Blog: Workplace Safety

Switching a machine off does not make it safe. Every year, equipment starts up while a maintenance worker, an operator, or a cleaner still has hands inside it. The results are amputations, crush injuries, and electrocutions. In nearly every one of those cases, someone believed the machine was dead. Stored pressure, a residual charge, a ...

Illinois is one of the harder states in the country in which to win a slip and fall case involving snow or ice. Most people assume the opposite. A property owner let ice build up, someone got hurt, and it feels like the owner should answer for it. Illinois law starts from a different place, ...

Chicago asks outdoor workers to handle a temperature range that most of the country never sees. Crews that spent July on a roof in ninety-five degree heat spend January on the same roof in wind chills below zero. Both extremes injure workers, both extremes kill workers, and neither one is covered by a specific federal ...

Forklifts do not feel dangerous after the first few weeks of operating one, and that is precisely the problem. A loaded lift truck can weigh several times what a car weighs, carries its load ahead of the front wheels, and steers from the rear, which makes it behave nothing like the vehicles operators drive to ...

Silica dust is the rare job site hazard that does its damage without producing a single bad day at work. A worker cuts concrete, grinds mortar, or drills into stone, goes home, and feels fine for years. The particles that cause the harm are too small to see and too small to cough out, and ...

Struck-by incidents injure more construction workers than any other hazard category and rank second only to falls as a cause of construction deaths. The reason they stay near the top of the list is that they do not look dangerous until the moment they are. A wrench set down on a beam, a loader backing ...

Falls remain the leading cause of death in construction, and nearly all of them are preventable with equipment that already exists on most job sites. Chicago’s skyline means a steady volume of high-rise work, facade repair, roofing, and steel erection, and every one of those trades puts workers above a lower level for most of ...

Teams should implement a variety of safety measures to help save lives and keep workers safe during trenching projects. Trenching is vital for many construction projects. It involves digging into dirt to form a narrow passage for workers and equipment. Trenching can be dangerous like other aspects of a construction project. Cave-ins and collapses often ...

Developments in construction worker safety wearables have been helping to keep employers safer and bring them home. With the many risks associated with construction projects and sites, organizations such as Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have worked to implement policies and encourage the use of safety gear, including wearable devices using innovative technology. As ...

A pressing issue Iowa workers face is workplace violence, which is why standards are required to maintain a safer work environment. Professionals, such as nurses, social workers, and emergency responders, are often at risk of harm. A recently introduced federal standard would help give Iowa’s workforce the protection they need. Is Workplace Violence on the ...