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| Don’t Want Them to Fade? Provide Water and Shade |
Work doesn't stop just because it's summer, but that doesn't mean that supervisors can forget about the heat and have their workers forge ahead full steam as though it’s November.
Follow these precautions to help keep the heat off your employees
1. Let the water flow: People often wait until they are thirsty to drink water but if you are doing physically demanding work and become dehydrated, you can't catch up and are at risk for potentially fatal heat illness. Employees need to be encouraged to drink water continuously on hot days and you must provide it.
2. Let your employees become accustomed to working in hot conditions. They cannot go from working in comfortable temperatures to working full-tilt in a heat wave. Allow them frequent rest breaks in the shade and save extra-demanding physical jobs for cooler parts of the day.
3. Educate yourself and your workers about the various forms of heat illness. It can start with weakness, headache, muscle cramps, dizziness, nausea, confusion/irritability and dehydration. The person must be taken out of the heat to a cool, shaded area and given plenty of water and allowed to rest. If the worker does not improve dramatically within half an hour, a doctor should be consulted. If someone continues to work with these symptoms, the body's internal temperature can rise to life-threatening levels and the person may die of heat stroke.
4. Encourage workers to wear hats and to dress in light-colored, lightweight, loose clothing. They should be using sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 15 and reapplying it if they are sweating it off. Workers who are overweight or have medical conditions should ask their doctors about additional precautions to take while working in hot conditions, whether indoors or outdoors.
5. Ensure that indoor areas are kept well ventilated and that fans or air conditioners are operating.
Protect your workers from potentially fatal heat stress by training them on the dangers, symptoms and appropriate response measures. SafetySmart has many tools to help, including eLearning, fatality reports, clip art, Safety Talks and puzzles, such as this Word Search puzzle and this Safety Talk (Excessive Heat Could Cause a Disaster for You).
Need access to additional resources on this topic? Try SafetySmart today and get immediate access to safety talks, presentations and more. Sign up for a free 14-day trial now. |
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| This worker has found a new and cringe-inspiring way of using a stepladder. Not only is the ladder set up in a completely unsafe manner, but the worker’s position on it could cause him to fall even before the ladder slips. Not pretty. (Photo source unknown) |
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| VPP Company Cited Following Worker’s Death |
Achieving Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) status with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) means that a company or organization has demonstrated exemplary safety and health practices.
But that can all change in an instant, as it did for a Wisconsin packaging company that now finds itself charged with 29 serious workplace safety violations after a worker died in an explosion.
American Packaging Corp. of Columbus, WI, became a VPP member in 2009 and only a few months later, one of its 230 workers, Jeffrey Doxtater, 47, was killed while using a metal grinder in a room containing flammable vapors.
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Related story: Taking a Successful Safety Program to the Next Level.
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Related story: Chemical Safety Board Warns Against Common Pipe Cleaning Practice
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