As we approach the end of yet another year, it's time to get prepared for the next one. One thing most safety-conscious companies do is set employee health and safety goals. By doing so, companies are forced to review their current situation and incr...

Weather affects just about everything in every part of the country and lately rain has had a starring role in the Northeast. Record amounts of rainfall have not only put a damper (no pun intended) on vacations, but also on agriculture, construction a...

We have covered the hazards associated with falls in the past.  Obviously, the reason is the severity of injuries associated with falls.  But we've focused primarily on elevated falls, whether from a ladder or a roof. But slips and trips ar...

There are many signs that indicate summer’s end no matter where you reside. The sun sets a little bit earlier. Temperatures drop noticeably at night. And the big yellow school buses reappear.  Although all three of these signs affect the t...

If you are reading this, odds are there is probably a computer screen involved. And you may be one of the 400,000 U.S. workers that lost an average of 8 days away from work due to a musculoskeletal injury in 2004, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of La...

Over the years, MEMIC’s construction industry safety specialists have inspected many jobs with numerous subcontractors on a single site. Now and again, some of the subs complain that the general contractor picks on them for "little safety thing...

The quality of the air we breathe at work has obvious ramifications linked to our health. Although this includes both outdoor and indoor environments, I want to talk about the indoor ones today. Offices, factories and similar indoor workplaces typica...

Anyone who's been a safety professional for a few years is eventually going to be asked by someone on the floor or job site “how did you get into this safety business anyway?”  When I was first asked this very question some 20 plus y...

With the arrival of summer comes the hotter workplace.  Depending on where you live, it can be quite a swing in temperature.  The daily high here in Maine is roughly three times what we were seeing two months ago.  Factor that into wo...

Here is a morbid anxiety that sometimes can kick in on a construction site: Fear of being buried alive Fear of being placed in a grave while still alive as a result of being incorrectly pronounced dead. The abnormal, psychopathological version of th...