October 6th – 12th is Fire Prevention Week!
October 9th: This year’s NFPA Fire Prevention Week campaign is “Not Every Hero Wears a Cape. Plan and Practice Your Escape!”
EHS professionals and others with safety responsibilities spend a good deal of time focusing on emergency evacuation plans for the workplace. However, the importance of evacuation or escape planning in the event of a home fire is often overlooked. According to an NFPA survey, only one out of every three households have developed and practiced a home escape plan.
Is Online Safety Training Compliant?
October 16th: OSHA acknowledges that computer-based training can be a useful component of an overall safety training program. However, OSHA does not consider the use of online training alone to be sufficient to satisfy safety training requirements unless that training contains interactive components. Their position is that to be effective, training must result in a certain level of mastery of the training material and that online training without an interactive component would not meet this goal.
National Protect Your Hearing Month
October 23rd: Did you know that hearing loss is the third most common chronic health condition in the United States?
October is National Protect Your Hearing Month, an annual event sponsored by the CDC to raise awareness about hearing protection. Did you know that hearing loss is the third most common chronic health condition in the United States? The CDC estimates that 22 million workers are exposed to potentially damaging noise at work each year. Hazardous noise levels in the workplace are a serious concern that not only can result in hearing loss if not protected against, but can also contribute to other causes of physical stress as well as mental stress and lower work productivity.
Do you Need to Generate an SDS?
October 30th: Are you required to generate a Safety Data Sheet (SDS) for your newly synthesized chemical, investigational new drug, or drug intermediate?
If you will be shipping any of these materials, or otherwise distributing them to another workplace, the answer is yes. Even if only small quantities are being shipped, an SDS is required if the material meets OSHA’s definition of hazardous. Activities that might require this include shipments to CMOs for scale-up or CROs for sample testing, analysis, or other services. There is no exemption based on sample size!