The goal of this blog post is to whet the appetite of those who may not be sufficiently familiar with ANSI B11, the series of U.S. national standards dealing with the safety requirements for general industry machines.
FDRsafety is continuing to see OSHA cite employers for alleged violations of machine guarding in situations where employees would have to intentionally reach into a hazard zone to be injured. Not all these citations are valid, especially in light of a 1997 case decided by the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
An article on an Australian safety website described the tragic death of a worker whose coat was caught in a lathe and asked the question that is the title of this article: Can metal lathes be made safe? The answers raise some basic issues about retrofitting machines for safeguarding.
What’s the first question to ask when an interlock bypassed — why the employee bypassed the safeguard or what is it about the task that required bypassing?
At the recent ASSE Conference in Las Vegas there were two issues that seemed to be moving to the front burner: Risk assessment and sustainability.
The March issue of ASSE’s Professional Safety magazine was devoted to the subject of Prevention through Design (PtD), with three excellent articles that covered: Integrating PtD into undergraduate curricula Design methods for implementing PtD, including things like policy, standards, processes …
When I work with clients, I always use Task Based Risk Assessment (TaBRA). Last August I wrote about how the methodology was instrumental in OSHA vacating a lockout citation. But the method is helpful in many situations, including: Deciding if …
I’m a long-time proud member of the Accredited Standards Committee that developed and recently updated ANSI Z10, the U.S. National Standard for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems. On the surface, that would likely make me a fan of I2P2, …
A spotlight has been focused on UCLA ever since a horrific lab accident in December 2008 caused the death of a research assistant. Most recently, a chemistry professor pleaded not guilty to three counts of willful violation of an occupational …
What happens when a worker is injured and you find that a standard was not followed? Do you point a finger at the worker or supervisor? Maybe you take a systems view and try to improve your management system. But, …