If you’ve been a safety professional for any amount of time, you could probably write a book based on the excuses you’ve heard regarding why a worker or a company failed to adhere to safety rules and regulations. The excuses range from ignorant to absurd – from entertaining to...

Ladders tend to be one of those tools that get taken for granted because they are used so often in the home.  Therefore, sometimes ladder safety gets as much consideration at work as it does at home, which is to say: zero.  That needs to change.  In a recent CDC article, it was noted...

Some of the safest people on the job do some of the most foolish things at home.  It seems that safety takes on a whole new meaning when you’re at home because, well, nobody is making you pay attention to it.  OSHA has no jurisdiction over what you do in – or on –  your own...

While some rooftops are simple, flat structures, not all of them are, accessing rooftop equipment can be made even more difficult with obstacles. How should you deal with them? How to access them?

Some say the concept of multi-tasking is an illusion – that our brains are not actually capable of doing two things at the same time.  Even the things we refer to as multi-tasking (i.e. – answering an email while writing a report and participating in a conference call) are actually short...

You’ve done an analysis of the hazards in your work area - whether it be a construction site, a warehouse, or a manufacturing floor, and you’ve determined that the best solution for one or more of your hazards is a work platform.  It may seem like your decision-making ends there, but...

If you are a construction company and work in confined spaces, odds are you’ve been following the General Industry rule as a best practice.  Up until this point, the only construction requirement for confined spaces has been that the involved employees needed to be trained. ...

The headline out of Jacksonville, FL reads, “OSHA: Roofing worker’s death ‘preventable’”.  As an EHS professional, I feel like I should be able to come up with a better retort then, “Well, duh,” but it seems to be awfully appropriate here.  Preventable incidents – preventable deaths –...

As safety professionals, our focus needs to be on prevention: proactivity keeps workers from being hurt in the first place.  In recent years, with incentive programs under fire, there has been a push for companies to focus on leading indicators (such as safety meetings attended, near misses...

For many years now, falls have been the leading cause of death on construction sites.  From small residential projects to large commercial structures, people continue to add to the fatal fall statistic – regardless of the focus placed on this epidemic.  Sometimes this is the result of a...

Fear of falling is natural.  Once believed to occur only as a result of a traumatic experience, it has more recently become considered a condition you are born with.  Most people fear falling because – well – gravity.  We can’t fly.  We don’t bounce.  We fall, we land – sometimes...

Homeowners and building managers cannot be expected to be experts in every area of maintenance and repairs that need to be performed on their building.  Day in and day out, contractors around the country are hired to perform such work because they are the experts.  Some of this work takes...

Fall hazards are abundant and varied, making them difficult to protect against.  Every single situation is different and employers need to work with employees to ensure that the correct solution is in place.  The solutions may be easy or they may be complex but, either way, we have the...

I’ve been in many warehouses.  Many, many warehouses.  The difference in safety culture from one to the next is as varied as the products they store.  Some are in pristine, new buildings with clear lines painted on the floor, have only safe, certified forklift operators driving the...

Things go wrong.  Equipment fails.  Accidents happen.  When discussing the inevitability of injuries in the workplace, these are reasons you will hear to argue against the belief that all incidents are preventable.  While a manufacturing defect could occur without forewarning, the vast...

Industrial Ergonomics: What Is It and Why Should I Be Concerned?

Ergonomics is defined as “the study of people’s efficiency in their working environment.” Yet in the world of health and safety, it tends to denote fitting a job or a task to a person. This is done for many reasons:...

Back when I began in the field of safety, self-retracting lifelines (SRLs) were frowned upon by workers, not because the function wasn’t preferable, but because they were big, bulky, and very heavy.  Over time, things have changed.  Technology has improved.  And while the cumbersome...

When the conversation turns to fall protection, railings, skylight screens, horizontal lifelines, and mobile anchor points are often discussed , but what about vertical lifelines?  We tend to not hear as much about this solution, yet there are many situations in which a vertical lifeline...

Inspections are required of every piece of equipment, but often overlooked in the rush to get to work.  If your personnel are not properly trained and monitored, there is no telling what condition the equipment making it out in to the field is in.  Many incidents involving equipment failure...

Personal fall arrest systems are often thought to have three parts: a harness, a lanyard, and an anchor point.  In reality, there is a 4th part – one that isn’t always utilized, but is always necessary – a fall rescue plan.  When dealing with fall prevention, this isn’t...

People tend to interpret regulations and laws in whatever way suits them best.  Speed limits, for instance, are treated as a bare minimum while safety regulations are treated like a goal to attain – a maximum level of performance.  In both cases, the opposite is actually true.  Speed...

We spend a good deal of time discussing equipment in this blog, from fall protection to work platforms to scaffolding and lifts. Notice, however, the title of this blog post - specifically the word “habits”. In the end, it’s often our behavior at work that contributes to incidents,...

There are obviously times when somebody will need to access the roof of your building or facility, whether it’s maintenance workers, contractors, or inspectors.  As we’ve discussed, roofs are inherently dangerous, so we develop policies to direct the behaviors of our employees and...

Because stepladders are such a common tool, even in the home, it is often taken for granted that employees know how to properly use them.  This is a dangerous assumption.  Most people don’t thoroughly inspect their ladders at home and many wouldn’t know what to look for if they did.  Many...