Congratulations to Joel Morrison, who was recognized as Environmental, Health & Safety Professional of the Year for the print industry by the Printing & Imaging Association of MidAmerica. Joel works for Cartamundi USA, a client of Impact Safety. Joel has built a safety program and a safety culture at Cartamundi that is second to none.
Customers of the Dallas plant include the largest providers of card games, collector sports cards, cell phones, software and other products.
Just a reminder. The OSHA 300A summary form for recordable workplace injuries and illnesses must be completed each January and posted in the workplace for all of February, March and April. You will need the following items to complete the form: The OSHA 300 log of injuries/illnesses for last year, the total manhours worked last year, and the number of employees at the company last year.
This year companies will be required to upload the OSHA 300A summary information to OSHA (during March - June). You should expect your company injury & illness data for 2016 to be posted on-line (with company name) in late 2017. As always, companies should take care to include all cases considered as "recordable" by OSHA. However, it's now important to not over-report by (more…)
If you work at an industrial facility in Texas, make sure the person in charge of environmental compliance at your facility has made a new storm water filing with the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality (TCEQ) recently. Manufacturing plants must renew this filing every five years. While the due date is November 14, 2016; there will be a 90 day grace period for filing (before your past filing expires).
Your facility can make a storm water filing on-line with credit card (for $100) or with paper and mail (for $200). Many of our clients are able to file the Storm Water "No Exposure Certification" (abbreviated NEC). The paper NEC application is (more…)
Lately, the typical first-time OSHA citations at companies I've worked with have ranged from $1775 to $4900 per issue, averaging around $3000 each. The maximum OSHA can charge for citations will increase by 78 percent on August 1, 2016. OSHA has not yet released guidance to their field staff on how to implement this change. At this point we can only wonder whether typical penalties will remain similar or will increase. "If average citation amounts are raised by 78 percent, we should expect to see typical citations increase from $3000 each to around $5300 each".
Bottom Line: Let's be diligent in moving our safety programs forward. It's not (more…)
The official deadline for labeling secondary containers of chemicals in your plant with GHS-style labels is June 1, 2016. If operators at your company put chemical products in bottles or solvent cans for use, this OSHA requirement affects you.
I've made a few templates (in MS Powerpoint) that can help you make your own labels. Follow this link to download your copy: Label Templates GHS 2016.05
OSHA announced last week that most companies (with 20 or more employees) will be required to electronically submit their OSHA 300A summary report of work-related injuries & illnesses to OSHA beginning in 2017. The first report due will include your company data from 2016.
The really significant thing about this new requirement is that OSHA says they will make some of the data available to the public. OSHA feels that public disclosure will (more…)
Very few of the fire stations can help you if someone is down in a confined space. There are six fully equipped rescue stations in the DFW area that can help with confined space rescues (Arlington, Dallas, Fort Worth, Denton, HEB and Colin County). Lt Keith Copeman, leads the special fire station #8 in North Arlington, Texas. He says his group is happy to come to a manufacturer's site to plan or practice a rescue of someone (more…)
At the recent "OSHA stand down meeting on Construction Falls" at the University of Texas - Arlington, we received a heads-up on how not to respond when OSHA asks your company to self-investigate an amputation injury.
Jack Rector, the OSHA Director in the Fort Worth office, says he's amazed how
many companies (more…)
Manufacturers of chemicals recently converted to GHS-Style Safety Data Sheets (SDS) and labels (including the new pictograms). Now companies that use chemicals have a June 1 deadline, from OSHA, to re-vamp their in-house labeling. After decades of using the color-coded HMIS labels for smaller containers that do not have the original OEM labels on them, companies must create GHS-style labels.
Key Steps:
1)Make sure you have new-style Safety Data Sheets (with 16 sections).
2)If your supplier will provide a GHS-style label, that's great. If you use an on-line service, such as "MSDSonline", you can pay an extra fee to access GHS label files. Otherwise, you will need digital files of SDS for chemicals that are relabeled in-house.
3) Create the new GHS style label file as follows: Copy & Paste the required information into the new label file (Product Identifier, Hazard Statements, Signal Word, Pictograms, Supplier Identification/phone, Precautionary Statements). 
