It’s true that the more often a piece of information is repeated, the more likely a person is to remember it. Take the number 3349.

3349 does not seem significant. In fact, it is hard to connect 3349 to anything. A person would be hard-pressed to even come up with a correlation to 3349.

But 3349 is important. Why is 3349 so important? Because 3349 is the booth number for New Pig at the National Safety Council’s 2011 Congress and Expo in Philadelphia, PA from October 31 to Nov. 2.

So stop by booth 3349 to meet the New Pig team who will be sharing great innovative solutions to keep your workplace safe, clean and productive.

You can even get your first look at PIG® Grippy® Mat– the revolutionary absorbent mat that stays put no matter what™.

Hope to see you there (at booth #3349, of course)

Safety signs and symbols help communicate hazards.   Recently,  the ANSI Z535 standards for signage in industrial and consumer products, workplaces and public spaces were updated.

Thess standards allow everyone from ink manufacturers to sign makers to use one set of “rules” for the design, application, and use of safety signs, labels, tags, tapes, colors, and symbols.

The standards in the Z535 Series include:

ANSI Z535.1-2011 – Safety Colors

• Provides color standards and tolerances as well as technical definitions

ANSI Z535.2-2011 Environmental and facility safety signs

• Describes the five types of safety signs used in facilities and outlines their use for consistent reinforcement and prevention of injury

ANSI Z535.3-2011 Criteria for safety symbols

• Lists criteria for use of safety symbols to identify specific hazards and help perople avoid injury.

ANSI Z535.4-2011 Product safety signs and labels

• Sets design criteria for use of safety signs on products

ANSI Z535.5-2011 Safety tags and barricade tapes (for temporary hazards)

• Provides design, application and use criteria for barricade tape, tags and other means of identifying temporary hazards.

ANSI Z535.6-2011 Product safety information in product manuals, instructions, and other collateral materials

• Provides information for providing clear, effective safety instructions such as owner’s manuals, assembly instructions, user guides and maintenance instructions

ANSI Z353-2011 Safety color chart

• Lists  ink specifications for the Z535 safety colors.

The standards can be purchased as a set or individually on ANSI’s website   http://www.ansi.org

To help you comply with these standards, we stock a wide variety of safety signs, tags, barricade tape and other products to help you comply.   We can even custom-design signs to meet your specific needs.

When I was in college, I was given a wonderful opportunity to follow a group of ROTC cadets for a month as part of a feature article for a local newspaper.

It was a fantastic experience.  I got to meet some really amazing people, tour parts of the Pentagon that most civilians don’t get to see, stay in an army barracks, and really gain a deeper understanding of the level of commitment and dedication that our armed forces has.

So what does this have to do with fall prevention?

One crisp Saturday morning, these cadets boarded a bus to go practice their repelling skills.    After a lunch of MRE’s, (I got lucky and didn’t pull the chipped beef one) we all donned harnesses and checked our ropes as the instructor reviewed safety protocols.  

One part of his instruction has stuck with me to this day: “You can die from a five foot fall or a 50 foot fall.  The only difference is the time it takes to hit the ground.”

Although the likelihood of dying from a five foot fall is smaller than from the 50 foot fall, his point is still valid:  the potential exists.  And, in the workplace, OSHA requires employers to evaluate hazards and create plans to eliminate them.    OSHA is currently working on a general industry standard for fall protection.  The construction standard for fall safety is 29 CFR 1926, Subpart M.

If there is a potential for a “drop” of more than four feet, employers need to provide some kind of fall protection for their employees.    For anyone just getting started on a plan, OSHA  has a dedicated webpage with additional guidance.  http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/fallprotection/index.html

Fall protection harnesses and lanyards may be part of the plan.    Safety rails and ladder safety gates may also play a role.  Even the simplest of plans has the potential to  help someone avoid one of the more than 800 fatal falls that occur in industry each year.

Our nation recently marked the centennial of the tragic Triangle Waist Factory Fire that claimed the lives of 146 workers on March 25, 1911. Many of the victims, ranging in age from 14 to 48, were killed by the smoke and flames. Others jumped from the building to avoid being consumed by the fire.

Fortunately, this incident and others like it called many to action, and drew attention to the need to protect America’s workers. The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) was formed on October 14, 1911 as a result of the incident. A handful of unions also used this tragedy to garner support for their organizations and push their plight for better working conditions.

Fire companies started looking at fire prevention opportunities in addition to fire fighting strategies. Building codes were revised, and new ones were developed. To this day, this tragedy is still studied by the fire service community and hard lessons are still learned from it.

In 1970, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created. With the newly created safety regulations came the tooth to enforce them. As we look at workplace safety conditions now that are world apart from the pictures painted 100 years ago, members of the safety community know that there is always room for improvement.

Violations to the hazard communication standard are always in “OSHA’s Top Five.”

Slips, trips and falls are still the number one cause of injury and lost work time.

Exit routes are still deemed to be insufficient or unsuitable.

The difference now is that we have the tools and the knowledge to make workplaces safer. We also have the tragedies of the past as vivid reminders of what can happen when we take shortcuts or ignore these duties.

Need help selecting safety products?    Give us a call.   Helping you keep your workplace cleaner and safer is our top priority.

For the first time ever, OSHA has made available to the public a decade’s worth of injury and ilness data. A searchable online database of 80,000 employers from the years 1996 to 2007 is now available.

“Making injury and illness information available to the public is part of OSHA’s response to the administration’s commitment to make government more transparent to the American people,” said David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for OSHA.

OSHA also uses the data to target inspections. The Site Specific Targeting Program helps the agency focus its efforts on the appropriate area and industries.

Sometimes, in safety, people assume. Those assumptions can lead to some very nasty incidents. When it comes to machine guarding, assumptions can be deadly. Don’t let these common mistakes hurt you or anyone at your company:

Mistake #1— People assume that machines are safe when they purchase them.

This is a common misconception that ends up hurting people. Machine manufacturers are not responsible for guarding the machines they create. The consumer who purchases the item must evaluate the machine to ensure that all areas are properly guarded.

A simple, but effective tool is a machine guarding checklist that is used to inspect each piece of equipment in your facility. Use this OSHA resource to create a machine guarding checklist for your facility.

Mistake #2— People assume everyone understands machine guarding.

The idea of safety being common sense is rampant… and wrong. Safety is learned and, if safety is learned, we must educate.

Although many guards are created to prevent any contact with dangerous moving parts, it can still happen if an employee does not understand the equipment. Machine operators must be trained annually on machine guarding and the dangers they face.

OSHA states in their Machine Guarding E-Tool that we should train on the following:

1. a description and identification of the hazards associated with particular machines;
2. the safeguards themselves, how they provide protection, and the hazards for which they are intended;
3. how to use the safeguards and why;
4. how and under what circumstances safeguards can be removed, and by whom (in most cases, repair or maintenance personnel only); and
5. when a lockout/tagout program is required.
6. what to do (e.g., contact the supervisor) if a safeguard is damaged, missing, or unable to provide adequate protection.

Mistake #3— People assume machine guarding is good enough for lockout/tagout.

One type of guard is an interlock, a device which shuts down a piece of equipment when a specific piece of the machinery is moved or opened. This is a great way to guard machinery to prevent injuries.

It is not, however, acceptable for locking or tagging out a piece of equipment. Although the machine has been deactivated, it is not locked out. The threat of restart is still there with interlocks. Always use a full lockout/tagout program when working on equipment. Never rely on machine guarding to protect you.

Remember, machine guarding is extremely important. You could save your employees from losing time at work, losing an arm or losing their life.

A recent letter of interpretation from OSHA mandates high-visibility warning garments for highway and road construction workers .

“Highway construction workers should not suffer serious or fatal injuries simply because they could not be seen,” said Jordan Barab, acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA.

The new letter supersedes an earlier ruling requiring high-visibility garments only where mandated by the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). OSHA considers road and construction traffic a well-recognized hazard to highway/road construction workers, bolstered by Bureau of Labor Statistics data (2003-2007) showing 425 fatalities in road construction zones.

Image © Stephen Jacoby – Fotolia.com

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What may be the greenest material around? Steel. More is recycled than paper, plastic, glass, copper and aluminum combined. Steel is recycled from automobiles at a rate of 106% (because newer cars are lighter and use high-strength steel). See other impressive info here (opens a PDF).

Man trucks 400 miles with cardboard windshield.

Could the safety sign below possibly violate not eight, not nine, but ten OSHA/ANSI standards?

Yep. Take the quiz.

More thinking goes into the design of those things than you might guess …

I don’t want to include a link to the story, but I just read about a worker’s dying back in May while performing maintenance inside a large ice machine that suddenly powered up. The details are disturbing: OSHA found that the company had done nothing to protect workers as it relates to maintaining this machine: no safety measures or training. The person killed may not even have understood there was danger.

It’s a sad reminder that lockout/tagout helps prevent death and injury and that it’s vital for companies to meet their responsibilities to worker safety.