July 2010

Slips, trips, and falls (STFs) kill more than 21,000 Americans a year — more than from electrocution, drowning, and firearms incidents combined — at a cost of $60 billion to $80 billion (including medical bills, litigation, and insurance claims). They’re the leading cause of emergency room visits, nursing home admissions, and accidental deaths.

Across industries and across the years, STFs continue to be among the leading causes of workplace injury. According to OSHA, they account for the majority of general industry accidents (including back injuries, sprains and strains, contusions, and fractures) and 15% of all accidental deaths. The opportunities for workplace STFs are too numerous to mention. Slippery walking and working surfaces, leaks, debris left in walkways, uneven floors, protruding nails, bunched floor mats, and uneven step risers are among dozens of dangers your workers face.

Your employees know that falling is a hazard. However, knowledge alone isn’t enough to keep them on their feet. You need a program that identifies the problem, implements focused solutions, and monitors the results. To ensure that you’re doing all you should to keep your people on their feet, take these and other steps:

• If you have wet or oily processes, maintain drainage and provide false floors, platforms, nonsolid mats, or other dry places where possible.
• Use nonskid waxes and grit-coated surfaces in slippery areas.
• Require slip-resistant footwear.
• Clean up spills immediately.
• Use smart housekeeping strategies, such as cleaning one side of a walkway at a time.
• Provide floor plugs so that power cords don’t run across pathways.
• Keep aisles and passageways clear at all times.
• Reinstall or stretch carpets that bulge or have become bunched.
• Provide good lighting for all halls and stairwells, especially at night.
• Provide proper handrails and slip-resistant stair treads.
• Train workers to use handrails, avoid undue speed, and maintain a clear view of the stairs ahead of them.

Focus on employee awareness and participation in your STF program. For example, BJF Healthcare (St. Louis, MO) started to see the benefits of its STF efforts once it found ways to get employees to become actively involved. To encourage participation, BJF ran a “Get a Grip on Your Slips” campaign during which employees called a hotline to report what they had don to prevent themselves or a co-worker from falling. By calling the hotline, employees automatically became eligible for a drawing for a prize. The company’s “Save Yourself a Trip” program motivated employees to come up with anti-trip and fall strategies and to share them with co-workers.

There are nearly 5 million permit-required confined spaces in workplaces nationwide, plus another million “non-permit” spaces. Confined space accidents, which often result in injuries or fatalities, happen more often than you might think. According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, these mishaps usually occur because workers encounter one or more of these potential hazards:

• Lack of natural ventilation
• Oxygen-deficient atmosphere
• Flammable/explosive atmosphere
• Unexpected release of hazardous energy
• Limited entry and exit
• Dangerous concentrations of air contaminants
• Physical barriers or limitations to movement
• Instability of stored products.

To prevent, or minimize accidents in confined spaces, we’d recommend a three-pronged safety program: Training, testing, and rescue preparedness.

1. Train
Training should emphasize recognizing what constitutes confined spaces, the potential hazards they pose, and the precautions that workers and managers must take to prevent accidents and injuries. Stressing that death is a likely outcome in confined space accidents usually makes trainees sit up and take notice.

2. Test
Testing, evaluation, and continuous monitoring are essential. More than half of confined space fatalities result from hazardous atmospheric conditions such as toxic vapors or lack of oxygen. NIOSH recommends that a qualified person test all confined spaces for oxygen level, flammability, and known or suspected toxic substances to determine whether the atmosphere is safe for entry.

3. Rescue
Make sure that trained, equipped, and experienced rescue personnel are available in case of emergency. A significant percentage of confined space fatalities and injuries involve would-be rescuers who rush in without proper training or equipment. NIOSH advises creating rescue procedures specific to the type of confined space and its hazards before rescuers enter the space.

Skin cancer accounts for more than half of the cancer cases in the nation each year. Exposure to the sun causes most of the more than 1 million cases of non-melanoma skin cancers (such as the basal or squamous cell type), which usually develop on sun-exposed areas of the body: Face, ears, neck, lips, and the back of the hands.

If your employees work outdoors during the summer, they should beware of these symptoms:

• Any change on the skin, especially in the size or color of a mole or other darkly pigmented growth or spot, or a new growth
• Scaliness, oozing, bleeding, or change in the appearance of a bump or nodule;
• The spread of pigmentation, such as dark coloring that spreads past the edge of a mole or mark
• Change in sensation, itchiness, tenderness, or pain.

Training outdoor workers to limit their exposure to the sun can help them not only to prevent skin cancer but also protect them against sunburn, premature skin aging, and eye damage.

Make sure that your employees:

• Avoid outdoor activities between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.
• Stay in the shade if they’re outside midday
• Understand that because ultraviolet (UV) rays will penetrate clouds, it’ possible to get a bad sunburn even on a cloudy day
• Know their risk factors for skin cancer such as a fair complexion, family history, multiple or atypical moles, and severe sunburns as a child.

If your workers must be outside during peak sunshine hours, have them use sunscreen and lip balm with a sun protection factor (SPF) of 15 or higher, applied in generous amounts (about a palmful) several minutes before going outside, and reapplied every two hours – or after toweling dry or perspiring. They should also wear broad brimmed hats to protect their head, ears, and neck. Clothing should be dark colored, and made of tightly woven fabric treated with an Ultraviolet Protection Factor (UPF) rating of 50 or higher. Workers can also wash sun protection into their clothes with an approved laundry additive that increases the protection and lasts through 20 washings.

Make sure that employees protect their eyes and the surrounding skin as well. They should wear sunglasses that provide 99% to 100% UV absorption and block both forms of UV radiation—UVA and UVB (pricier sunglasses or those with a darker tint don’t necessarily offer more UV protection). It’s wise to select wraparound glasses that offer side protection.