Yes it’s that time of the year again as we look forward in excitement to winter and in dread to the diseases of the season. I’m headed to the doctor today to get my annual flu shot. Are you? OSHA has some materials available to help you prevent OR have in place should a pandemic occur.
Check them out here. Workplace Safety and the Flu (web); Pandemic Influenza (web).
You can also find out about the flu, find informational videos to use, and even locate a source locally for flu shots at flu.gov.
Check out the OSHA Noise Exposure Resource online here.
Pages for:
NIOSH has a short publication/poster that gets at the source of protecting your hearing. Cap the Noise is a pdf file that’s available to communicate the idea that hearing protection is not the first step to protecting your hearing. Controlling it and avoiding it are to be preferred over immediately resorting to earplugs and muffs.
Click here for: Cap the Noise Publication (pdf)
A FREE web-based resource that offers interactive tools and evidence-based resources to design effective worksite obesity prevention and control programs, including an obesity cost calculator to estimate how much obesity is costing your company and how much savings your company could reap with different workplace interventions.
Includes some good health related materials like tips for healthy snacks at meetings and links to state programs where they exist.
Check it out at www.cdc.gov/leanworks
MSHA proposed a rule that would lower underground and surface miners’ exposure to respirable coal mine dust by revising the Agency’s existing standards. The major provisions of the proposal would lower the existing respirable dust exposure limit from 2.0 mg/m3 to 1.0 mg/m3 over a 24-month phase-in period; require full-shift sampling; and redefine the term “normal production shift.” In addition, the proposed rule would provide for the use of a single full-shift compliance sampling under the mine operator and MSHA’s inspector sampling programs, establish requirements for use of the Continuous Personal Dust Monitor (CPDM) to monitor exposure, and expand medical surveillance of coal miners. Read the full proposed rule below.
Click here for: Proposed Rule in Federal Register (pdf)
I was at the doctor this week for my H1N1 flu shot and remembered that I had this link to post for some time. There's lots of information out there on H1N1 and some of it's even good! (ha ha) The bottom line is that reasonable steps to help prevent the spread of any flu is a good investment. For one, I've noticed that the simple procedure of sneezing into one's elbow is catching on. That along with the willingness of people who are sick to stay home, which is a tougher thing to sell, are great first steps to keeping more of us healthy.