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There are a variety of pipe color code systems; ANSI A13.1, IIAR, CGA and ISO, publish pipe color coding systems for specific applications. How do you know how to mark the pipes in your facility?
Covers the Basic Operation of the 9600Ki, including all features and capabilities. Also covers machine adjustments,
error messages and the Editor 3.2 software.
The Examiner.com reports in its online edition that OSHA has been visiting home construction sites throughout the Houston area and issuing a large number of fines - mostly related to fall protection. The fines typically are $3,000 fines per violation and are being given to the individual workers who are found to be working in violation of OSHA requirements. The article reports:
"One general contractor, who works for a major new home builder in northeast Houston, said individual workers are being cited on most of the inspections. However, he shrugged and said that if he's caught on a job site where workers are not protected, he knows a much larger fine is likely headed for the home building company that employs him."
The Greater Houston Builders Association has placed a web page online to inform builders about OSHA safety requirements.
A longstanding California occupational safety program requiring all businesses to eliminate workplace hazards can help prevent injuries to workers, but only if it is adequately enforced, according to a new study by the RAND Corporation.
The first-ever evaluation of the California Injury and Illness Prevention Program found evidence that the program reduces workplace injuries, but only at businesses that had been cited for not addressing the regulation's more-specific safety mandates.
"We found the safety effects to be real, but not very large," said John Mendeloff, lead author of the study and a senior public policy researcher for RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "We think that the most important reason for the limited impact of this program is that inspectors often did not go beyond a review of the employer's written document."
When California Division of Occupational Safety and Health inspectors did investigate further and found failures to comply with provisions to train workers, identify and abate hazards, and investigate injury causes, the average injury rates at targeted businesses declined more than 20 percent in the following two years, Mendeloff said.
However, these provisions were cited in only about 5 percent of Cal-OSHA inspections, RAND researchers found. In the other 20 percent of inspections where a violation of the rule was cited, it was only for the section requiring the employer have a written program. Such a violation carries an average penalty of $150.
The California Injury and Illness Prevention Program, which became effective in 1991, requires all employers to adopt certain procedures. These include communicating to employees about risks, carrying out regular workplace surveys and abating the hazards that are found, training employees about how to work safely, and investigating the causes of the injuries that occur. In contrast, almost all other safety standards address specific hazards—for example, those dealing with protection against falls.
The program has been the most frequently violated Cal-OSHA standard in every year since 1991, being cited in about 25 percent of all inspections. The California program is also one possible model for federal OSHA's current rule-making effort to develop a safety and health program rule.
The RAND study notes that higher penalties for noncompliance with the program and more extensive activities to make employers aware of their obligations could enhance compliance. However, two other approaches could have a greater impact: having inspectors conduct more in-depth assessments of employer programs and having inspectors link the violations they find and the injuries that have occurred to the program by asking "Why weren't these prevented by your Injury and Illness Prevention Program?"
The study found that employers who were cited for violations of the Injury and Illness Prevention Program in one inspection usually came into compliance in future inspections. However, the overall percentage of inspections finding program violations did not change over time.
Moreover, the percentage of first-time inspections finding violations was the same in 2007 as it was in 1993. These findings indicate that information about the program requirements failed to reach many employers, they failed to be convinced to comply by the threat of penalties, or both.
The 20 percent reduction in injuries following citations for the specific requirements of the California Injury and Illness Prevention Program translates to about 1 injury per year at a workplace with 100 employees. Most estimates of the value of preventing a work injury are in the range of $15,000 to $50,000. The RAND study did not find evidence that the statewide workplace fatality rate had decreased after the introduction of the program standard.
The study of injury effects was carried out using several different injury data sets. In all cases, inspections were included in the data if "before and after" injury rates could be obtained for the inspected business. The study was limited to workplaces in the manufacturing, transportation, utilities, wholesale trade and health care sectors. It included inspections through 2006.
The study was sponsored by the California Commission for Health, Safety and Workers' Compensation, a public body with management, labor and public representatives located in the state's Department of Industrial Relations.
The study was conducted within the RAND Center for Health and Safety in the Workplace, a research center within RAND Law, Business and Regulation. RAND Law, Business and Regulation, a division of the RAND Corporation, is dedicated to improving policy and decision making in civil justice, corporate ethics and governance and business regulation.
02/06/2012 03:53 PM
I was doing research on office safety this past week and came across an old film about office safety. It is a Navy training film from 1944. This safety film revels in carelessness, surprise, and pratfalls
An online resource for films, and other freely available material, is the Internet Archive at: http://www.archive.org/
02/06/2012 03:46 PM
