The Hidden Deaths of Mining

Some workers killed on the job aren’t counted in fatality records, making the industry appear safer than it is

Many mining deaths aren’t captured by global safety statistics, making the industry seem safer than it is to regulators, investors and consumers.

Metro admits mistakes were made when a full train was sent towards possible track fire

“Some of the most concerning things we heard on those audio files is that as a direct result of the chaotic atmosphere in the ROCC during the events of December 10, is that the use of checklists and strict adherence to procedure, what we call procedural discipline, seemed to go out the window,” he said. “And as a result, a bad situation was made worse.”

After completing an internal review, Metro said it has already taken immediate corrective actions and identified specific areas where additional training and supervisory oversight are required.

“We work in a safety culture, and we look for opportunities to improve after every incident,” said Metro spokesperson Dan Stessel. “So we are going to stay focused on what I believe we and WMSC share: the goal of having the safest Metro we can possibly deliver for our customers and employees.”

Benefits of ‘proactive approach’ to farm health and safety in 2020

Farmers can develop a positive health and safety culture within their business by using the New Year as a time to review procedures and put plans in place for any training required by employees and family members.

This is according to rural firm Strutt & Parker, who highlight that figures from the Health and Safety Executive show that in 2018/19 a total of 39 people in Britain were fatally injured in an agricultural incident.

Many more have been seriously injured or made ill by their work.

Robert Gazely, health and safety expert with Strutt & Parker, said: “The New Year is a prudent time to review the policies and procedures in place, to make sure risk assessments are up-to-date and that steps are being taken to bring about a positive health and safety culture among all workers.”

Safety Leadership: Demonstrate your personal safety ethic

One challenge leaders often have is that although they may articulate that they understand why safety is important, it can be a struggle to show that safety is authentically part of “who they are.” In other words, they have difficulty showing that it’s rooted in their personal safety ethic.

This needs to change if their organization is committed to changing its safety culture. Having a personal safety ethic means that safety is actively seen by both their leadership peers and front-line workers as a part of their agenda, and that they have the conviction to carry it out. This value for safety is perceived as transcending the traditional business culture because it has been made a priority.

So, what is a “personal safety ethic,” anyway?

A leader’s personal safety ethic is demonstrated by every action taken and not taken when it comes to safety

NTSB: Poor crew training, oversight led to tuna seiner fire On Dec. 6, 2018, the 228-foot tuna seiner Jeanette sank off Tutuila Island, a part of American Samoa, after being on fire for nearly 23 hours. The estimated damage exceeded $15 million. There was no loss of life.

The Jeanette, which was built in 1975 and owned by C & F Fishing LTD in San Diego, Calif., but home ported in America Samoa, caught fire and sank as a result of inadequate crew training and oversight, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s marine accident brief.

The Jeanette, with 18 crew members, had been fishing in the Pacific for about two weeks when the captain ended the trip and returned to Pago Pago Harbor on Nov. 22 to offload 1,330 metric tons of tuna valued at $1.75 million.

The Jeanette was a 228-foot steel hull tuna seiner built in 1975. NTSB photo. The Jeanette was a 228-foot steel hull tuna seiner built in 1975. NTSB photo.

Several senior officers left the Jeanette while it waited its turn to offload. During that time, an item on the maintenance work list called for removing wasted sections of the overhead frames on the wet deck and to weld in replacements.

Pharmacy staff are less concerned about prosecution when reporting patient safety incidents

Only 14% of pharmacy professionals are worried about criminal prosecution when reporting a patient safety incident, compared with 40% in 2016, survey results have showed.

The results of the 2019 ‘Patient safety culture survey’ of 917 pharmacy professionals, carried out by the Community Pharmacy Patient Safety Group (PSG) in April and May 2019 came after the introduction of a legal defence for dispensing errors in 2018.

The survey also showed that 22% of pharmacy professionals would not report a patient safety incident inside their organisation owing to fears of criminal prosecution. This is compared with 40% of 623 respondents saying in 2016 that they would not report a patient safety incident because of the possibility of criminal prosecution.

Kelowna fire department opens up about job-related PTSD

Gone are the days when firefighters would only put out fires.

Today, they respond to all kinds of urgent calls.

“We assist B.C. Ambulance with all kinds of medical calls, we have several specialty teams, we have a high-angle rope team, we do swift-water rescue, ice rescue, we have a hazmat (hazardous material) team, that helps the whole regional district with hazmat issues,” said Kelowna firefighter Ryan Corsi.

“We have a marine rescue boat for issues on the lake, so everything, motor vehicle accidents.”

Many of the calls are difficult, and, over time, can and do take a heavy toll on a firefighter’s mental health.

“We deal with a lot of the sadder types of calls, a lot of death, a lot of injuries, Corsi said. “Anything to do with children, it’s never a nice thing. Those are the ones … it’s usually a little quieter on the way back to the hall.”

Trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is said to be prevalent among first responders.

“A recent study that came out suggested that 40 per cent of firefighters are struggling with PTSD or some kind of a stress injury,” said Troy Mamchur, union president of local 953. “And I think that number would be higher if you actually calculated those that are coping in silence.”

[Hazardous Gas Visualization Provides Actionable, Shareable Detail for Personnel] napipelines.com/how-optic…

When developing or strengthening a culture of safety in an organization, the word “culture” should bear as much emphasis as “safety.”

Without organizational dedication, safety protocols or procedures can risk seeming ancillary to the operation’s shared objective, when ultimately safety must be a core value of any operation dealing with potentially hazardous gases. Buy-in from all levels helps avoid weak links where a serious lapse in safety might occur. Safety protects not only the practitioner of safety but that employee’s coworkers and others as well.

Upstream and downstream oil and gas operations, along with power plants and other industrial facilities, should partner with technology providers that emphasize safety. For example, FLIR, designer and producer of thermal imaging cameras and sensors, is determined to be “The World’s Sixth Sense,” a goal explicitly rooted in bringing about a safer future. Organizations that work with gas that can cause injury should seek to integrate effective and efficient technologies that ensure safe operational practices. Recent advancements in Optical Gas Imaging (OGI) technology offers companies in a number of industries the opportunity to improve safety and bolster a culture of safety throughout the organization.

Volcano victims’ dignity betrayed as NZ’s no-fault system lets tour operators off the hook

While such schemes patently fail the fairness test, they also fail the economics test. No-fault schemes typically become financially unsustainable. The ACC has moved from one financial crisis to the next over the course of its nearly five decades of life. And when there is a financial crisis, it is survivors of accidents who get less.

But worst of all these schemes fail the safety test. No-fault schemes such as the ACC foster a lax safety culture. There is little accountability when preventable accidents occur. Compared with Australia, the ACC has fewer incentives or serious consequences for companies to ensure safety is prioritised. In the knowledge they cannot be sued for negligent conduct, many businesses adopt a cavalier safety approach. That approach in New Zealand has been highlighted many times during the life of the ACC.

Australia has many safety-nets of coverage for people injured who cannot pursue legal action. But taking away the right to sue for negligent conduct ignores basic psychology, and ignores compelling evidence here and in countries such as Canada and Britain. The right to bring claims for negligence creates powerful incentives for safer behaviour. Whether it’s aircraft, hospital or car safety, workplace injuries and death, or efforts to reduce asbestos and silica exposure and smoking, the exercise of common law rights in holding negligent parties to account and forcing improved standards has long been to the benefit of the wider community.

Chemical Safety Board proposes accident reporting rule

The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) proposes that companies report immediately and directly to the CSB accidental chemical releases sufficient to trigger an investigation.

The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating and finding the root cause of chemical accidents that result in a fatality, serious injury, or substantial property damages. The 1990 legislation that created the CSB required the board to create a reporting regulation, but it has never finalized one. Instead, the CSB has relied on press accounts and other incident reporting to determine which accidents it investigates.

Over the years, several federal agencies and community groups have urged the CSB to issue the reporting regulation. In 2009, the CSB issued a proposal and then dropped it due to a combination of implementation costs, lack of funding, and industry opposition, according to sources familiar with the proposal.

Several nonprofit advocacy groups, including Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Air Alliance Houston, then sued the agency. On Feb. 4, 2019, a US District Court judge ordered the board to issue the final rule within 12 months.

The proposal released by the CSB on Dec. 11 says that any incident serious enough to qualify for an investigation—such as a death or damages above $1 million—would require the company involved to file a brief report within four hours of an accidental release. The information in such reports could be changed, corrected, or updated without penalty.

CSB believes as many as 200 accidents per year could merit an investigation. However, the board, which had a budget of $12 million for fiscal 2019, takes on only a half-dozen accidents annually.

The proposal is a “missed opportunity,” says Daniel Horowitz, a former managing director of the CSB. The reports, he says, are likely to be “bare-bones,” and he urges the CSB to require companies to submit more detailed follow up information—like Contra Costa County already mandates in California—to help guide the accident assessment process. He also laments that the information would not immediately be made public and could only be accessed through Freedom of Information Act requests.

In a statement, Scott Jensen of the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, says, “We recognize and value the importance of keeping government officials informed of an incident at a chemical facility, and we intend on providing the CSB constructive feedback as they move forward with their rulemaking.” However, the ACC must poll its members before commenting in depth on the rule, he says.

NURSES SLEEP 83 FEWER MINUTES BEFORE WORK DAYS

Researchers asked the nurses how much sleep they usually get, including naps, in the 24 hours prior to a scheduled shift, as well as how much sleep they usually get before a day off.

Researchers also asked about the quality of patient care in their workplace. They measured patient safety using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture.

Nurses reported getting, on average, just under 7 hours (414 minutes) of sleep prior to a work day and more than 8 hours (497 minutes) prior to a non-work day. Thus, the difference in sleep duration between work and non-work days was 83 minutes, or nearly an hour and a half less sleep before a work shift.

In addition, getting less sleep was associated with lower measures of patient safety and quality of care, a finding that may indicate several underlying issues.

(‘FAA culture needs to change,’ lawmaker asserts ahead of 737 Max hearing) [https://abc11.com/faa-culture-needs-to-change-lawmaker-asserts-ahead-of-737-max-hearing/5745815/]

In 2003, DeFazio voted against the initial bill that mandated the ODA program.

“We can certainly mandate changes in the approval process and the oversight process by the FAA,” DeFazio said. “We’re already thinking of options of changes we might make.”

The committee chairman hopes to hear firsthand from Dickson and other FAA officials on Wednesday about how the agency plans to change its culture.

“I’m hoping the FAA Administrator has some recommendations of his own,” he said.

DeFazio has also raised the alarm about the safety culture inside Boeing – specifically production pressures that might indicate the company put profit over safety.

The Unsafe Superstar At what point, if any, do needed skill sets justify safety compromises?

But there is a fly in this particular ointment. He does not like to wear safety glasses in the field, even on sites where the client has a robust safety culture. It’s not just the glasses, either. He has not yet made his 90-day probation, and you have already recorded several unsafe acts he has committed — and those are just the ones you know of. Other crew members have expressed concern, and three have said they do not want to go out into the field with him again.

You have on several occasions asked him to stop work and tell you how he can do the task more safely. His attitude was not cooperative. When you started writing him up, your boss called you into his office and told you the company really needs this guy. Then your boss said, “If you annoy him and he quits, that will cost you your job. Understood?”

So how do you resolve this dilemma? Your boss is not thinking clearly. Nobody is so important that a company can’t fire them. The new employee — superstar or not — is a liability to the firm and to himself. And now your boss is a liability, too.

Loophole limited scrutiny before deadly NYC helicopter crash

FlyNYON operated under the government’s least stringent standards “to the detriment of their customer’s safety” because it described the purpose of its flights as photography, not sightseeing, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said. … “FlyNYON has done just about everything they can to skirt safety, accountability and best practices within their industry,” said Schumer, a New York Democrat. “The helicopter company has proven time and again to be reckless, brazen and a hazard high above, and even down below.”

In addition to a standard lap belt and upper body restraint, FlyNYON provided passengers with a nylon fall-protection harness — akin to something bought at Home Depot — that could be released only by cutting a tether with a provided knife or unscrewing a carabiner at their backs, investigators said.

The board also slammed the safety culture at FlyNYON, which arranged the flight, and Liberty Helicopters, the company that FlyNYON contracted with for helicopters and pilots. FlyNYON’s CEO stressed profits over safety and remarked that pilots who complained “can’t get their snowflake feelings hurt,” according to Homendy.

In a statement, FlyNYON said safety has always been its “first priority and we have made changes to our operations to help ensure an accident like this never happens again.”

Commissioners OK $2,500 for branding effort, review more budgets

Commissioners also approved a proposal by county risk manager Jennifer Phelps to create a safety team of county employees to promote a better work environment. Phelps said items of discussion will include safety and incident reporting requirements, housekeeping items and what she described as “atypical” topics outside of the usual ones, such as no texting while driving.

“We need to bring a safety culture to our employees and understand why safety is important, not just for us as a county because everybody thinks if they don’t file a claim they’re OK or they think workers compensation is some bottomless pit of money that doesn’t affect the county,” she said. “That’s not true. It’s like auto insurance — it’s there if you need it, but it costs you money if you use it.”

Chipotle takes employees calling in sick seriously.

According to Business Insider, the burrito chain has nurses on call that check to see whether employees that call in sick are actually ill and not just hungover.

CEO Brian Niccol made the claim at a conference on Wednesday.

“We have nurses on call, so that if you say, ‘Hey, I’ve been sick,’ you get the call into the nurse,” Niccol said. “The nurse validates that it’s not a hangover — you’re really sick — and then we pay for the day off to get healthy again.”

It’s not just meant as a way to expose or embarrass employees, Yahoo! reports, but to make sure Chipotle restaurants are as clean and healthy as possible.

That stems from an outbreak of the norovirus at the chain in Virginia, which CNBC reports was due to an unenforced sick policy, with managers allowing sick employees to prepare food.

“We have a very different food-safety culture than we did two years ago, OK?” Niccol said at the Barclays conference. “Nobody gets to the back of the restaurant without going through a wellness check.”

Hospital Administrators Need to Put Patient Safety Above Profits, Health Expert Argues

Millenson: “As a study of clinician overconfidence in infection control delicately concluded, providers ‘do not recognize the need for training [for themselves] but express this need for others.’ In that context, we perhaps should not be surprised that 40% of respondents to a recent nationwide survey’ on hospital safety culture agreed that ‘hospital management seems interested in patient safety only after an adverse event happens.’”

Millenson acknowledges some push-back, noting that the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America in 2007 made the case that its members didn’t just add to costs but that there’s a genuine “business case for infection control. A dozen years later, infection control specialists still feel they need ‘an administrative champion,’” Millenson writes.

UK Athletics Club Operations Manager

This is an outstanding career opportunity with a not for profit charitable organisation committed to providing a diverse and meaningful range of leisure and culture related activities for the local communities in which we serve. Will promote and encourage a strong health and safety culture throughout the centre

Senior Director, R&D Sterile Engineering

Develop a strong safety culture that encourages taking the right amount of time to perform each task safely.

Robinson Crash highlights Lack of Australian Powerline Maps

(http://www.australianflying.com.au/latest/robinson-crash-highlights-lack-of-powerline-maps)

“While this accident was a private aviation operation, the significance of this report for aerial application safety–including firebombing–is obvious.

“If all state electricity regulators and power companies took the same safety-based approach as Qld and NSW already have (voluntarily because of their clear safety culture), this would make a very real and practical improvement in low-level aviation safety for very little cost.”

“There are also a number of spin-off benefits of marking powerlines–especially for farmers–who can make their farms safer for trucks and other tall machinery such as headers and cotton pickers as well as aerial contractors.

Read more at www.australianflying.com.au/latest/ro…

(https://www.continuitycentral.com/index.php/news/resilience-news/4675-a-review-of-the-business-resilience-issues-facing-the-food-sector-in-2020)

This is no easy task – and there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to create a food safety culture within a business – a programme that works for one FBO won’t necessarily work for another. Similarly, activities that work for one part of a business might need adapting for another. Tailoring might also be necessary for employees in different roles, in different locations or in any number of ways specific to the organization.

But perhaps the crucial factor in determining the strength of a food safety culture is the attitude and style of the local leadership. If the local restaurant manager doesn’t demonstrate a strong commitment to food safety, then it is unlikely that their employees will either, even if the senior management team at regional and head office recognises its importance.

Operators say AFM makes them safer and more productive

A SURVEY of close to 40 heavy vehicle operators using Advanced Fatigue Management (AFM) has found they had fewer fatigue-related incidents, an improved safety culture and higher productivity.

NHVR Principal Safety Assurance Advisor Andreas Blahous said that the NHVR study followed calls for the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) to allow for increased flexibility when effective fatigue management systems are in place.

“The study demonstrates the significant benefits of AFM and a more flexible fatigue management framework for both safety and productivity,” Mr Blahous said.

Industrial manslaughter now a crime in Victoria with maximum penalties of $16.5m and 20 years’ jail - are you ready? Preparing for industrial manslaughter laws

The legislation highlights a strong focus on organisations achieving a culture of compliance which we expect WorkSafe Victoria’s investigations will target in relation to possible offences of industrial manslaughter. With this in mind, it is important for businesses that they ensure adequate OHS systems, instruction training and supervision, but also place a heavy focus on worker engagement and a strong safety culture.

Driving air safety, security at the apron

Rising incidents involving airlines, ground handling companies and other ancillary services providers at airport aprons are attracting the attention of regulators, especially because of their attendant effects on safety and security. Experts say enhanced training, improved regulation and adherence to operational procedures may reduce infractions at the air side, writes KELVIN OSA OKUNBOR.

Accuform celebrates 5 years without a lost-time accident

Accuform’s President, Rob Ogilvee and Safety Director Mike Giovinazzi take no credit for the 1825 days that Accuform has gone without a lost-time accident in the workplace. That credit goes to their 270 employees who have embraced a “culture of safety,” putting best practices to use with regard to themselves as well as their co-workers.

The staff and management of Accuform celebrated their accomplishment on Monday, Nov. 11, 2019 with an outside BBQ and games, as well as picking up new t-shirts commemorating the occasion and a desk toy called “Pinch Point Pattie,” part of a collection of action figures depicting OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health) violations that can cause workplace injury.

Accuform is a member of the Justrite Safety Group, a global workplace safety company with 1700 employees worldwide. According to President and CEO, Mark McElhinny