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How is ‘smart’ concrete revolutionizing construction?

In many contexts, the “smart” prefix refers to giving technologies some form of wireless connectivity. That’s not necessarily the case with smart concrete, which covers a much broader range of materials than it may initially seem.




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10 safety measures that will help protect your utility workers

Who makes sure all of that water and electricity continues to flow so it’s there when we need it? There are a million people working at all hours of the day to make sure these resources are always available. 




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Whisleblower probe finds cargo firm retaliated against seaman who reported safety concerns to US Coast Guard

OSHA ordered the Maersk Line to reinstate the seaman and pay $457,759 in back wages, interest, compensatory damages and $250,000 in punitive damages. 




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Technology adoption a critical component in high-risk environments

Increased investment in OSH reflects the acknowledgement that high-risk industrial businesses need the most advanced solutions to function effectively and protect their workforce. 




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JLG® ClearSky Smart Fleet™ turns connectivity into interactivity

 
Next-generation IoT system digitizes daily processes, adds capabilities, streamlines logistics and provides actionable, on-demand machine insights.




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Winterization as a defense: Protecting your machinery from corrosion

Effective winterizing strategies can protect your equipment from corrosion damage during cold seasons.




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What are the best ways to improve work truck ergonomics?

Truck driving ergonomics is an often overlooked part of vehicle safety. Employee comfort and musculoskeletal health deserve attention, too.




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Combilift launches Combi Safe-Lift to address forklift overloading

The new device includes an anti-overload sensor and an alarm to alert operators of potential risks.




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Memorial Day is the fourth most dangerous holiday for driver fatalities

The research highlights the average number of fatalities that normally occur per month and per day of the month and compares these figures with the average number of fatalities during each national holiday. 




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Elevating construction equipment safety: Strategies that deliver

Actions to reduce risk can range from using sensors for better construction fleet management to holding periodic training sessions about emerging issues.




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Implementing a Safety Management System (SMS) in aircraft maintenance operations

It seems like aircraft incidents have become more frequent, whether it’s a crash or disappearance. This should catch the attention of aircraft facilities and manufacturers.




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Fourth of July: America's second deadliest driving holiday

Driving during a national holiday is always a risk. Stay safe out there!




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Optimizing vehicle maintenance for safety and compliance

In the manufacturing and construction industries, proper vehicle maintenance is not just about keeping the wheels turning.




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Young people are being overlooked in opioid misuse prevention programs

Researchers at the National Safety Council and the University of Michigan found that about one in 20 adolescents ages 10 to 17 and one in 10 young adults ages 18 to 25 report prescription opioid misuse, based on a new review published in Preventive Medicine. However, effective intervention programs are not in place to address prescription opioid misuse among young people, and NSC and University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center researchers are urgently calling for evidence-based prevention programs to be developed and tested.




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Mesothelioma linked to asbestos in talcum powder

Thirty-three cases of the asbestos-related lung cancer mesothelioma draw attention to talcum powder as a non-occupational source of exposure to asbestos, according to a study in the January Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. "Our findings strongly suggest that asbestos exposure through asbestos-contaminated cosmetic talc explains cases once deemed idiopathic or 'spontaneous,'" according to the report.




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AHA: President’s proposal to eliminate FDA tobacco oversight risks public health

“We strongly oppose the administration’s proposal to create a separate government agency to oversee tobacco products. This unfortunately comes from an administration that has repeatedly placed the needs of the tobacco industry on equal footing with public health.




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Causes of numbness in the hands

A heart attack may cause tingling and numbness in one hand. If a person is experiencing a suspected heart attack, they or someone near them should seek emergency medical help. Severe blockages in the heart's main blood supply can cause chest pain as well as tingling and numbness down one arm or the other.




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Mail-order limb, rerouted nerve, and prosthetic hand grips like the real thing

Doctors met a patient at a surgical center outside Boston to invent a new operation, a way to perform arm amputations that might allow patients to move their prosthetic hands more like real ones. The right arm resting on a blue surgical drape before them came from a cadaver; it’s just the limb, ending at the shoulder. It came from the Anatomy Gifts Registry. Devising a new operation is like re-engineering the anatomy.




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Rodeos take a toll on hands & arms

In rodeo, it’s not really a matter of if you’ll get injured, but when and how badly. Last year, a major shoulder injury that tore six of the eight tendons in his riding arm took one rider out of competition for several months. Every rider who competes in professional rodeos carries a catalog of their injuries.




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CDC confirms 14th case of 2019 novel coronavirus in U.S.

The CDC yesterday confirmed another infection with 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States in California. The patient is among a group of people under a federal quarantine order because of their recent return to the U.S. on a State Department-chartered flight that arrived on February 7, 2020. All people who have been in Hubei Province in the past 14 days are considered at high risk of having been exposed to COVID-19 and subject to a temporary 14-day quarantine.




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A high-fiber diet may counteract the harmful health effects of pollutants

Research from the University of Kentucky’s Superfund Research Center (UK-SRC) shows that a diet high in fiber could possibly reverse the adverse effects that environmental toxins have on cardiovascular health. The findings are part of UK-SRC’s “Project #1,” which examines how nutrients affect toxicity caused by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in vascular tissues.




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Sitting more is associated with higher heart disease risk in older women

Longer sitting times were associated with higher levels of heart disease risk among overweight and obese post-menopausal women overall, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the open access journal of the American Heart Association.




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Excess costs for obese employees vary between industries

Although obese employees incur higher direct and indirect costs, the extent of obesity-related costs tends to be lower in some industrial sectors — including healthcare, reports a study in the February Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Dominique Lejeune, MSc, of Groupe d'analyse, Ltée, Montréal, QC, Canada, analyzed variations in the relationship between obesity and healthcare and other employee costs.




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NSC unveils comprehensive plan for presidential candidates to combat opioid misuse

The National Safety Council (NSC), in partnership with more than 50 organizations and companies nationwide, released a comprehensive, inclusive strategy to address opioid misuse that all presidential candidates – regardless of party – should either adopt in full or use to close gaps in existing plans and policies.




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Four tips to prevent & reduce musculoskeletal disorders

No magic pills make musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) disappear, yet risk, human resources and safety departments continue to buy into programs and systems that do not affectively aid in helping employees deemed the “walking wounded.” 




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The OSHA “willful” mysteries

Many of the OSHA cases that cite “willful” violations present mysteries. The mysteries are why the alleged violations were categorized as willful. These charges are not a mystery to OSHA, but they are mysteries to readers of citations. Since the penalty for a willful violation can be over $130,000, there should not be any mystery about such charges.




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Health groups join forces to help Americans control blood pressure

In a move toward meeting goals for better cardiovascular health in the United States over the next decade, the American Heart Association (AHA) is joining the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Hypertension Control Roundtable (NHCR)® along with other founding members in a public, private and non-profit collaboration committed to increasing blood pressure control rates to 80% by 2025.




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Health groups urge Supreme Court to uphold Affordable Care Act

Patient and health advocacy groups representing millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions are applauding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments in the case of Texas v. United States this term. The case is the latest court challenge to the health care law known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The groups filed an amicus brief urging the Court’s swift action and citing the detrimental impacts and uncertainty patients would face were the case left at the lower court level.




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For older adults, more physical activity could mean longer, healthier lives

Two studies demonstrate that older adults may be able to live longer, healthier lives by increasing physical activity that doesn’t have to be strenuous to be effective, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention | Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions 2020. The EPI Scientific Sessions, March 3-6 in Phoenix, is a premier global exchange of the latest advances in population-based cardiovascular science for researchers and clinicians.




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Consider ergonomics to reduce materials handling

Warehouse hazards are often the cause of workplace accidents. Choosing the correct type of storage will greatly reduce the potential hazard in a facility. The correct storage medium will reduce improper lifting, reaching and travel distance to retrieve an item.




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For your health & wellness: Sleeping habits

Sleeping well, long enough and having regular bedtimes, in addition to meeting the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Life’s Simple 7 (LS7) guidelines, may help reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases.




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Focus on organizational and human factors impacting risk

Changes in safety and health approaches are needed both in and outside of government. Many established beliefs and assumptions concerning government operations currently are being re-evaluated and questioned. This reset presents an opportunity.




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Provide employees with the tools to support your expectations

Expectations drive both the leader and follower. Various forms of research suggest that when leaders have higher types of expectations for their followers, those followers often live up to the expectations.




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Positive & negative workplace safety vibes

How do people get to a point where they fear safety? How can something like a checklist or an SOP or a safety manager create fear? Our body is equipped with automatic protective wiring that reacts to scary stimuli with a fear response.




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A story of team defense: What is resilience leadership?

The hard part is getting teams to buy into the team vision to play selfless and trust that if they focus on all the intangibles, the scoring will come and at the end of the game the scoreboard will reflect their efforts.




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‘Safety culture’ is a messy concept

The term “Safety culture” has become like the term “engagement” in popular management writings. There is no common agreement on the term. We are left with (mis)interpretations of terms like “safety culture,” which lead to haphazard attempts at changing organizations toward improvement.




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Want better safety outcomes? Try servant leadership!

Twenty-five years ago, as a young safety professional, I struggled to find a set of leadership practices I could call my own. In 1996, I wrote about many of the leadership practices I was already using but found more clearly established in Servant Leadership (Sarkus, 1996).




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Personality tendencies impact performance

It wasn’t until recently that we started understanding that people with different personalities tend to naturally pay more attention to safety attributes like work environment, people, equipment, processes, etc. based on their personality tendencies.




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How do you assess risks? It hinges on leadership & culture

Not many people walk around throughout their day with a risk assessment in hand. We should, however, always have an informal risk assessment tool in our mind that allows us to perform at least a cursory assessment until we can dig deeper or in a more formal way.




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Leadership gaps & situational awareness

The knowledge gap within utilities, construction, and related industries is more of a growing concern than ever — especially when it comes to serious injuries and exposures. 




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What happens in the boardroom affects the front line

The union steward had just recounted an incident where a supervisor asked one of his workers to step into standing water to work on corroded gauges near the coker. The work needed to be done immediately as it would delay ongoing maintenance on the fractionator to take on different stock feed.




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5 strategies & tactics to minimize errors

Individual oversights and errors can and will eventually lead to unwanted consequences. However, we need multiple checks and balances that limit fallout and the continuance of loss, or possibly, an egregious event.




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Tools for serious injury & fatality prevention

In the last decade or so many organizations have been placing more of a focus on Serious Injury and Fatality prevention (SIF). The theory behind the traditional “Safety Pyramid” (or Heinrich Safety Triangle) says if we reduce incidents at the “base” of the pyramid, it follows we will reduce incidents at the top of the pyramid at an approximately proportional rate. 




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5 business lessons learned amid COVID-19

If there’s one thing the global business community has learned from the COVID-19 pandemic that continues to ebb, flow and unfold on the daily, wreaking having on bottom lines in every corner of the world in its wake, it’s the outright imperative for companies to be agile “from top to bottom.”




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Changing safety culture via VPP: How one roofing company achieved OSHA recognition

Evans Roofing Company, Inc., with its subsidiaries Charles F. Evans (union) and CFE, Inc. (non-union), is a building envelope contractor licensed in 46 states. Charles F. Evans and CFE, Inc. are the only commercial roofing and wall panel contractors to hold the VPP STAR mobile work force designation.




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Complacency depends on what you’re doing

For all the COVID-19 safety guidelines circulating, some hundreds of pages long, basic best practices are straightforward and known by most Americans. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, recently recounted them in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association.




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Women in construction should take advantage of available resources

Women have made amazing strides in many fields and industries throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Unfortunately, there are many others in which it remains a big challenge for a woman to rise to the top — or even, in some cases, to enter the industry at all.




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Emergency shower booths for decontamination

HEMCO Emergency Showers are fully assembled and ready for installation to water supply and waste systems. This unit is equipped with a pull rod activated shower and push handle eye/face wash for quick rinsing of eyes, face and body. 




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Two new members join PIP senior management team

PIP’s stellar growth over the last 10 years has positioned itself as a global leader in Safety Hand Protection and places PIP well on its way to becoming a referenced-leader in the Personal Protective Equipment market space.




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Mirrored safety products for blind spots and problem intersections

Se-Kure Domes and Mirrors is a true Made in America manufacturer of mirrored safety products. Full 360-degree domes from 18” to 60” in diameter, 180 & 90-degree domes are also available.