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Assessing and Avoiding the Liability Risks
Editor’s Note: It’s become a SafetyXChange tradition. Every year at this time, we publish my analysis of an important but not well understood aspect of workplace safety: an employer’s potential liability for traffic incidents involving employees who’ve gotten drunk at the company office party.
The Risk of Liability for Serving Alcohol
Like many employers, you may be [...]
9 Ways to Curb Alcohol Liability Risks
If you’re planning to serve drinks at your holiday party, here are some of the steps you can take to prevent drunk driving accidents, recommended by alcohol liability consultant Shelly Timms:
Make guests pay for their drinks and don’t allow workers to buy drinks for clients
Limit the number of drinks each guest can consume
Offer a wide [...]
10 FACTS ABOUT DRINKING & DRIVING
Here are 10 interesting things that you ought to know about drinking and driving.
1. Alcohol-related fatalities are caused primarily by the consumption of beer (80%) followed by liquor/wine (20%)
2. There is considerable evidence that laws that lower the illegal BAC limit from .10 to .08 can reduce alcohol-related fatalities by an average of 7%.
3. Access [...]
Can You Provide Computerized Access to an MSDS?
Here are parallel quizzes about the rules governing computerized access to the MSDS—one for the U.S. audience and the other for Canadians. Good luck, North America.
U.S. VERSION
SITUATION
A liquid chemical transport company keeps an MSDS for each chemical it transports in a large binder at its tank-wash facility. Workers who clean the tanks have [...]
What to Do When the Inspector First Shows Up
Trick or treat! It’s not a ghost, a witch, a vampire or a werewolf who’s been rapping at your door. It’s something even scarier. It’s the OSHA inspector, and he wants to look around. Here’s what to do. (This guidance also works in Canada.)
How OSHA Inspections Begin
OSHA usually conducts inspections during the regular working hours [...]
Lessons from a California Case
If you think the incident Richard is musing over is some kind of freak occurrence, think again. The citing by OSHA of rescue workers for disobeying safety rules during emergency operations happens more often than you might think. Consider the following case from last month.
What Happened
While helping with the construction of a new building, a [...]
Can Disobeying a Safety Rule Be Safer than Obeying It?
While looking through some old newspaper clippings, I found a story about firefighters in Moraga, California, who were cited by CAL-OSHA for violating safety regulations. What caught my eye was that the supposed safety violation occurred in the course of a trench rescue. And the story set me to thinking about the law and the [...]
How to Comply with the OSHA PSM Standard
If you work with highly hazardous substances, you need to comply with the OSHA Process Safety Management Standard (PSM) (Sec. 1910.119). Here’s how.
Overview of the PSM Standard
The PSM standard is designed to prevent or minimize catastrophic releases of highly hazardous substances. It applies to chemical “processes” that involve the storage, manufacturing, handling or moving of [...]
An Interview with Yvonne O’Reilly, the Chair of this Year’s OHS Summit
The Westray mining tragedy, in which 26 workers died in an explosion at a Nova Scotia coal mine, had a big impact on the world of workplace safety. The resulting inquiry lead to changes in Nova Scotia’s and other jurisdictions’ OHS laws and Bill C-45, which amended the Canadian Criminal Code to make it easier [...]
Due Diligence: From Theory to Practice
The theme of last year’s OHS Summit was Due Diligence from Theory to Practice: What It Is, How It’s Evolved, Current Best Practices. Attendees were invited to learn from some of Canada’s leading OHS lawyers what due diligence does and doesn’t require, and how to use the lessons from recent court cases to assess and [...]
