The days are growing shorter. The wind is picking up, bringing with it crisp fall air, turkey and holiday joy.With this seasonal change comes my favorite time of year: flu season. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that December, January and February are peak months for influenza activity. Combine that with family parties and holiday get-togethers, and we have a recipe for widespread sickness. Hence, this yearly reminder to be prepared in the workplace and to stay home if you are experiencing symptoms.Flu’s direct cost to businesses is $7 billion in sick days and lost productivity with an estimated 17 million workdays lost, the CDC estimates. A National Health Interview Survey found the flu contributes to 200 million days of lost productivity and 75 million days of missed work.Research shows the virus responsible for stomach flu can live on certain surfaces for weeks. Some ways to contract it include:• Eating food or drinking liquids that are contaminated.• Touching surfaces or objects and then putting your hand or fingers in your mouth.• Direct contact with a person who is infected.While many of these recommendations stem from households with children, these same things translate to the workplace as well. Employees often come in to work sick, allowing the flu and other illnesses to spread. New research released by Accountemps confirms this fact.The global staffing firm surveyed working professionals, 90% of whom admitted they have come into the office with cold or flu symptoms. “Whether it’s due to large workloads, pressure from the boss or because they can’t afford to take time off, it’s all too common for employees to come to the office feeling sick when they really should be resting,” says Michael Steinitz, Accountemps’ senior executive director. “Staying home when you’ve got a cold or the flu is the best way to avoid spreading germs to others and fight the illness faster.” With that said, here are 10 tips from the CDC about how you can keep a healthy, productive workplace over the course of the winter months. 1. Get a seasonal flu vaccine.2. Host a flu vaccine clinic at the workplace.3. Review sick leave policies that encourage sick workers to stay at home without fear of any reprisals.4. Recommend workers stay home if they are sick until at least 24 hours after their fever is gone. Persons with the flu are most contagious during the first 3 days of their illness, according to the CDC.5. Send home workers who exhibit symptoms upon reporting to work or become sick during the day.6. Develop work-from-home policies if possible, including those workers who need to stay home for sick family members.7. Provide tissues, no-touch trash cans, hand soap, sanitizer, wipes and disinfecting cleaner for employees’ workstations, doorknobs, etc.8. Remind employees to cover coughs and sneezes with tissues and provide easy access to trash cans. 9. Remind workers to wash their hands and provide easy access to water, soap and alcohol-based rubs.10. Provide resources for employees who may be at higher risk for flu complications such as pregnant women or adults with a chronic medical condition such as asthma, heart disease, or diabetes. Individuals at high risk for flu complications should seek medical attention right away if they do become sick with flu, the CDC states.Lastly, one of the best things a leader can do is live by example. Managers and safety professionals should adhere to the same recommendations they provide and work from home or take a sick day if they are under the weather. This is a no-brainer. So, don’t make yourself sick by not being prepared. Let's block ads! (Why?)
View the latest products from EHS Today's October 2019 issue.
EHS Today's print edition highlights the latest personal protective equipment, software and safety products ranging from footwear to training.
Our October 2019 issue features innovations from 3M, Rite-Hite, KEEN Safety, Apex Tool Group, Sandvik Mining and Technology, SW Safety Solutions and Nightstick.
To view product descriptions and photos, use the arrows to move back and forth through the slideshow.
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Highway crash fatalities have decreased for the second year in a row, according to a new report from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The 2.4% decline in overall traffic deaths, compiled from 2018 National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) data, comes following the NTSB's focus on safety under the leadership of Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao.
“This is encouraging news, but still far too many perished or were injured, and nearly all crashes are preventable, so much more work remains to be done to make America’s roads safer for everyone,” U.S. Chao said in a media statement.
According to the NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, fatalities dropped in 2018 to 36,560 people from 37,473 in 2017.
The fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled also decreased by 3.4% (from 1.17 in 2017 to 1.13 in 2018), the lowest fatality rate since 2014.
NHTSA Acting Administrator James Owens credits the decline to public outreach campaigns and enhanced safety technology features in newer model vehicles.
“New vehicles are safer than older ones and when crashes occur, more new vehicles are equipped with advanced technologies that prevent or reduce the severity of crashes,” he said. “NHTSA has spent recent years partnering with state and local governments and safety advocates to urge the public to never drive impaired or distracted, to avoid excessive speed, and to always buckle up.”
In addition, fatalities among children (14 and younger) declined 10.3% along with alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities falling 3.6%. Speed-related deaths decreased 5.7% and motorcycle fatalities dropped 4.7%.
Initial data from the first half of 2019 show the overall positive trend continuing. NHTSA's estimated number of fatalities for the first half of 2019 show a 3.4% decrease compared to the same period in 2018, the lowest first-half numbers since 2015.
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On May 4, 2016 at 6:30 a.m. Justus Booze left his home. He never returned.
The 23-year-old started his first day for Countryside Tree Service at a job site in Guilderland, N.Y. Booze was hired for the job after a friend discussed it with him, according to media reports.
He had not been trained to safely use the company's wood chipper. However, he was directed to feed materials into the machine. Booze became entangled in the chipper's moving parts and was fatally injured. OSHA immediately opened an investigation into the incident.
"A young man's life ended tragically and needlessly," said Robert Garvey, OSHA's Albany, N.Y. area director said in a Nov. 4, 2016 statement. "Countryside Tree Service bears responsibility to ensure that all phases of tree trimming, tree felling and tree removal work is performed safely. Putting employees to work with potentially dangerous machines with no safety training is unacceptable. Tree service companies must train workers - climbers, trimmers and ground crew - properly. These workers must also be instructed in safe work practices and use of equipment including chain saws, cutters and especially hand-fed wood chippers that cut and grind branches and logs into pulp."
The agency cited Tony Watson, Countryside Tree Service owner, for five willful and serious citations. The agency discovered the employer did not ensure workers used safe operating procedures when feeding materials into the chipper, exposing them to deadly hazards.
Investigators found Watson willfully exposed his workers to laceration and amputation hazards while operating chain saws during tree removal at three separate locations.
There was no evidence that workers were trained to use personal protective equipment. Employees were observed not wearing leg protection while performing tree removal. Watson willfully exposed workers to eye hazards including wood dust, flying wood pieces, and being struck by branches during tree trimming and feeding wood into a chipper. In addition, employees were not required to wear protective helmets in areas where the potential exists for head injuries from falling objects.
Watson contested the initial allegations to the independent Occupational Health and Safety Review Commission in October 2017.
In a filing dated Sept. 16, 2019, a Administrative Law Judge William S. Coleman affirmed the initial citations and ordered Watson to pay $66,986 in penalties.
According to the decision, Watson told OSHA officials that he knew the victim was "green" and "never had any experience in doing tree work." He continually acknowledged Booze's inexperience, stating that it has been his "concern all day long" and that the victim was hired to "basically rake" and to be "a helper and cleaner."
On the day of the incident, Watson along with four additional employees were spread across three different family residences. He did not delegate any supervisory responsibilities to his two experienced workers, relying on assumption that "both implicitly understood that Watson relied on them to maintain proper work procedures with respect to the two inexperienced workers."
Following Booze's death, Watson made several false statements to police. According to the decision, he told the police that “all day long [Booze] was cleaning up branches and raking up debris” and “was not supposed to be putting things in the chipper,” when he had in fact observed the victim feeding the machine.
"When in truth the decedent had fed the chipper with Watson’s express permission, evinces a consciousness of wrongdoing with regard to having given an inadequately trained employee with no prior experience the permission to operate lethal equipment," Coleman wrote in his decision. "Corroborative of this conclusion is Watson’s testimony that allowing new workers to “run” the chipper was not his “normal procedure on a new guy working with us.”
Booze's friends commented on a GoFundMe that was created to assist his fiance, Kristin Schutta, with funeral and living expenses, "A young man so full of laughter and joy had suddenly passed away. Justus was a ray of sunshine and always did whatever he could to help anyone who needed it. His passing has left us all deeply shocked and saddened."
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Even though Type 2 workplace violence incidents are most pervasive in the healthcare industry, restaurant workers particularly are suspectible to becoming victims through their direct interactions with customers.
Security camera captures a Type 2 workplace violence incident in which a disgruntled diner at The Cuban Cafe, Madison, Ala. restaurant, inappropriately grabs a server's arm and tries to forcefully jam the worker's hand onto the customer's plate.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) classifies workplace violence into four categories. Type 2 occurs when the perpetrator is a customer or client of the establishment, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
The Cuban Cafe's owners pulled the video following the incident and posted it on social media with the response:
"To the man in this video that had the audacity to demean and belittle one of our servers in this manner....you are no longer welcome at The Cuban Cafe!!!! To think that it’s OK to grab a person’s hand and try to force it into your plate and your wife’s plate simply because you did not receive your silverware quick enough is unacceptable. Who do you think you are telling him where to stand and demanding that he stand up straight while he is leaned over trying to hear what you were saying? Rest assured that if one of the owners were there tonight, you would not have been able to finish your meal and would have immediately been asked to leave. And if someone knows this man please pass along this message that he is no longer welcome in this establishment."
Information and resources to protect your workers against workplace violence are available through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
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Plan for trick-or-treating accordingly so this holiday doesn't have a scary ending.
As the days become shorter and Halloween approaches, the National Safety Council (NSC) is cautioning parents to be prepared for hazards that come with falling leaves.
Children are more than twice as likely to be hit by a car and die on this particular celebration full of treats and laughter, according to the organization.
With the proper personal protective equipment and prevention efforts, each child can have a happy and safe holiday.
View the slideshow to see additional tips for a spooktacular Halloween.
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A petroleum refiner and industrial contractor are facing $106,080 in OSHA fines after failing to secure a permit-required confined space.
As a result not securing the area, a worker asphyxiated when he lost air supply while performing his duties.
"Employers should never allow workers to enter a space without properly evaluating the hazards and following required safety standards associated with entry,” said Ramona Morris, OSHA's Birmingham, Ala. area director.
Turner Specialty Services, the industrial contractor, did not ensure employees outside of the confined space were capable of rescue efforts at the refining facility in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The contractor also was cited for allowing a worker to enter the area with insufficient lighting equipment as well as assigning members of the rescue team to other tasks, preventing them from responding to an emergency situation.
Petroleum refiner Hunt Refining Co. did not identify all hazards of the confined space nor did the company documents all of the steps required to make sure employees were safe while performing work in confined spaces. Hunt also failing to ensure, through periodic evaluations, that Turner Specialty Services fulfilled their obligations as specified in the Process Safety Management standard, according to OSHA.
The agency cited the two companies for a total of $106,080 in proposed fines. Turner and Hunt have 15 business days to respond to the citations and proposed penalties, either through compliance, an informal conference with Morris, or through contesting the findings with the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
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Over the past decade, there’s no doubt that automation and technology have significantly changed roles in manufacturing.
Luckily, the youngest segment to the American workforce, Generation Z, grew up immersed in technology since birth, unlike their Millennial counterparts who had to learn as new devices and the Internet revolutionized the way the world operates.
With baby boomers retiring at a rate of 10,000 per day, according to American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the need to attract newer, younger workers and effectively train them is crucial to the global economy.
“The silver tsunami that is occurring where we have a significant amount of the current workforce retiring is increasing that void,” says Keith Barr, CEO of Leading2Lean, a manufacturing operations management platform. “It’s already starting to occur, but it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. So, we know we need to have a way of attracting the next generation workforce.”In an interview with EHS Today, Barr provides insight into the mindset of upcoming Generation Z’s perceptions of the manufacturing industry and how to nurture new talent.
What can be said about using software to train and develop Generation Z?
Keith Barr: I think there’s two things. One is the complexity of the manufacturing environment is as challenging as anything you’ll find in technology. I think that’s an interesting challenge for the workforce. The workforce that we’re trying to recruit here is armed very differently and has a very different level of competence or capability as it relates to using technology in their lives—through social media and the way they communicate. I think what motivates a Gen Z employee is having access to all of that information because they’re used to that.
They want to have the ability to collaborate with coworkers on an unprecedented scale, and they also want to solve big problems and we have to change the work environment on the shop floor to really empower them to do just that because that’s also exactly what manufacturing needs to innovate and to solve problems to drive improvement.
What can be said about the recruiting process to get new talent into the workforce?
Barr: I think that’s a tough one. Baby boomers—and I’m a baby boomer—benefited from things as a result of the economic challenges that our mothers and fathers had to face coming out of the Depression and coming out of wars. That influenced the way we were raised and what motivated us. That changed a lot because that empowerment that we felt and in our ability to live —the American dream about owning your own home and having a successful career and being able to leverage our capital system – those things that motivated us probably helped set the stage for the Millennials a little bit.I have both Millennials and Gen Z as children. I can tell you they’re very different because the technology that started to come was probably a little bit late for Millennials, but it has very much enabled and empowered Gen Z on a huge scale because now we have smartphones with applications and the ability to collaborate and communicate in a lot of different ways. It’s just the way of life. I’ll be talking to my son and he might be texting with one hand and talking to me in a conversation because that’s just how adept they are.
What can leaders do to foster a transparent and open learning environment?
Barr: You have to open up the information. Manufacturers are driven very much by data. It’s just the data is a little bit too siloed and, in some cases, very closed and very limited access. I think you have to change that.
Everything has got to be visible and everything’s got to be transparent and we’ve got to give the workforce access to the information that’s going to help them in the task, to empower them in a task. It’s much different than enterprise software today. Enterprise software historically has been a way of managing or defining a process to provide information for decision support for leadership. That has to flip. We have to empower the decision-making capability and the person down at the work level and in the task by arming them with all that information and the trends and the kinds of things that correlate to the task that they’re working; so, they’re empowered to solve problems and drive to innovation.
It’s just now I think the workforce demands or expects that, and that’s something I think leadership definitely can do by changing the focus on their enterprise systems to focus on the employee and what that employee needs in that task as opposed to what they need as a decision support system.
How else can employers best take advantage of Gen Z’s unique skills?
Barr: People don’t understand what gamification really is. It’s not about playing games; it’s about inspiring people to engage and providing some method of personal reward. I think information systems, or the software that we use in any business, not just manufacturing, but any business is going to have to change to where those are part and parcel in the way that the application works. It has to have personal value to that individual in order for them to feel like it’s worth being there. It’s a large part of the way they communicate and how they influence others as well. I think it’s very connected. If we don’t change that, I think not just manufacturing, but all segments of the industry that have employees are going to suffer because they have to facilitate those things. That is the way people think and act and move these days. So, it’s an exciting time for sure.
And those things are becoming known enough to where people realize the value that they can contribute to their own businesses if they employ them.
Where do you see manufacturing going in the next five years with the skills gap and the rate of boomers retiring in relation to innovation?
Barr: Well, I think it’s a challenge, right? I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know that we’ll be able to cover all the jobs that we need, but it’ll be a definite challenge over the next five years. Automation is filling part of the role for some of the jobs that are the retiring workforce. The reality is the jobs that a lot of the workforce are doing today, the next generation workforce won’t do. They will be replaced by automation and an empowered worker that has more access to information and the ability to control equipment and things like that more electronically.
Those investments are being made now, and we’ll see a very different work environment on the shop floor. It’ll continue to evolve as the retiring workforce exits, and systems are put in place to replace that. But it’s going to be a real challenge to see how we cover it since we all depend on everything manufactured. Everything we touch, consume or use in any way is manufactured.
We have to have the processes and people there, and we have to have the innovation and problem-solving in manufacturing if we’re going to remain competitive globally as a country as well.
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Discount retailer Dollar Tree Stores Inc. is once again under OSHA scrunity for obstructing exit routes and electrical panels.
The company's Elmira, N.Y. store was recently the subject of an agency inspection which uncovered multiple health and safety violations.
“Employers have a duty to protect workers from unsafe conditions at stores nationwide,” said Jeffrey Prebish, OSHA's Syracuse area director. “Improper storage of merchandise can result in employees being struck by falling inventory, while blocked exit routes can impede swift exit in an emergency.”
OSHA inspectors discovered unsafe storage of materials, boxes and equipment blocking an exit route in a storage room, unsecured boxes stacked to the ceiling, and piles of equipment and boxes blocking access to a circuit breaker.
Three repeat violations were given to the Cheaspeake, Va., which proposed penalties totaling $208,368. Similar violations were found at locations in Bronx, Amityville, Lindenhurst, and Yonkers, New York, in 2014 and 2015. Recently, OSHA cited the retailer for violations at four stores in Idaho.
In 2015, the retailer reached a corporate-wide settlement agreement to the tune of $825,000 as a result of 13 different inspections. In that case, the company promised it would implement safeguards to protect workers at Dollar Tree stores nationwide from hazards related to blocked emergency exits, obstructed access to exit routes and electrical equipment and improper material storage
The company has 15 business days from receipt of the citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA’s area director, or to contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
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An recent uptick in trenching and excavation deaths has caused OSHA to address the issue as one of its priority goals.
In October 2018, the agency updated its National Emphasis Program (NEP) on preventing collapses.
“The single most important measure for preventing cave-ins when working in trenches is designating a competent person and making sure that person is adequately trained,” said Joe Wise, regional customer training manager at United Rentals.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)'s set of recommendations details engineering controls, protective equipment and safe work practices employers and safety professionals can implement to minimize trenching hazards for workers.
This infographic from United Rentals explains the basic requirements of trench safety.
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