplace injuries.

The free courses include:

Basic Fire Safety
Basic Electrical Safety
Intro to HAZCOM
Flu Symptoms and Prevention Strategies
Flammable and Combustible Liquids
Material Handling
Walking and Working Surfaces

“We’re in the business of protecting employees. If we can help prevent an injury, and help small businesses stay in compliance with OSHA – we’ve done our job. But we hope that you will love our free courses so much that the next time you need training you’ll immediately think of SafetySkills,” said Trey Greene, President and CEO of noodleStream.com.

Courses have various lengths and include quizzes throughout the course material. An incorrect answer on a quiz triggers a review of the related material and a repeat of the quiz question. After successful completion of a course participants can print a personalized certificate.

SafetySkills™ Direct is for small businesses with 100 or fewer employees to train. For larger companies, SafetySkills™ Enterprise has advanced reporting features and also allows for course customization. For more information and to see demo courses visit the Safety Skills web site at: http://www.safetyskills.com.

Previous Related Posts
Free Online Safety Training
OSHA Academy - Free Online Safety Training
Material Handling Safety Training

Labels: HSE, Industrial Health, Safety Training

The nation’s first standard to protect workers from the spread of airborne diseases was approved Monday by California’s Office of Administrative Law and filed with the Secretary of State. It is known as the Aerosol Transmissible Disease (ATD) standard. It is designed to protect workers in healthcare and related industries from the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis, measles, influenza, and other pathogens spread by coughing and sneezing. The standard becomes effective on August 5.

“This first in the nation standard is a milestone in workplace safety,” said Department of Industrial Relations Director John C. Duncan. “It is designed to protect employees who are likely to come in contact with transmittable diseases which is especially significant due to recent events such as the H1N1 swine flu outbreak. I applaud the efforts of our Cal/OSHA program for once again being on the leading edge of worker safety.”

The new ATD standard will be added to the California Code of Regulations as Title 8, section 5199, and will cover health care and related workplaces that typically treat, diagnose, or house individuals who may be ill such as hospitals, clinics, nursing care facilities, correctional facilities, and homeless shelters. It will also cover emergency responders, who often are the first point of contact of the health care system with patients who can transmit disease.

Designed to protect workers with duties that increase their risk of exposure to infectious diseases, the ATD standard requires health care employees and others at increased risk to develop exposure control procedures and train employees to follow them. Employees must be made part of the process by involving them in the periodic review and assessment of these procedures. Basic exposure precautions such as source control, hand hygiene, and cleaning and decontamination procedures are a fundamental part of the standard.

Currently there are no specific requirements outlining the responsibilities for employers to address aerosol transmissible diseases as a workplace safety hazard for their employees.

“The ATD standard provides guidance on how to protect employees from exposure to diseases that are well known, like TB, and those that are novel, like what we have just experienced with the recent appearance of H1N1 flu,” said Cal/OSHA Chief Len Welsh. “This standard provides a set of safety practices and precautions tailored to the level of healthcare-related service provided by the employers covered, so they can respond in an organized and intelligent fashion to situations ranging from day-to-day management of a potentially infectious patient to emergency surges that may be brought on by a pandemic. The standard is designed not only to protect healthcare workers, but the functionality of the healthcare system itself, since the system cannot run without them. ”

Also accompanying the ATD standard is the Zoonotic Disease standard, which addresses employees working around animals where many infectious diseases originate. The standard requires employers to control workplace exposures to infectious diseases in animals such as Hantavirus, monkey pox, anthrax, avian influenza, and bovine tuberculosis.

For more information about the ATD and Zoonotic Disease standard visit or web site at www.dir.ca.gov/DOSH.

Labels: hospital safety, HSE, Industrial Health

The director of Wrexham Roof Services Ltd was found guilty of manslaughter following the death of an employee who fell through a skylight. He served 2-1/2 years in prison.

The following is a press release from the United Kingdom's Health and Safety Executive (HSE). HSE is the part of the United Kingdom government that is responsible for the regulation of risks to occupational health and safety in the UK.

Under UK law, in addition to fines similar to those levied by OSHA, the responsible parties for a death resulting from a workplace accident may be charged with manslaughter.

Here is the HSE press release:

The Health and Safety Executive is warning companies whose business involves working at height to ensure they provide suitable safety equipment and have appropriate procedures in place before allowing their staff to work in potentially dangerous situations.

It follows the prosecution of a North Wales roofing contractor in relation to an incident where one of his employees sustained serious injuries, and later died, after a 25ft fall through a skylight on the roof of the Comet store in Wrexham.

Paul Christopher Alker, 33, required surgery for a broken collar bone after the fall, just days after starting work with Wrexham Roof Services Ltd. He died shortly after his operation.

In a prosecution brought by the Crown Prosecution Service, Steven Christopher Smith, director of Wrexham Roof Services Ltd, Rhostyllen, Wrexham, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, a charge under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and a further charge of committing acts intending to pervert the course of justice. Smith was jailed for a total of two and a half years following a hearing at Mold Crown Court.

HSE assisted North Wales Police on the investigation into the incident, and HSE inspector Debbie John said it was not acceptable for employers to cut corners.

"Mr Smith clearly knew that he should have provided safety harnesses for people working on roofs, but chose only to do this after the incident which led to the death of Mr Alker."

Figures show that in 2006/07, 45 people have died and more than 3000 suffered a serious injury after a fall from height in the workplace. It remains the most common cause of fatal injury in the workplace, but the risk does not just apply to those working at great height. Many fatal and serious injuries are caused by people falling from below head height too.

"Health and Safety rules are not there to inconvenience employers or to wrap employees or others in cotton wool – they are in place to ensure incidents like this are prevented, and the risk of this incident happening would have been significantly reduced had appropriate safety equipment been provided."

Labels: HSE, workplace safety