Safety News Blog

Presidential Proclamation - National Hurricane Preparedness Week

National Hurricane Preparedness Week highlights the importance of planning ahead to protect our families and secure our communities and homes in advance of the upcoming hurricane season.

Hurricanes are powerful storms that can create severe flooding, dangerous storm surges, high winds, and tornadoes. The effects of these storms can be devastating to entire communities and can have long-lasting consequences, including loss of life and property. In addition to threatening coastal areas, hurricanes significantly impact inland locations. Our Nation has seen devastating hurricanes and storms, and we must not let our guard down as we prepare for this year's hurricane season. With tens of millions of Americans living in coastal communities, preparation can enhance our ability to respond to and recover from any natural disaster we might face.

Our Nation's weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center continue to improve the accuracy of their hurricane forecasts. However, we cannot prevent a hurricane from making landfall, and awareness of the threat is not enough -- we must translate this knowledge into action, and work together to develop prepared and resilient communities. My Administration recognizes that we must move from a government-centric approach to disaster management to a community-oriented approach that includes all levels of government, the private sector, volunteers, community and faith-based organizations, and the public. A whole community effort is needed to effectively prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against any disaster.

During National Hurricane Preparedness Week, we emphasize the need for individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and families to prepare emergency plans, create emergency supply kits, and learn evacuation routes. More information on hurricane hazards and details on how to secure buildings and belongings is available atwww.Hurricanes.gov/Prepare and www.Ready.gov.

America has seen the heartbreak a hurricane can leave behind. By working together, government, private and nonprofit organizations, emergency responders, and private citizens can help save lives and reduce the damage caused by these storms.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 22 through May 28, 2011, as National Hurricane Preparedness Week. I call upon government agencies, private organizations, schools, media, and residents in the coastal areas of our Nation to share information about hurricane preparedness and response to help save lives and protect communities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twentieth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fifth.

BARACK OBAMA

Do you have a “Ho-Hum” Approach to Hazards?

By Carl Potter, CSP, CMC and Deb Potter PhD, CMC

What is your first reaction when you find a hazard? In a quick poll, we found the most common answer to be “it depends.” Depends on what? The answers to that question were quite varied:

“It depends how serious the hazard is.”

“It depends if I can fix it or not.”

“It depends on my manager or supervisor – what I think they’ll do about it.”

Far too often when we do site walk-throughs at the invitation of our clients or as part of our Hazard Recognition and Control Workshop, we find that people often do not see the hazards in the workplace and even more frequently do not know what to do about a hazard. Why is that?

We’ve found a few reasons for the problem of not knowing what to do about hazards. One is the lack of training. The other is that workers are led by leaders who do not have a specific approach to hazard recognition and mitigation; they develop a “ho-hum” attitude about hazards.

A Ho-Hum Approach to Hazards

Think back to the last time you found a hazard. What did you do? An all too frequent scenario is that the leader of a safety meeting asks a question about any recent findings, incidents, or near-misses. Someone will bring up an issue, let’s say a hole in the parking lot. A lot of discussion follows with different folks jumping in to say they’ve noticed that as a problem and wish someone would do something about it. Then the note taker for the meeting makes a note of the issue and nothing happens until the next meeting when the minutes are read, and someone says something like, “Yeah, they never do anything about this stuff. Why bother.” And it’s on to the next item on the agenda. The scenario gets repeated the next month, when more remarks are made about nobody in management caring to take care of anything. Then someone says, “They just give it lip-service around here! Why should we bother turning anything in?” In the next few meetings, no hazards are discussed or brought up. No one says anything when the meeting leader gets to that item on the agenda. Then it happens, someone trips in the hole, breaks an ankle, and it becomes an OSHA recordable. Then it all breaks loose! The site manager is all over it. The facilities manager calls the asphalt company and suddenly you have a brand new parking lot.

The scenario may be different in your company, yet we’ve all seen it played out in some form or another. Several issues exist here: lack of clear ownership of the problem, the nonexistence of follow-up with the person who reported the hazard, and an absence of follow-through to complete mitigation. These issues, when left unchecked, go far beyond “ho-hum”; they lead to a dangerous culture in which safety gets a low priority. If this seems all too familiar, consider the following process to help you make a necessary correction.

Implement a Hazard Tracking Process

Recognizing and mitigating hazards is the hallmark of any exceptional safety management process.The premise is this: if you find a hazard in your workplace, you should know precisely how to handle the situation regardless if you know how to mitigate the hazard.

Establishing and supporting a hazard tracking process is one of the things that any company of any size can implement to get immediate results. Here are the basic steps:

1. Develop a tracking mechanism. This can be as simple as a list on a white board or a spreadsheet that is posted and accessible. Certainly more elaborate systems are available. The primary elements are: hazard description, person reporting, date reported, person assigned as responsible, action taken and date, date of completion.

2. Establish an employee and management joint ownership of the list. This list of “open” hazards provides a tool that can be jointly owned by employees and their leaders. Agree that this list will be kept in front of the safety committee, the employees, and site management and updated frequently.

3. Hold each other accountable for the timely resolution of reported hazards. Certainly, it goes without saying, all hazards must be dealt with as soon as they are discovered. They must be guarded and reported. The purpose of the “list” is to document the intermediate steps taken to resolve the issue and to ensure that longer term solutions are applied. While you hold each other accountable also work to understand that some things take time and are part of broader decisions. Ensure that everyone who works in and around the noted situation knows how to protect themselves – that is first order of business.

The Bottom Line: Find and Fix

The purpose of identifying hazards and tracking them until they are resolved is to keep everyone’s awareness high. This is what OSHA refers to as “find and fix.” Declare war on the ho-hum attitude. Make good faith efforts and discuss the situations that are potentially harmful in your workplace. After all, the goal is this: nobody gets hurt.

HAVE YOU REGISTERED YET?

Carl Potter is presenting his Hazard Recognition and Control Workshop in a rare

Open Enrollment

Henderson, Nevada

March 17, 2011

Enroll at by clicking here

Only a few seats are left!

This one of the best things you can do to help people in your organization learn to recognize hazards.

Interested in your own workshop? Contact us at 800-259-6209 or visit

www.HazardRecognitionWorkshop.com

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Carl Potter, CSP, CMC and Deb Potter, PhD, CMC work with organizations that want to create an environment where nobody gets hurt. As advocates of a zero-injury workplace, they are speakers, authors, and consultants to industry. As a general aviation pilot and certified flight instructor, Carl enjoys infusing aviation safety principles into his workplace programs. For information about bringing Carl and Deb to your company or your next conference, contact them at Potter and Associates International, Inc. 800-259-6209 or www.carlpotter.com.

Learning to Be Safe

A progressive process to an injury-free workplace

By Carl Potter, CSP

Have you heard the joke about...?

One day a guy walked into a blacksmith’s shop where the craftsman was beating on a cherry red horseshoe, shaping it to fit a customer's horse. Knowing the man wasn’t familiar with the workings of a blacksmith shop, the smith announced, “Don’t touch anything hot.” Not being familiar with the hazards associated with this type of work, the man reached over and picked up a horseshoe. He was surprised to find out that the one he picked up was still hot. When he dropped it faster than he picked it up, the blacksmith calmly asked, "Was that hot?" He responded with clenched teeth, "Nope, it just doesn't take long for me to look at a horseshoe."

Sometimes we think we take actions because we think we know everything. As I state in my book, "I AM Safe!" there is a gap between knowing and doing. Working safe implies action or “doing.” Sometimes, it seems that we focus more on the “doing” than the “knowing.” To overcome this gap, it is essential that the organization become focused on learning. Consider the following five tips to help your organization and the individuals within it to be resolute in gaining knowledge that can be applied.

Five Steps to Resolute Learning

First, there must be an objective. If the objective of an organization or individual is to prevent every workplace injury then we must identify what can cause harm. Every individual must learn to recognize the hazards that can cause harm. This is the basis of creating a safe work place.

Second, there must be a process. Once employees are trained to recognize hazards, the next step is to use a process to capture the information about the exposures. This requires a survey of the workplace, tasks to be completed, and the tools required to do the job. This process is known asjob hazard analysis (JHA). Through this analysis, the organization identifies accepted practices for mitigating the hazard; workers must be trained so they can begin to apply controls to reduce the risk of injury.

Next, organizational knowledge must be shared. Knowledge about how to mitigate a hazard isn’t worth much if it is not shared. And by sharing the information, learning can take place. Knowledge can be shared in a variety of ways in an organization: formal training courses, college classes, on-the-job training, observation, and personal development. Regardless of the method, learning is a progression of steps that can be applied by individuals and organizations.

The Progression of Learning

Progression means that there are steps that lead to a result. Simply put, if you do “a” then “b” then “c” you can expect “d”. In the learning model, the progress begins with rote learning, then understanding, then application. The result is correlation.

Rote learning is the ability to repeat a learned knowledge or skill without a great deal of understanding.

Employees might be able to quote a safety rule found in a company's safety manual. In some cases they may be able to demonstrate an action to be safe such as, wearing a hard hat, safety glasses and ear plugs without knowing why they are doing it. Certainly we hope to observe employees carrying out this activity that leads to injury prevention, yet to stop at that point would simply be compliance. In other words, the individual only performs this action when and as the rules requires. If we can help the person to understand why they are doing it, the learning process begins to progress.

Understanding means that the individual or organization as a whole comprehends or grasps the reason for performing a required activity. Many organizations improve employee safety compliance by using the experiences of someone who has been injured on a job. Although this is effective because it increases awareness and motivates employees, it does little to increase understanding. Understanding begins to happen once employees are taught why, when and how to apply the safety activity to reduce the risk of injury.

Application is the ability to put into operation something learned and understood. The crucial component is that the appropriate knowledge must be applied consistently. By understanding the fundamentals of safety and then understanding how and when to make application of appropriate controls the connection, or correlation, can be made.

This correlation of appropriately applying knowledge to achieve is critical to moving an organization to continually create an injury-free workplace. The ability to recognize a hazard and then apply the control (safety rule) to other instances where the same rule or control will mitigate risk of injury is correlation. This progressive process of learning safety is the responsibility of the organization. Most organizations attempt to help workers apply the learning process in weekly, monthly and in some cases an annual safety meeting.

Creating Effective Learning Opportunities

Consider the effectiveness of the learning opportunities in your organization. Are you going beyond simply having employees read from the safety manual during the weekly or monthly meeting? Most employees will tell you, if you ask them, that this is a frustrating and annoying practice that makes them nervous and uncomfortable. Just reading a rule fails to complete the full learning process. The safety learning process must be designed to create the desired objective through specific steps that can be measured and then observed to insure the process is effective. Learning can take place when employees learn to recognize hazards, how to control them, and then create shared appropriate knowledge that can be applied.

Imagine a workplace where employees know the safety rule, understand why the rule exists, can apply the rule directly and can also apply it to other hazards where it can effectively prevent injury. This is the foundation of a workplace where employees can take responsibility for safety, so that they and their co-workers can go home every day without injury. When the organization commits to develop a progressive learning process, the result will be the ultimate goal: Nobody Gets Hurt.

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Carl Potter, CSP conducts his customized Hazard Recognition and Control Workshop at company locations that include the progressive learning model. Contact him at 800-259-6209 to learn more. You may also want to gain access to Carl's work by obtaining a membership to the Simply Seamless Safety® Institute at www.safetyinsititute.com

Members have access to the Safety Education Resource Center (SERC) where articles, videos and Vol.1 of 52 Weeks of Safety are located and license is granted to use this material to educate employees in creating an injury-free workplace. Click here for individual membership.

Construction Industry Records and Reporting

Access to Medical and Exposure Records

Each employer must permit employees, their designatedrepresentatives, and OSHA direct access to employer-maintained exposure andmedical records. The standard limits access only to those employees who are,have been (including former employees), or will be exposed to toxic substancesor harmful physical agents. Each employer must preserve and maintain accuratemedical and exposure records for each employee. Exposure records and dataanalyses based on them are to be kept for 30 years. Medical records are to bekept for at least the duration of employment plus 30 years. Background data forexposure records such as laboratory reports and work sheets need to be kept foronly 1 year.

Records of employees who have worked for less than 1 year need not be retained after employment, but the employer must provide these records to the employee upon termination of employment. First-aid records of one-time treatment need not be retained for any specified period.

Accident Recordkeeping and Reporting Requirements

Each employer must maintain, in each location, a log and summary of all recordable injuries and illnesses (resulting in a fatality, hospitalization, lost workdays, medical treatment, job transfer or termination, or loss of consciousness) for that location, and enter each recordable event no later than 6 working days after receiving the information. Where the complete log and summary records are maintained at a place other than the establishment, a copy of the log that reflects the injury and illnesses experience of the establishment must be complete and current to date within 45 calendar days and must be available at the original site. In addition to the log of occupational injuries and illnesses, each employer must have available for inspection at each establishment within 6 working days after notification of a recordable case, a supplementary record for each occupational injury or illness for that establishment.

Each employer must post an annual summary of occupational injuries and illnesses for each establishment, compiled from the collected OSHA 200 Log, which includes the year’s totals, calendar year covered, company name, establishment name and address, certification signature, title, and date. An OSHA 200 Log must be used in presenting the summary. The summary must be posted by February 1 of each year and must remain in place until March 1 of the same year. The log and summary, the supplementary record, and the annual summary must be retained in each establishment for 5 years following the end of the year to which they relate. Records must be made available, as authorized, upon request.

Within 8 hours after its occurrence, an employment accident that is fatal to one or more employees or that results in the over-night hospitalization of three or more employees must be reported by the employer, either orally or in writing, to the nearest OSHA area director.

2 OSHA Administrative Penalty Information Bulletin

OSHA is implementing several changes to its administrative penalty calculation system. Many of the agency's current penalty adjustment factors have been in place since the early 1970's, resulting in penalties which are often too low to have an adequate deterrent effect. Administrative penalty adjustments will therefore be made to several factors which impact the final penalty issued to employers. These factors include:

History Reduction
History Increase
Repeat Violations
Severe Violator Enforcement Program
Gravity-Based Penalty
Size Reduction
Good Faith
Minimum Penalties
Additional Administrative Modifications to the Penalty Calculation Policy

A brief description of each penalty adjustment factor and planned changes are provided below:

History Reduction
The time frame for considering an employer's history of violations will expand from three years to five. An employer who has been inspected by OSHA within the previous five years and has not been issued any serious, willful, repeat, or failure-to-abate citations will receive a 10 percent reduction for history.
History Increase
An employer that has been cited by OSHA for any high gravity serious, willful, repeat, or failure-to-abate violation within the previous five years will receive a 10 percent increase in their penalty, up to the statutory maximum. Employers who have not been inspected and those who have received citations for serious violations that were not high gravity will receive neither a reduction nor an increase for history.
Repeat Violations
The time period for considering the classification of repeated violations will be increased from three to five years.
Severe Violator Enforcement Program
Where circumstances warrant, at the discretion of the Area Director, high gravity serious violations related to standards and hazards identified in the SVEP will not normally be grouped or combined, and may be cited as separate violations, with individual proposed penalties.
Gravity-Based Penalty (GBP)
The gravity of a violation is the primary consideration in calculating penalties and is established by assessing the severity of the injury/illness which could result from a hazard and the probability that an injury or illness could occur. OSHA is adopting a gravity-based penalty structure for serious citations which will range from $3,000 to $7,000.
Size Reduction
OSHA will be amending its penalty reduction structure based on the size of employers, allowing for a penalty reduction between 10 and 40 percent for those with less than 250 employees. No size reduction will be applied for employers with 251 or more employees.
Good Faith
The current good faith procedures in the Field Operations Manual will be retained. A penalty reduction is permitted in recognition of an employer's effort to implement an effective workplace safety and health program. Employers must have a safety and health program in place to get any good faith reduction. Good faith reductions are not allowed in the cases of high gravity serious, willful, repeat, or failure-to-abate violations.

The 15% Quick-Fix reduction, which is currently allowed as an abatement incentive program to encourage employers to immediately abate hazards identified during inspections, remains unchanged. However, the 10% reduction for employers with a strategic partnership agreement will be eliminated.
Minimum Penalties
The minimum proposed penalty for a serious violation will be increased to $500. When the proposed penalty for a serious violation would amount to less than $500, a $500 penalty will be proposed for that violation. The proposed minimum penalty for a posting violation will increase to $250 if the company was previously provided a poster by OSHA.
Additional Administrative Modifications to the Penalty Calculation Policy
Final penalties will be calculated serially, unlike the current practice where all penalty reductions are added and the total percentage of reductions is then multiplied by the gravity-based penalty to arrive at the proposed penalty. All penalty adjustment factors will be applied serially.

These changes will establish general agency policy and do not preclude the agency from assessing a different penalty, where appropriate under the Act, in light of all circumstances in a particular case.

2010 Florida Occupational Safety Conference and Expo

Thanks to all who contributed their time and effort in collaboration with Safety Products Inc for helping us create our most successful Safety Conference and Expo. Many talents were at work with our exhibitors, guest speakers and live demonstration guests. We'd also like to thank the many attendees who came to share in this experience with us. We hope you found this to be an educational event that you would want to attend again.

Our favorite activity of the day though had to be our now famous Safety Fashion Show. Thanks to the Safety Products Inc Field Sales Team for allowing me to put you in an otherwise uncomfortable situation. You were all truly talented and entertaining and contributed to another favorable outcome for our attendees and exhibitors alike.

See you all next time at the SPI Florida Occupational Safety Conference and Expo!
Jodie Ciccarello,
Marketing Manager
Safety Products Inc

The Safety Culture War

Three Things You can do to Improve Your Safety Culture

By Carl and Deb Potter

Is there a Culture War in your Workplace?

Not too long ago an executive of a large company in a high-risk industry proudly displayed his handsome new shirt. The shirt had a company logo. Below the logo was a large “7” in bright yellow and a line below that read: Reduce Injuries to 7 in 2007.

What this leader didn’t understand was that he was contributing to the safety culture war in his organization. Yet research shows that not every one has the same beliefs when it comes to workplace safety.

One Organization, Three Cultures

Think about your organization for a moment. Does everyone seem to be on the same page when it comes to safety? It’s likely that if you spend time talking to people in different parts of the organization, you’ll soon learn that you can group people into three categories of safety beliefs: workers, engineers, and executives. These three categories don’t necessarily represent job titles; but rather viewpoints when it comes to safety. These perspectives represent safety sub-cultures in your organization. The farther apart the beliefs of the sub-cultures, the deeper the divide in your organization.

Different Perspectives, Different Beliefs

Let’s examine the three sub-cultures that seem to exist in most organizations:

1. Workers. Front-line employees who face hazards daily in the course of their work want to know that they can go home every day without an injury. They want to know that their leaders are there to create and support an environment where nobody gets hurt. The perspective in this sub-culture is people.

Engineers. The engineering sub-culture typically is concerned about systems and equipment. People in this sub-culture want to know how to improve equipment, tools, and processes to improve safety. They rely on statistics as their yard-stick. After an incident occurs, the focus is on improving equipment or systems. The perspective in this sub-culture isprocess.

Executives. The executive sub-culture focuses on the cost of safety, usually in terms of dollars. This culture may include executives and managers as well as people with accounting and budgeting responsibilities. The primary question these people ask is: How much is that going to cost? The perspective in this sub-culture is profits.

These different beliefs exist in an organization primarily because of theperspective that different parts of the organization play and because they haven’t been exposed to different perspectives or a unifying perspective.[MSOff

Stop the Culture War

As a leader in your organization, you can bring together different perspectives into one ideal: nobody gets hurt. Here are three things to consider:

Adopt an expectation that no one gets hurt doing their job.

Be vocal – let people know what’s important to you. The reality is that no on can argue with a belief that is focused on everyone going home every day without an injury.

Start today to express your desire that nobody gets hurt on or off the job.

Organize your daily calendar to include safety as a priority.

If you’re like most people, if it doesn’t get put on the calendar, it won’t get done. Make it a habit to schedule at least on safety-related high value activity.

Begin every day by scheduling time to include a safety specific activity.

Show your appreciation to employees who demonstrate a high regard for safety.

One of the best ways to build a culture that is focused on the goal that “nobody gets hurt” is to involve people -- the more, the better. And, people want to get involved when they feel appreciated and are acknowledged for their efforts.

Take time every day to thank an employee for his or her efforts to create an injury-free workplace.

Hope for a Common Goal

No matter how divided your organization’s safety culture seems to be, you can make a difference. It doesn’t matter what your job title is, you can make a difference by leading others around you to create an environment where nobody gets hurt. That’s a goal everyone can live with!

Carl Potter, CSP, CMC and Deb Potter, PhD, CMC work with organizations that target a zero-injury workplace so everyone can go home to their families every day without injury. As advocates of a zero-injury workplace, they are speakers, authors, and consultants to industry. For information about bringing Carl and Deb to your company or your next conference, contact them at Potter and Associates International, Inc. 800-259-6209 orwww.SimplySeamlessSafety.com

Hurry Up and Get Hurt!

Hurry Up and Get Hurt

by Carl Potter, CSP

Root cause analysis is a tool that many safety professionals and organizations use to identify "what caused the injury." This is tough work because the injured party usually says, "Oh, it just happened!" As we dig down and get to the root cause, 97% of the time we find the injured person didn't see the hazard and failed to control it. During the investigation (or as I like to call it, "Interrogation") we often find a competent individual who just got in a hurry and got hurt.

Hurry is the most common cause of injuries I have reviewed, investigated and advised on. Hurry is the reason we forgot to "follow the safety procedure." Hurry is the reason we:

- break the speed limit driving to the safety meeting

- run to the safety meeting

- walk past spilled coffee in the hall thinking, "somebody should clean that up"

- trip climbing the stairs because we have an armful of donuts for the (you guessed it!) safety meeting

At work or at home it is hard to stop and take the time to do an activity safely unless we consider the possible outcome. If we are:

- breaking the speed limit can lead to a wreck

- running can cause you to land in the hospital

- leaving spilled coffee uncontrolled can cause a co-worker to slip and fall

- tripping and falling down the stairs can put you in a wheel chair the rest of your life (not to mention all of the ruined donuts)

We hurry when we are trying to catch up. Feeling rushed takes up space in your brain and can lead to a mistake. The control for this easily, but seldom dealt with, hazard is to slow down. If you are late starting a job, it is likely going to take you the same amount of time. In other words, recognize that you cannot make up the lost time. Being late on jobs continually may mean you are continually late getting started (imagine that).

Some people feel rushed because the boss has pushed the deadline for a job up and now it sounds like he or she is telling you to hurry up even though it may mean that you get hurt, but that's not true. Schedules get pushed up for many reasons, but when it comes to doing a safe and quality job, the 'squeezed' deadline might not be met. The reality of hurrying through any job is that it leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to injuries and an inferior product.

This week in your safety contact time, open the discussion about hurry. See if anyone can describe what hurry looks like on the job and what could result. Go one step further and count how many times you find yourself being in a hurry during the next five work days. Report back at your next safety meeting. Take the time to do this and you will be well on your way to targeting zero injuries and ensuring that Nobody Gets Hurt on your job.

To learn about Carl's work, you might want to visit:

www.safetyandthesupervisor.com

www.hazardrecognitionworkshop.com

Consider purchasing a 52 Weeks of Safety Workbook for each of you team members. This will meet some compliance training for less than .29 cents per week, per employee. Click Here to Learn More

Carl Potter, Certified Safety Professional and Certified Management Consultant works with organizations that want to create an environment where nobody gets hurt. As an advocate of a zero-injury workplace, he speaks, writes, and consultants to industry. As a general aviation pilot, Carl enjoys infusing aviation safety principles into his workplace programs.

If you have questions about working with Carl Potter, call 800-259-6209

2-Minute Safety Training Talk

How Noise Affects Hearing

Understanding Hearing Loss

Hearing loss is a normal part of the aging process. Throughout our lives we are exposed to loud noises and physical conditions that add up to gradual loss of hearing. But many of us lose our hearing prematurely by failing to protect ourselves from excess noise both at home and at the workplace. Understanding how hearing works can help you realize the importance of protecting your hearing now, before it's too late.

How Hearing Works

The ear is composed of numerous delicate structures designed to carry sound waves to the brain. The hair cells in the inner ear are particularly important because they stimulate the auditory nerve which transmits impulses to the brain. The brain translates auditory impulses into the sounds that we hear. When the ear's hair cells become damaged due to excess noise exposure, the auditory nerve is not sufficiently stimulated, the brain does not receive the appropriate sound signal, and we fail to hear correctly. And, when hair cells are damaged by prolonged over-exposure to loud noise, they "die" and cannot be replaced, resulting in permanent hearing loss.

Excess Noise Exposure

Noise is measured in units called decibels (dBs or dBAs) Excess noise is generally considered to be exposure to 85-90 decibels or more over an 8-hour period. A typical automobile horn can be as loud as 120 decibels, but hearing a horn honk for 10 seconds is unlikely to cause hearing loss. If you had to listen to the horn blast for 8 hours straight, though, you could very well experience gradual, permanent loss of hearing. Or, if you work in a factory and are exposed to 80 decibels of noise over a 4-hour period, you might not be at risk. But, if you then went home and operated a power mower or tools, listened to high-volume music, or perhaps practiced at the shooting range, you could very well exceed your safe noise exposure limit.

Protecting Your Hearing

On or off the job, you can protect your hearing by wearing the appropriate personal protective equipment recommended for your tasks. Ear muffs, plugs, and canal caps can all reduce the amount of noise your ears are exposed to. It also helps to know the decibel range or noise level of some common activities and situations to see if you may be exposing yourself to too much noise. Remember that even loud vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, and home power tools can create excessive noise, so protect your hearing wherever you are.

Safety Up!

By Carl Potter, CSP

In Oklahoma, the term “cowboy up” means to get ready to ride or work cattle by putting on your boots, chaps, hat, and other equipment needed for the task. I heard someone who was having some legal issues say, "I guess I need to lawyer up!" So when I say, "Safety up!" I'm saying, "Plan your job by protecting yourself , co-workers, and anyone else from hazards to prevent injuries.”

To “safety up” you need to know what to do. Knowing what to do is about learning; to learn something you have to gain knowledge or information. We may go to a school, attend a seminar, read a book or watch a video to receive the knowledge. Knowledge on it's own is worthless until it is applied. Knowing how to apply the knowledge is the result of training.

Training is accomplished by applying the knowledge we have; then we practice the application repeatedly. As a pilot, I am constantly reading about techniques and maneuvers, when they are used and how to do them, but if I don,t get in the airplane and practice until I can do them to a certain level of acceptance, learning has not occured. Once I feel confident in my ability to apply the knowledge and know how to perform a particular maneuver, I am usually required to prove I can do it with an observer in the airplane. Submitting myself to be observed demonstrates my commiment to personal performace and willingness to perform the task I have learned when required.

Willingness means being motivated to do what is required when it is required. If someone says, "Oh, I know how to do that", but is found not performing the task when required, then the process of learning may be broken. If we are going to safety up, we need to gain the necessary knowledge, have the motivation to apply what we’ve learned, and the willingness to practice.

Here are three ways you can safety up:

Learn what regulatory bodies such as OSHA have to say about your industry. In addition, learn what other industries are doing to protect their workers from similar hazards that exist in your industry.
Practice the safety tasks you will be applying on the job. Make sure that you are performing the tasks to a measurable standard.
Submit yourself to be observed by someone else and ask for feedback. Let everyone around you – co-workers and your supervisor, for example - know that you want their feedback and then prove it by accepting it in a positive manner.

From now on, Safety Up! so that you can hit the goal Nobody Gets Hurt.

Carl Potter, CSP, CMC, CSP works with organizations that want to create an environment where nobody gets hurt. As an advocate for zero-injury workplaces, he is a nationally-renowned safety speaker, author, and advisor to industry. He also enjoys flying and infusing aviation safety concepts into workplace safety practices. For information about his programs including Hazard Recognition and Control Workshop, check out www.carlpotter.com orcontact him at Potter and Associates International, Inc. 800-259-6209 or carl@potterandassociates.com.

Permission granted to reprint with the following complete attribution: © 2010 Carl Potter, Potter and Associates International. 800-259-6209

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