NSC: OSHA, MSHA, NIOSH Leaders Discuss the State of Occupational Safety | EHS Today

NSC: OSHA, MSHA, NIOSH Leaders Discuss the State of Occupational Safety EHS Today

In an October 5 National Safety Council Conference, Keynote Speakers included OSHA Administrator David Michaels, NIOSH Director John Howard, and MSHA Administrator Joe Main. I2P2, Vaccination, and Black Lung are on the regulators minds these days. In his keynote speech, David Michaels indicated that OSHA cannot be everywhere at once so the agency "must think of creative ways to have a bigger impact. The key to workplace safety and health is working on prevention". Indead, one key to prevention is communication. For example, the Illness and Injury Prevention Program, called I2P2, proposes finding and fixing safety problems before they cause occurrences. To do this there must be a plan of action that is endorsed by those in charge and implemented by everyone from human resources, management, and employees. Getting key imput from those directly affected and getting support from those above is critical in making realistic safety goals, purchasing appropriate engineering controls and PPE, properly using these controls and equipment, etc. Finding and fixing by means of proper and thorough communication are challenges every company faces.

On a different note, John Howard spoke on vaccination and the timing of flu season on Oct 1. As companies continue to struggle with meeting production goals for the end of 2010, sick time runs out on some employees, stress of missing days when sick to only have to pick up the pace when one returns back to work cause other employees to come to work sick, while in other circumstance employees sometime miss work to care for their sick children. Besides vaccination, when was the last time your keyboard, mouse, and phone were cleaned? And, keeping a small hand sanitizer around is another way to minimize germs.

Joe Main's emphasis was also on prevention, that of keeping miners safe through re-education programs, improvements on dust respirators and engineering controls, and better evaluations of the mining situations during shift changes. Again, communication challenges must be overcome to plan, find and fix problems to minimize other incidents in the future.