I’ll admit it. I was skeptical that distance learning could be a worthwhile experience for service contractors. 

By the time you read this, most people’s New Year’s resolutions or goals will be a distant memory, and they’ll be back to doing the same things they said they weren’t going to do. 

You may think you are too small to have a fleet manager, or so big you need a full-time fleet manager, and neither of those things is necessarily true.

When we see a testimonial, we know someone else has already tested the waters for us. Especially in today’s crowded marketplace, you need something that sets your contracting company apart.

There’s an ancient proverb that says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

The owner of a 107-year-old home sought an advanced hydronic heating solution for a major basement finishing project and to alleviate his existing heating woes on the first and second floors of the residence. The installation of an innovative and highly efficient boiler from Weil-McLain helped make the basement remodel a success and the family’s home comfortably warm throughout.

Last month, the Biden-Harris Administration announced it is proposing the first-ever national drinking water standard for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The proposal, if finalized, would regulate PFOA and PFOS as individual contaminants, and will regulate four other PFAS — PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS and GenX Chemicals — as a mixture.

A few weeks back I was having a conversation with a plumbing and HVAC contracting business owner. During the beginning of our discussion, he abruptly told me, “I just use ChatGPT to do your job.”

Life in Ghana: The search for water.

Thermostatic mixing valves and common sense can help prevent injury and litigation.

I began my career in the HVAC business in 1970 as a truck driver for an AC/refrigeration wholesaler. I stayed there just six weeks because my father — who worked for a manufacturers’ rep — told me there was an opening for a clerk at the rep. It paid $110 a week, which was $10 more than I was getting driving the truck. Plus, I’d get to work with him as my boss.

Safety professionals work diligently to engage both leaders and employees. But there is often a challenge: leaders wish their employees would just "be careful" without doing diligence to hazard identification, assessment and control. The result: workers claim leaders are only concerned with productivity and budgets.

Since mind not on task is bound to happen if you know how to do something well, there is much more “leverage” or efficiency in getting people to put more effort than they are currently making (none) into improving their safety-related habits.

Thousands of Industrial Safety & Hygiene News subscribers jumped online to vote in ISHN’s 2013 Readers’ Choice Awards between March 1 and May 1, 2013. The results are in, and ISHN Publisher Randy Green has released the list of winning entries.

Complimentary webcast on March 21 will cover the most pressing challenges in the Environment of Care and Life Safety.

The National COSH announced the 2024 “Dirty Dozen” list of employers who put workers and communities at risk due to unsafe practices.

Mine workers are experiencing an increase in dangerous health effects from heat exposure as surface temperatures get hotter and underground mines get deeper.

From wearable safety devices to machine learning to Big Data, companies now have more tools than ever to help push safety incidents down to zero.

Today, optrel, a leading manufacturer of active eye protection products, introduced its new crystal2.0 welding helmet with Crystal 2.0 Lens Technology (CLT2.0) — representing a quantum leap forward in optical clarity for welders before, during, and after welding.

Compared to 10-15 years ago, companies are safer. Whether it’s tighter regulations, more awareness, enhanced experience, technology improvements or other factors, companies are doing a better job keeping their employees safe at the workplace. However, that number has plateaued over the last couple of years—the total incident rate per 100 workers has not changed significantly since 2017.

Fall protection remains in the No. 1 spot. Incident data shows potential connection to top workplace compliance issues.

In 2018 alone, there were 103,600 recorded incidents in commercial buildings. Electrical malfunctions are a leading cause of these events, and they cost businesses $373,400,000 in 2018.

True to its reputation of providing unparalleled protective welding gear for over 90 years, the John Tillman Company announced its new MIG (Metal Inert Gas) welding glove.

Electrical-related fatalities and serious injuries (FSI)* are among the noted FSIs. FSIs represent a safety and health challenge that has gained increasing visibility in the past decade as even organizations with elite environment, health and safety programs struggle to reduce FSI numbers.

SoterGenius uses image and video analysis, chat functionality and document analysis to automate compliance checks against OSHA guidelines.

Northern Ireland Water has purchased more than 700 connected wearable devices by leading safety technology provider Blackline Safety Corp. for its frontline workers.

Collaboration aims to enhance refining operations and workforce with advanced AI-Assisted technologies, including a new generation of alarm management solutions.

Imagine a world where industrial accidents are almost non-existent, where robots, drones and AI-powered technologies work together to create the safest possible work environments.

Whether moving parts to the dock or product down an assembly line, lower push forces mean that employees can move materials quickly with less wear on their bodies and greater productivity. 

The mobile training aims to shake up the notion of traditional compliance training, making it widely accessible and highly interactive, even in remote locations. 

When workers aren’t taking control of their health, it can be quite costly for employers. Here are three tactics for employers to begin utilizing.

Job safety audits can mitigate the risk of accidents. But many rely on slow processes designed with compliance.

It’s time to increase awareness of the elevated risk of injury and ensure your workers are as safe in the summer months as any other month. 

The 2018 print edition of NFPA 70E Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace® is 104 pages. Updated every three years by the 70E technical committee, this comprehensive standard covers the latest information about the effects of shock, arc flash, arc blast, dc hazards, and developments in electrical design, PPE.

From February 7-9, 2018, AD hosted its second annual eCommerce Summit at the Westin in Denver, CO. More than 250 AD independent distributors across six industries and three countries attended.

Global safety equipment manufacturer MSA Safety Incorporated reported results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2017.

Klein Tools and Tenacious Holdings, the parent company of Ergodyne, announced in September a major deal in which Klein Tools acquired Ergodyne. The “Tenacious Nation” will remain tenacious, with Ergodyne operating as a separate business unit at its St. Paul, MN headquarters and Tom Votel staying on as Ergodyne president.

Telling employees to watch their step isn’t enough to eliminate slip, trip and fall injuries in production areas. Like other safety hazards, slip, trip and fall hazards can be identified and in many cases eliminated.

Connected Hydration is a sweat-sensing wearable biosensor and cloud analytics solution that measures sweat loss, sodium loss, skin temperature, and movement to provide actionable rehydration strategies in real time to industrial workers ahead of adverse dehydration events. 

Workplace violence and harassment disproportionately harms women from underserved and historically marginalized communities, including women of color, LGBTQI+ individuals, women with disabilities and women affected by persistent poverty and inequality. 

In many contexts, the “smart” prefix refers to giving technologies some form of wireless connectivity. That’s not necessarily the case with smart concrete, which covers a much broader range of materials than it may initially seem.

Actions to reduce risk can range from using sensors for better construction fleet management to holding periodic training sessions about emerging issues.

Researchers at the National Safety Council and the University of Michigan found that about one in 20 adolescents ages 10 to 17 and one in 10 young adults ages 18 to 25 report prescription opioid misuse, based on a new review published in Preventive Medicine. However, effective intervention programs are not in place to address prescription opioid misuse among young people, and NSC and University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center researchers are urgently calling for evidence-based prevention programs to be developed and tested.

No magic pills make musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) disappear, yet risk, human resources and safety departments continue to buy into programs and systems that do not affectively aid in helping employees deemed the “walking wounded.” 

In the last decade or so many organizations have been placing more of a focus on Serious Injury and Fatality prevention (SIF). The theory behind the traditional “Safety Pyramid” (or Heinrich Safety Triangle) says if we reduce incidents at the “base” of the pyramid, it follows we will reduce incidents at the top of the pyramid at an approximately proportional rate. 

Evans Roofing Company, Inc., with its subsidiaries Charles F. Evans (union) and CFE, Inc. (non-union), is a building envelope contractor licensed in 46 states. Charles F. Evans and CFE, Inc. are the only commercial roofing and wall panel contractors to hold the VPP STAR mobile work force designation.

Workers in many fields – construction, landscaping, oil and gas extraction, emergency response, firefighters among others – toil in high heat stress conditions. These tasks can lead to rapid increases in body temperature that raise the risk of heat-related illnesses.

When loud noises cannot be reduced or eliminated through engineering controls, workers who are exposed to them must use hearing protection devices (HPDs) to conserve their hearing. This notion is not new, nor is the concept that HPDs require fit-testing to be effective.

We have gradually come to depend on cell phones and their apps for more and more information about our daily lives. The latest trend seems to be health monitoring that allows the average person to keep an eye on their vital stats. The future of hand protection is moving in much the same direction.

Many devices, including gas detectors, have connectivity features designed to transfer information from a lone worker back to safety personnel on site. Although connectivity features are a tremendous step forward, not all lone worker solutions deliver the protection they need.