When a serious incident happens in the workplace, everyone will be busy dealing with the emergency. Helping injured victims, assessing if the danger has abated, trying to piece together what happened. So, it’s critical to be prepared to investigate an incident before one occurs.
A 50-year-old male cleaner died when he fell approximately 35 feet through a temporary roof opening and was impaled on a piece of equipment on the factory floor.
An electrical burn occurs when skin meets an electrical voltage. It does not always leave a significant burn to the skin, but the electricity can cause significant internal damage to nerves, muscles and internal organs.
Poisoning, accidental or intentional, causes significant harm or death to many US and Canadian people. Poisoning takes many forms as harmful chemicals can be breathed in, swallowed, touched or injected.
Two workers entered an unprotected trench (11 feet deep x 8 feet wide) to set new sections of pipe. Only one would survive.
One cubic yard of soil can weigh as much as a car and the pressure on the chest can make it impossible for a worker to breathe, even if his or her head is above the level of the collapsed soil. Often, it’s impossible to rescue a trench collapse victim quickly enough to prevent death.
There are some obvious hazards in this picture, yet it’s still a good tool for training and learning. Share this image with your crew and see how many hazards they spot. Then discuss why they are hazardous, how these hazards can be corrected, and what they would do if they were asked to work in this excavation.
Use this checklist as a starting point and edit the list as necessary for location specific regulations and work performed.
A fracture is the medical term for a broken bone. The break can be along the length of the bone or across the bone, so it looks as though the bone has snapped. These are generally clean breaks but sometimes the bone can fracture in several places, especially if the fracture is caused by a fall from a great height or from being crushed.
Sexual harassment is defined as any conduct, comment, gesture, or contact of a sexual nature that is likely to cause offence or humiliation to any employee; or that might, on reasonable grounds, be perceived by that employee as placing a condition of a sexual nature on employment or on any opportunity for training or promotion.
As “safety people” we spend a good deal of our time consciously or unconsciously trying to persuade others. We try to persuade management to support and fund safety initiatives. We try and persuade supervisors to enforce safety rules. We try and persuade workers to follow those same safety rules. In his article, Powerful Secrets of Persuasion, speaker, trainer, and coach James Hurford, DTM, he goes over 20 ways to get people to take action.
The type of soil determines the strength and stability of trench walls. These charts give you an overview of the four soil classifications in Canada and the U.S.
Slips, trips, and falls are consistently rank as one of the top 2 causes of injuries and deaths on the job. Our contributor, Zachary O’Dell from SafetyLine asks, “Have you taken these 6 precautions to avoid injuries in your own workplace?”
Slip, trip, and fall injuries are one of the most common causes of workplace injuries and death. The falls from slips and trips can lead to disabling injuries, traumatic brain injuries, surgeries, and countless hours in rehab. These types of injuries are painful and costly and can put stress on your relationships, lead to depression, anxiety, and in some cases post-traumatic stress disorder, or PSTD.
Hazardous walking and working surfaces account for hundreds of thousands of injuries and hundreds of deaths every year. This translates into billions of dollars spent on work comp, lost-time injuries, and days away from work. Set yourself, your employees, and your organization up for success by doing your part to keep these surfaces safe.
An excavation is any man-made cut, cavity, trench, or depression in an earth surface formed by earth removal. Trench is a narrow excavation (in relation to its length) made below the surface of the ground. In general, the depth is greater than the width.
A 40-year-old worker was killed at a construction site recently in Toronto. According to police, concrete panels had fallen onto the worker as they were being unloaded, and the man became trapped.
Infographic - summer safety
Flammable and combustible liquids are responsible for workplace fires and fires at home. You may not realize it, but you probably have at least a few containers hanging out in your garage, basement, or under the kitchen sink.
One of the biggest challenges when you are investigating an incident is sorting out the irrelevant information from the relevant information. One way to do this is by using a systematic approach to investigate all incidents that focuses on finding the root causes.
The use, storage, and handling of flammable and combustible materials is critical to the safety of workers, property, the community, and the environment. This is a general checklist designed to give you a starting point.
Water-related deaths are a sad part of every summer. The following stats are meant to bring awareness to just how often drowning deaths and diving-related injuries occur. There is also an important link to a blog post, Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning, that I highly recommend reading – it is eye-opening.
What do these dual personality containers and a woman in Utah drinking sweet tea and a BBQ joint have in common?
Investigating an incident allows you to look beyond what happened and discover why it happened. It also allows you to identify and correct deficiencies in your safety and health programs, management shortcomings, and unsafe processes, conditions, and actions.
A 35-year-old employee died from injuries sustained during a flammable gas explosion.
Since it's your first time, you may want to checkout some of the video tutorials.
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