A flash fire broke out at 626 Lynnway on Monday morning after a worker with a private demo company cut a pipe, according to the Fire Department’s Public Information Officer. The worker was transferred to a Hospital with “minor burns.” The worker is expected to make a full recovery. The worker was carried out of […]
A bloody episode in a long war introduces the idea that defenses designed to protect against one kind of hazard can render their users prey to other kinds of danger, usually not foreseen by those who created them or even appreciated by those who use them. In short, defenses can be dangerous. This is no
This week, I shared some pictures of a setup I encountered last year in an audit I conducted at a manufacturing facility. This sole department was using metal trash cans as ” safety cans,” while the rest of the facility was using FM/UL “approved safety cans” for their “dirty rags” storage. The sight of this
Most everyone has seen the failures within Boeing, both in its commercial aviation division and now its space flight division. I’m guessing this latest story should not be a surprise, seeing the depth of the issues in their commercial aviation division. But this is NOT about Boeing, as there are hundreds, if not tens of
A Proposed Rule by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on 08/30/2024 OSHA is proposing to issue a new standard, titled “Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings”. The standard would apply to all employers conducting outdoor and indoor work in all general industry, construction, maritime, and agriculture sectors where OSHA
A contract worker died and two others were injured in an ammonia gas leak at a chemical factory. The three (3) contract workers, 24, 37, 24, were working at a chemical factory which was producing soda ash and other products. When they were trying to check an ammonia leak from a pipe around 3.15 p.m.,
In 2015 and 2022, I mentioned that the EPA proposed updating 68.85 by requiring Hot Work permits to be retained for five (5) years, where that frequency came from, and why they wanted to update the standard. Members can read… EPA proposing a retention period for Hot Work Permits and How long do you keep
One of the quandaries I find with the “Safe HW Area” approach is those areas that are actually set up as weld shops with all the bells and whistles we want in welding shops, such as ventilation to control exposures resulting from welding, cutting, and grinding. For example… 1910.252(a)(2)(viii) Ducts, requires that any ducts and/or
The Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry’s (DLI’s) Minnesota OSHA (MNOSHA) Compliance has issued a $621,600 penalty to a trucking company primarily for lack of confined-space safety requirements at its facility in Virginia, Minnesota, following a worker fatality in a tanker in March 2024. In July 2024, MNOSHA Compliance issued 10 serious citations for violations
In 2017, FRA published a report on safety culture sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Safety Council. The report states that when safety culture is strong, there are less frequent and less severe accidents. DOT defines safety culture as the shared values, actions, and behaviors that demonstrate a commitment to safety over competing
The critical issue is that a proposed change’s direct and indirect effects on the control of hazards should be identified and assessed. Due to the greater potential consequences of an accident, major accident hazard sites should aim for greater reliability in their planning and decision-making. Avoid too many simultaneous changes, which may result in inadequate
The FMCSA has begun Phase III of a project to refine the non-destructive metallurgical testing method and protocol for detecting cracks in nurse tanks and to determine possible relationships to causal factors not previously considered in detail. Background:
