Safety News & Views

Do steroids bulk up madness, too?

Heather — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:44:00 GMT

When WWE wrestling star Chris Benoit alleged committed double murder-suicide this week Fox MSN didn’t pull any punches: “Add [him] to the long list of freakishly muscled carnival attractions for whom a pro wrestling career ended tragically," the network wrote online.

Steroids are being pegged by several sources, including former wrestlers, as a leading cause behind the horrific crimes. It could be weeks before toxicology results show if steroids were in the body of Benoit (right) at the time of death, but that doesn’t stop the industry and public from raising alarms about the health and safety of wrestling pros.

Steroids have been linked to serious physical health problems for a while now. For example, one of Benoit's best friends, Eddie Guerrero, died in 2005 from heart failure linked to long-term steroid use. Jon Stewart, former pro wrestler and now wrestling promoter, told Bill O’Reilly of The O’Reilly Report on June 27 that “since 1997… more than 60 current or former professional wrestlers, all 45 years or younger, have died from assorted causes” such as drug overdoses, heart attacks and other reasons.

Those other "assorted causes" could well include serious mental health problems, and the Benoit tragedy has unleased a maelstrom of public concern over extreme, illogical anger (known as 'roid rage) and severe, chronic depression and suicidal thoughts or attempts by steroid users.

Mental health issues are popping up in other pro sports

Mental health issues are finally being talked about in other pro sports, too, of late such as the Concussion Summit held by the National Football League June 19 to try and prevent severe (even suicidal) depression and neurological illnesses linked to players receiving multiple concussions.

The NFL is dealing with it. The WWE, however, issued a statement on June 26 that steroids “were not and could not be related to the cause of death… The physical findings [of the murder scene] announced by authorities indicate deliberation, not rage.” The WWE also claims that Benoit tested negative for steroid use on April 10 of this year, the last time he was tested for drugs.

So we wait for the autopsy on Chris Benoit to see, conclusively, if steroids were in his system and any further evidence as to how long he used the powerful drug to enhance his famous beefcake image in the competitive arena of wrestling. Just as horrendous outcomes from football players getting slammed in the head again and again may be leading to real change in health and safety practices in the NFL.

As tragic as the death of the Benoit family is, maybe it will help move our society that much closer to caring enough about the health and safety of its sports stars who, despite their adulation-fed egos and oversized salaries, don’t always get the protection they need.

Beavis and Butthead do Workplace Safety

Greg — Mon, 28 May 2007 16:43:00 GMT

Is an image of a severed ear on the floor shocking in this day and age? Is cartoon violence really the way to hammer the importance of workplace safety to young people??

The Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) of Ontario, Canada thinks so. They recently unveiled their 2007 young worker safety campaign which is supposed to be shocking and amusing - at the same time!

Before the ads were officially unveiled last week, WSIB chairman Steve Mahoney warned that "some adults may find these ads a bit too graphic." The ads have already been pulled from Guelph Transit buses after a woman complained about their "very graphic" nature.

While they are graphic, the message is lost in the lame attempt at humor. One poster shows a young worker with a large metal spike going through his head who's more concerned about where the party’s at than the excruciating pain he must be in. (As if anyone could even survive such a terrible mishap!)

The video clips on Prevent-It.ca (go to "Eye Candy") trivialize accidents even more. One clip shows a young man getting his hand chopped off in a deli meat shaving machine while an uncaring boss fails to notice even as his employee passes out.

I half expected to hear Beavis and Butthead guffawing in the background!... In fact, the WSIB ad campaign was created by J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, the same company that animated several first-season episodes of Beavis and Butthead!

I don’t think the light-hearted approach is the way to go here. Anyone who has seen a Quentin Tarantino movie (virtually ALL of today's young people) is no longer shocked at the site of an ear on the floor!

A recent youth-oriented site that really hits the mark is www.notworthit.ca with its shopping theme (how better to reach teens of both genders!!) The Not Worth It site, coming out of Nova Scotia, Canada, combines an interactive format and a light touch of humor with stark facts on injuries and real-life teens with serious mutiliations caused by jobs (girl with a missing eye; guy with am arm severed at the shoulder).

Teens creating their own safety videos

Even teenagers themselves get the seriousness of this topic, if the three top teen-produced Workplace Safety Video winners are any indication (in the 2007 competition held by WSIB). The Gold medal went to a video showing an industrial workplace and all the hazards it poses. The silver medalist chose to compare a welder's destroyed eyes to a pair of jeans that can be sewn and a vase that can be glued back together. And the broze went for a minimalist video of a teen girl on crutches. All three videos are currently being shown in Ontario movie theaters.

Beavis and Butthead wouldn't likely be impressed by the somber and touching vignettes, but most everyone else should feel a shiver go down their spine.

Teenagers aren’t stupid, so I don’t think an advertising campaign that talks down to them is the way to go.

Real-life tragedy trumps cartoonish violence any day.

Remember Froggers? Play Factory Frenzy... and meet "An Sen Man"!

Heather — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:22:00 GMT

OK, maybe American kiddies aren't snatching An Sen Man action figures off the shelves of Wal-Mart. But I'm fond of this superhero with the robotic mega-jaw, a steel hull of a chest and trailing a long, scarlett cape as he whirls into action much like the Tazmania Devil. (An Sen means "safety" in Japanese.)

And remember the video game, Froggers? That's the basic principle behind "Factory Frenzy," also created by Japan-based Omron which recently became America biggest maker of safety control systems for machinery installed in factories everywhere.

(Omron's CE-Safety.info is one of my favorite business-to-business websites in a long while; I just love the design, navigation, user interactivity and its overall playful nature - who says safety has to be boring??)

And while you're there, give your trigger finger a break from hustling An Sen Man through the Factory Frenzy (dodging conveyor belts, AGVs, etc.) and check out useful safety info such as North American and international safety standards, risk assessment and work equipment safety directives.

Omron bought the US-based Scientific Technologies Inc. (STI) last year. The acquisition brought with it such a sizable customer base of safety system users that Omron/STI is now America's largest maker of integrated safety systems for equipment of all kinds.

Safety, Technology and Innovation

And Omron has just announced that it's now selling its safety product line under the name STI, only now that acronoym stands for Safety, Technology and Innovation. They say it reflects a new, worldwide approach to safety in general, and specifically to the machines that put workers at risk.

I like this recent shift - not just by Omron but by equipment makers worldwide - away from the presumption of "worker error" around safety issues, instead to a new focus on making the machines inherently safe, from the first draft of their design to the moment they're uncrated and installed on the factory floor.

One manufacturing blog recently wrote: "... recognising that human error and machine failure are unavoidable risks, organisations such as the ISO (International organisation of Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) have established international standards for risk management stipulating design measures to ensure that workers are kept safe from machinery... Compliance with these standards is now an pressing issue for manufacturers worldwide."

Hallelujah, the onus for safety is firmly on the shoulders of the makers of the equipment that can crush fingers and toes, damage eyes and other violations of workers' lives!!

Safety First at Hannover Fair

Omron's acquisition of Scientific Technologies Inc. happened a bit too close to the dates of the world's biggest industrial show, Hannover Fair 2007 (mid-April in Germany) for Omron and STI to show up there with one, merged booth. However, both were present (everyone who is anyone in the field of machine safety exhibits and/or attends Hannover!). I chatted with Peter Goebbels, Omron's product manager for safety systems, on the show floor. That's when I happened to notice he was wearing a tiny lapel pin depicting An Sen Man, and Goebbels introduced me to the caped safety crusader.

Which brings me back to the Caped Safety Crusader - long may he fly over us, keeping the workplace safe! Who knows - maybe the cartoon figure will catch on, and households across America will be rushing to get their very own An Sen Man the way they did with Furbys and Tickle-Me-Elmos!

Don’t multi-think and drive

Greg — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:49:00 GMT

For many folks the workplace is a two-ton vehicle, and multi-tasking/thinking behind the wheel is a lot tougher than at a brick-and-mortar office. Being distracted by a cell phone ring while updating your spreadsheet report is not quite as dangerous as when it goes off when you’re merging onto a freeway.

“We can’t multi-think” behind the wheel, says the CEO of a driving school that recently gave me a driving upgrade class/road test.

Here, try this test to see what I mean. (My driving instructor used it in class): What is wrong with this phrase:“A bird in the the hand.”

Did you spot the error right away? Even if it took you a nanosecond to notice, that kind of delay while driving can (and usually will) kill or injure you, your passengers or other drivers.

John LeFrevre, who runs Canadian Pro Drivers, estimates that 98 percent of accidents are caused by distractions!! That’s not a stat to sneeze at. (Have you ever noticed that you physically can’t keep your eyes open when you sneeze? Not a great thing when you’re driving, but harder to avoid than choosing to pick up that coffee.)

Ever taken your eyes off the road for a quick sip of coffee? Let’s say it takes four seconds to look down to locate your coffee cup and pick it up. At 50 miles an hour, you’ve traveled 292 ft. in those four seconds - that’s a lot of opportunity for a road hazard to “sneak up” on you!

After 17 (near-perfect) years of driving, I figured I knew and had seen it all - but my driving instructor had several neat tips that were new to me:
• Keep your eyes constantly moving; you should know the status of the next three traffic lights ahead of you. (One of my classmates, when tested, responded: “Red… Green… Smog.”)
• Keep your mind focused - this is more important, and harder, than you’d think. When distracted, you tend to see what you think you see, not what is actually there. (Like most things in life, it comes down to perception vs. reality!)
• Side mirrors should be winged out further than most of us do - so you can see more of the road and not the edge of your own car.

Obviously companies that require employees to drive large vehicles for a living should be investing in driving courses regularly.

But also, given the increasingly understood effect of off-the-job safety to on-the-job safety, it makes sense for companies to offer group driving instruction to all its employees on occasion.

(Interestingly, deaths that occur during one’s commute are counted as workplace fatalities in some countries, and not in others!)

Even experienced drivers can develop bad habits over time - maybe even me ;) By the way, no pylons were harmed in my driving of the test minivan (see photo).

Make me, show me, watch me!

Heather — Tue, 22 May 2007 12:43:00 GMT

There are three types of employers when it comes to safety practices, according to an interesting Irishman I met last week. Tom Beegan, who was CEO of the Republic of Ireland's Health And Safety Authority until he moved recently to Canada to become the Chief Prevention Officer of the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) of Ontario, told me that employers fall into these types:

"Make me!" Companies that won't optimize their health and safety practices unless they're forced to. ("And we're going to!" says Beegan.)
"Show me" Companies that aren't resistant to change, they just lack the knowledge and experience to know what to do and await instruction by governing bodies such as OSHA, WSIB and others.
"Watch me!" These are the superstar companies, the ones that seek out the best information about health and safety and then apply it to all their operations for the benefit of all their employees. (a.k.a. Safety Champions.)

When I asked Beegan to give me an example of a "Watch Me" effort, he mentioned the "CEO charter" in place in Ontario that a handful of utilities and petrochemical companies have signed and that WSIB endorses. This voluntary progam is expected to grow across Canada, Beegan says, and it extends to any contractors which whom CEO charter members do business re: their safety and health records.

When it comes to "Make Me," Canada has its four-year-old Bill C-45, a strong piece of federal legislation which states that if any president or board of director member or workplace supervisor knows of any danger prior to any accident occuring, they will be held liable with fines up to $500,000 and jail time. Unfortunately, though, nobody of significance has served any time yet because of Bill C-45.

Go directly to jail, do not collect accolades

Now, I'm no lawyer but it strikes me that enforcing this kind of legislation (see also OSHA raising the stakes around employers at fault in worker deaths) seems like the only approach when it comes to tackling the "Make Me" type of profit-seeking, risk-minimizing corporations!

The chance of being sued and paying a huge fine and/or going to jail is a mighty effective stick (versus dangling carrots such as signing a "willingness memo"!) In the post-Enron days, corporations cannot afford to ignore compliance issues - not just in financial matters.

Top legislative priorities in 2007 (especially for advocates such as Senator Ted Kennedy) are to update this enforcement provision as well as to pass the Protecting America’s Workers Act.

Oh, and the place where chief prevention officer Beegan and I were chatting about his organization's "Make Me, Show Me, Watch Me" strategy? The media launch of the WSIB's annual Summer Job Safety campaign and safety video competition - attended by a full house of government officials (Ministers of education and labor, many dozens of agency workers and union reps) as well as rows of high school students there to support their colleagues who won the video awards) but...

NOT A SINGLE COMPANY was present at the auspicious WSIB event!! Not one "Watch Me!" executive to put substance to the day's focus on getting employers to support safer working conditions for young people!

A room full of government and union officials doesn't cut it - it's the classic "preaching to the converted."

Our young workers deserve more; they need to witness the commitment of the actual employers who hold their lives in their hands. I have two teens about to enter the workforce - I, for one, want to see and hear and believe companies on the record about safety!

Run, robot, run... even with a human nearby!

Heather — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:33:00 GMT

Doesn't sound too safe, does it? But really, what business person wants an expensive robot to squeal to a halt whenever a human approaches? That's been a thorn in the side for industrialists for many years - and now they've found a way around it!

Thanks to an innovative machine safety system, a robot (or other machine) can slow down its tasks instead of stopping altogether. Only when the pesky human coworker gets super-close will the robot come to a standstill.

Gone is the need for metallic fences boxing in the frightening robot! No more alarm systems to slam that metallic giant down - and fast!

Welcome to a new world of machine safety without the need for machine guards! The dawning of a new era in machines and men living in harmony! (OK, I'm getting too maudlin, too Star Trekky!)

The SafetyEye system, launched at Hannover Fair 2007 in Germany last month, relies on machine vision, motion sensors and software to decelerate or stop a machine. Complete with light show and three sensor "eyes" watching from the ceiling, the new system from Pilz Automation takes "Do the Safety Dance" to the highest level: watch a geeky German engineer dance up to a moving machine - safely!

Machine safety is an intensely important issue in the world these days - led by the Europeans (Let's be honest, their standards for safety compliance are, once again, ahead of Americans, same as with environmental compliance.)

Every vendor and end user company I spoke to at Hannover Fair in Germany last month were fervently preaching safety (music to mein ears!) Safety standards have caught up in the US market in the last couple of years, and many Euro companies, like Pilz, have US subsidiaries that are starting to see lots of machine safety business on this side of the pond. Click on the image to the right to see the SafetyEye system in action.

(Stay tuned to this space for upcoming blogs - and exclusive videos from Hannover! - showcasing the world's best safety technologies.)

Another insight I gleaned from attending Hannover Fair (myself being one of almost half a million visitors to the 27 halls of manufacturing technologies!) was just how prevelant the use of robots have become in all aspects of making stuff around the world.

Robotics have long been a tricky business for workers - a necessary evil, you could say. Robots take on a lot of the three Ds of manufacturing - Dirty, Dull and Dangerous - that human employees don't want to do. But heavy metallic robot arms swinging arond at rapid speeds pose an obvious safety threat, too.

Remember what Astar the Robot (right) said in the cheesy '80s War Amps video: "I can put my arm back on. You can't!" (Unfortunately that classic PSA is no longer available online - without paying for it.)

Machine safety has come a long way, baby! Run, robot, run!!

None for the road - let’s stop drinking in the workplace

Greg — Fri, 11 May 2007 17:29:00 GMT

Beer and baseball have gone together since the days of Babe Ruth. But that tradition has come into question with the recent death of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock. He was killed April 29 when his vehicle plowed into a tow truck. Hancock’s blood alcohol level was nearly double the legal limit at the time of the crash.

The Cardinals have banned alcohol in the clubhouse in the wake of Hancock’s death, but is this just an empty measure? The team chose not to punish their manager, Tony LaRussa, last spring, after he was charged with DUI during spring training, sending the wrong message to its players.

Drinking at the workplace or even while on the job is a practice not limited to the baseball diamond. I’ve worked at a few places in the past where a few beers would come out for ‘special occasions.’ Looking at the numbers, I think even this practice should be stopped.

A 2006 study by the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) estimated that 15 percent of the U.S. workforce, or 19.2 million workers, had been to work under the influence at least once in a 12 month period. Of these, the RIA estimates that 2.1 million workers (1.7 percent of the workforce) worked under the influence of alcohol and 11.6 million workers (9.2 percent of the workforce) worked with a hangover.

The potential for accidents is simply too great when more than ten percent of your workforce isn’t up to par. It is up to employers to set an example and ban drinking before or during the workday.

As North American Occupational Health and Safety week ends, let’s all work harder to discourage drinking in the workplace along with drinking and driving – after all, for many people, the road is their workplace!

A safety superstar is better than a daily Advil

Heather — Wed, 09 May 2007 14:47:00 GMT

It’s Occupational Safety and Health Professional Day - do you know who’s taking care of you on the job?? You better hope it’s someone like Paul Wedyck, director of loss prevention for Schneider National Inc.

The first thing Paul did when he got hired by the Green Bay, WI-based trucking/logistics giant, which employs 13,000 people, was to hop up into one of their truck cabs and get a real feel for the drivers’ comfort. He wasn’t impressed.

So off Paul went off to a safety conference where he met a couple of ergonomists and convinced them to adapt their office chair system for truck seats. Atlas Ergonomics and Schneider worked together to come up with 11 adjustments for each driver (his/her personal seat depth, seat-back angle, seat slide, etc.) which were rolled out across the US and Canada.

Paul’s advocacy to help prevent worker back injury has apparently helped the truckers a lot. “The drivers commented that they were feeling so much less fatigue; they reported many fewer aches and pains and said they didn’t have to take daily Advil!”

Schneider claims the number of drivers reporting discomfort dropped by more than 47 percent within six months of the new seats being installed.

Tracking trucker wellbeing across the country

And now a dozen physical therapy centers have opened across the US as part of Schneider-owned truck stops. Their drivers now fill up, shower and get physio for aches and pains. The centers will also offer blood-pressure monitoring and help with sleep disorders, smoking, nutrition, family and personal issues. And Schneider even links all its trucker centers by electronic medical records system to track each drivers’ wellbeing across the country! (Thanks to BLR.com for giving me access to info on Schneider safety - part of BLR's CD titled "What’s New for 2007: Workplace Safety Trends to Watch, Training to Conduct, and Pitfalls to Avoid.")

I wish every company made the connection between profitability and best practices in occupational health and safety the way that Schneider has here! Management there understands that if their truckers are laid up with injuries or stress-related sick leave, they aren’t making money - and that is bad for the company as well as the drivers!

What a concept, eh? Money spent on taken care of your workers mental and physical wellbeing leads to a stronger bottom line!!

So, to ask my opening question again: Who is taking care of safety at your company? Is he/she doing everything possible to prevent you from getting hurt or sick? If not, why not?

Good questions to seek answers for on Occupational Safety and Health Professional Day! (It's the second annual such day, as declared by The American Society of Safety Engineers.)