Category Archives: Safety

Protecting Workers from Sun Exposure

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sun workers
The number of skin cancer cases in the United States continues to increase, with nearly 5 million people treated for it every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Outdoor workers are especially at risk, as they are constantly exposed to ultraviolet (UV) rays, even on cloudy days when they may think they are safe from the sun.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), UV rays, which are a part of sunlight, are an invisible form of radiation. There are three types of UV rays: UVA, which is believed to CDC advicedamage connective tissue and increase the risk for developing skin cancer; UVB, which doesn’t penetrate as deeply into the skin, but can still cause some types of skin cancer; and natural UVC, which is absorbed by the atmosphere and does not pose a risk.

One of the dangers of being out in the sun for prolonged periods is that sunburn is not immediately apparent, NIOSH said. Symptoms usually start about 4 hours after sun exposure, worsen in 24 to 36 hours, and get better in 3 to 5 days. They include red, tender and swollen skin, blisters, headache, fever, nausea and fatigue. Another danger is that eyes can also become sunburned. They become red, dry, painful and feel gritty. Chronic eye exposure can cause permanent damage, including blindness.

The CDC advises organizations to add sun safety to their workplace policies and training programs, as well as to:Include sun-safety information in workplace wellness programs. For example, programs designed to help employees avoid heat illness can be adapted to include information about sun safety.
• Teach outdoor workers about risks of exposure to UV radiation and the signs and symptoms of overexposure.

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• Encourage outdoor workers to be role models and discuss the importance of sun protection with clients, and coworkers. Visit the National Cancer Institute’s RTIPs website for more information about sun safety.

NIOSH’s advice to workers:

Protect Yourself

  • Avoid prolonged exposure to the sun when possible.
  • Wear sunscreen with a minimum of SPF 15.
    • SPF refers to how long a person will be protected from a burn. (SPF 15 means a person can stay in the sun 15-times longer before burning.) SPF only refers to UVB protection.
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    • To protect against UVA, look for products containing: Mexoryl, Parsol 1789, titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, or avobenzone.
    • Sunscreen performance is affected by wind, humidity, perspiration, and proper application.
    • Throw away sunscreens after 1–2 years (they lose potency).
    • Apply liberally (minimum of 1 oz.) at least 20 minutes before sun exposure.
    • Apply to ears, scalp, lips, neck, tops of feet, and backs of hands.
    • Reapply at least every two hours and each time a person gets out of the water or perspires heavily.
    • Some sunscreens may lose their effectiveness when applied with insect repellents. You may need to reapply more often.
  • Wear clothing with a tight weave or high-SPF clothing.
  • Wear wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses with UV protection and side panels.
  • Take breaks in shaded areas.

First Aid

  • Take aspirin, acetaminophen, or ibuprofen to relieve pain, headache, and fever.
  • Drink plenty of water to help replace fluid losses.
  • Comfort burns with cool baths or the gentle application of cool wet cloths.
  • Avoid further exposure until the burn has resolved.
  • Use of a topical moisturizing cream, aloe, or 1% hydrocortisone cream may provide additional relief.
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If blistering occurs:

  • Lightly bandage or cover the area with gauze to prevent infection.
  • Do not break blisters. (This slows healing and increases risk of infection.)
  • When the blisters break and the skin peels, dried skin fragments may be removed and an antiseptic ointment or hydrocortisone cream may be applied.

Seek medical attention if any of the following occur:

  • Severe sunburns covering more than 15% of the body
  • Dehydration
  • High fever (greater than 101 °F)
  • Extreme pain that persists for longer than 48 hours

5 Analytics Tips for Your Chief Safety Officer

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Safety data
Industries on average experience 3.2 non-fatal occupational injuries per 100 full-time workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some industries have nearly four-times this rate. Similar statistics exist for workplace illnesses and, unfortunately, fatalities. Could analytics be a solution for lowering these statistics?

Companies today gather huge volumes of operational and enterprise data, plus they have access to myriad sources of external data such as weather, traffic and social media. Unfortunately, this data is normally stored and analyzed in siloed data systems that are scattered across the enterprise. There are, however, steps a chief safety officer (CSO) can take to apply analytics to all available data to reduce incidents and, therefore, safety-related costs.

Here are five steps CSOs and other safety leaders can take to be smarter about data and safety.

1. Know your network

To reduce incidents and therefore safety-related costs for your organization, you need to know the what, where, when, why and how of accidents. After all, accidents happen at a specific time and place, and involve specific people and pieces of equipment. Knowing your network of time, place and equipment speeds up response time when accidents happen, and can even prevent them.

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Analytics systems are now able to correlate, analyze and visualize operational, enterprise and external data from across your company. The resulting information can identify the situations, patterns and trends that indicate hazardous but preventable conditions. You can more clearly see the job roles, work sites and times of the day or week that pose the greatest risk.

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This information lets you invest your time, money and effort where it has the greatest impact.

2. Collaborate across departments

When you have analytics illuminating the times, places and activities of greatest risk, share that with everyone who can help reduce that risk. Workers and their supervisors need to know what the data indicate about risk, so that they can make appropriate changes. Your facilities department needs to know that some aspects of a work site—lighting, ventilation, access and drainage—contribute to unsafe conditions. Human Resources needs to know what training and certification is required, or should be offered, to increase staff potential.

But collaboration isn’t simply feeding analytics to various job roles. It is important that all those roles—operations, facilities, HR and more—share the same view of analytics in order to work together to address dangerous conditions before something happens.

3. Learn to trust your own data and analytics

There is now too much data arriving too quickly for us humans to manually gather and analyze. It’s still common for business and risk analysts to spend 80% of their time gathering data and only 20% applying it to solving problems. Analytics systems that correlate and analyze multiple data sources flip that equation, enabling analysts to spend 80% of their time acting on insights from data to solve problems.

While you might be willing to trust the math of analytics, you are probably like a lot of leaders who don’t trust their data. Many leaders believe their data is too incomplete, inaccurate, outdated or irrelevant to support an analytics program. When people say this, I usually ask them how they know their data is bad. Until you work with your data, you don’t really know its condition. When you start working with your data to solve a use case, you can address any data quality issues related just to that use case, without needing to somehow fix all of the data.

4. Look for analytics-leveraging skills when hiring

There is a witticism in the business world that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” While sayings like this can be cliché, in the case of analytics, this one is true. If your human and work culture doesn’t embrace data-driven decision making, any analytics strategy faces uncertain odds of success.

To establish an analytics culture within your organization, hire people who are comfortable exploring and applying data. You don’t necessarily need to hire data scientists, as that skillset is available from consultants and vendors if and when it is needed. You do, however, need people who are curious and capable of working with each other, and with data scientists, to formulate inquiries, pursue those inquiries, and apply the insights they discover.

5. Start small, but start now

Existing company safety programs that are not data-driven struggle to show their impact. That makes funding harder to justify, which can mean safety programs grow stale over time. If you’d like your organization to be better at safety and analytics, but struggle to measure the effectiveness of your investment in safety programs, it is possible to start small.

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Any CSO can immediately identify their most dangerous job role or location. Start with one of those dangerous situations, use data to drive tangible changes in facilities, tools, process or training, and measure the results.

It is really that simple. You can start small, but at least start—now—and make safety a priority.

New Rail Tank Car Usage Promises Safer Crude Oil Transport

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Added capacity of pipelines used to transport crude oil and declining prices are contributing to decreasing transport of crude oil—and an almost 97% drop in the use of older, less safe transport cars between 2014 and the end of March, Gannett reported this week.

Rail tank car shipments of crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota have declined from a peak of 498,271 in 2014 to 424,996 in 2015, according to the Association of American Railroads. An AAR official made the announcement at a rail tanker car safety forum sponsored by the National Transportation Safety Board, according to Gannett.

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In the December 2013 report “Moving Crude Oil by Rail,” the AAR noted that the rail industry has been urging federal regulators “to toughen existing standards for new tank cars” and recommended that the estimated 92,000 existing tank cars used to transport flammable liquids, including crude oil, be retrofitted with advanced safety-enhancing technologies, or phased out if they cannot be upgraded.

While there are obvious issues with the transportation of oil by rail, the AAR has pointed out that railroads have an excellent safety record with crude, even surpassing pipelines in recent years. But the industry and federal regulators acknowledge there is much room for improvement.

The new, safer tank cars have thicker steel shells, insulating materials, full-size metal shields at each end and improved outlet valves underneath the car. Increased use of the new cars is good news for densely populated areas on the east and west coasts that have numerous trains—often of at least 100 tank cars—moving through daily.

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DOT 117 train car
A transportation law, the FAST Act, signed by President Obama in December 2015, includes new mandates for freight trains transporting crude oil through the U.S. The law requires that older tank cars be replaced by the newer, safer car for shipping flammable liquids by March 1, 2018, phasing out the older model used, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

A rail disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Canada, on July 26, 2013, that killed 42 people brought a heightened focus on the dangers of transporting highly flammable Bakken crude oil by train.

According to the DOT, the rule also:

  • Requires an enhanced tank car standard and an aggressive, risk-based retrofitting schedule for older tank cars carrying crude oil and ethanol.
  • Requires a new braking standard for certain trains that will offer a higher level of safety by potentially reducing the severity of an accident.
  • Designates new operational protocols for trains transporting large volumes of flammable liquids, such as routing requirements, speed restrictions, and information for local government agencies.
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  • Provides new sampling and testing requirements to improve classification of energy products placed into transport.

Prioritizing Risk Management Strategies in Schools

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safety
No matter what precautionary measures schools take, there are many risks and “fires” that need to be put out on a daily basis. To keep staff and students safe and to protect school assets, a proactive approach to mitigating risk in schools is a necessity. The keys to a successful risk management program include careful, strategic planning while taking all relevant and potential factors into consideration, but how can administrators get started?

By identifying potential risks and applying a process to assess them, schools can focus on their objectives more clearly, including top priorities like student and employee wellbeing. Effective risk management reduces the disruption of a student’s education, damage to a school’s reputation, lost time, stress from managing incidents, and the potential risk of legal intervention in an increasingly litigious world. School administrators can explore these strategies as they strive to enhance their risk management initiatives:

Focus on greatest risks and exposures
The concern about lawsuits is ever present, but schools cannot operate under the pretense that litigation is going to happen. They instead must conduct their business for the safety of students and staff. If schools operate under fear, their risk management efforts will simply not be as effective as planned.

Administrators must also consider relevancy. In the private sector, risk management has a large seat at the table, whereas in the public sector that is not always the case. Depending on priorities, some issues that play a vital role within the public sector may not be relevant in the private sector. Identifying the relevance of issues often determines where and how money is spent in a school district, however. District-wide funding can be one of the biggest issues administrators face.

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Districts encounter daily challenges to come up with the right resources available to train staff—especially when it comes to implementing technology. Administrators must make tough decisions when considering funding realities and the need for as much risk management coverage as possible. They need to maintain a balance when money is at stake, as they are only able to make decisions based on the amount of funds available to them.

Focus on what effective training can offer a school faculty
Safety training for school and district staff should play a huge part in every risk management strategy, as well as ensuring the district is in compliance on a state and federal level. Safety training has a trickle-down effect, and if provided at the appropriate level of training, administrators will see a significant effect in reduction of accidents, damage to buildings and costs overall.

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There is always work to be done when it comes to improving school safety and collaboration is a big part of a program’s success. Some of the issues schools now face are different than the concerns of decades past, so providing training and resources to staff can make a difference in helping them understand how to handle a number of situations that could arise.

Technology resources can help with this. Online databases, such as SafeSchools Online Staff Training System, for example, allow school districts to distribute quality training to all employees. This is an effective and way to track and share information on safety and compliance issues that could arise in the classroom or school. The digital database also serves as a proactive approach to training.

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Having an online database enables staff to train in school or at home, and ensures that everyone has the necessary training to handle a situation before it occurs. In the end, by deploying an online safety training system, the district is saving money and time and will be more proactive in handling issues.

Focus on training early on—and take it seriously
First and foremost is tackling the issue of rallying everyone to take safety and compliance issues seriously. Risk management is not a job for one person. It starts with everyone in the school district, from administrators and the school board to principals, teachers, grounds staff and even students. Everyone needs to think of safety and practice mutual accountability within the school community.

Final Thoughts
Risk management may take a back seat when funding is low, giving the impression that it isn’t important. For the sake of their staff and students, however, district-level administrators need to be on board with risk management and make it a priority. In schools, educating students is the main concern, and risk management is secondary. But just like in a factory where posted signs read “safety first” or “safety is number one,” our goal is to get schools to think of safety and its importance to the school in the same way they think of education.