Talk about dangerous work. When it comes to always working around flammable materials like oil or natural gas - adding in the pressure that those liquids are under as oil and gas companies pump the ground to extract that "black gold" - and there are very few occupations out there that are so dangerous on [...]
There is little doubt now that, with the advancing technology in the oil and gas exploration industry, there is a new energy boom in North America. From the Bakken oil shale fields in North Dakota, to shale around Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, and of course the new resources in western Canadian provinces like Alberta, British [...]
We all like to think that when we are not on company time, we're on personal time and we can be who we are, instead of who we should be when in the office. Yes, your time is your own. Unless, of course, you act "stupidly," as the President of the United States once said. [...]
We can be honest. We're all friends here. Who hasn't had that boss that was intimidating, harsh, cruel or downright abusive - especially verbally or mentally? And how many of us, after getting a lashing from our boss, stewed until we drove home and thought, "I probably should have said this," and then you got [...]
While there may be some flaws in the research, certainly very few people are arguing about the recent study that was published that showed a loose correlation between workers who had permanent disability due to a work-related accident and injury, and the overall life expectancy of such workers compared to those who were relatively healthy. It is [...]
At least some of us, if not many of us, have come across a worker who was stricken by a permanent disability that made him or her become a former worker. Even if the job market is tough nowadays, there are many of us who might not have a job but are willing and able [...]
Every so often, I read about some tragic news in the health and safety arena. I know that it seems that worker deaths and serious injuries can tend to be inevitable, but forgive me if I am not very desensitized. I find all death to be a tragedy. However, every once in a while I [...]
There is little doubt that construction sites really are an incident waiting to happen. It is not carelessness that leads to 1,000 deaths every year on construction sites - it is often just all of the hazards that are apparent and it could be just one small misstep or a couple of small miscommunications that [...]
As many people know, we safety officers are dynamic thinkers. Many of our bosses, however, are linear thinkers when it comes to workplace safety. Administrators and managers often have so many things on their plates that, when an incident occurs on the worksite, they often do not want to know the reality of how the [...]
As was previously mentioned, there are a lot of inherent risks on construction sites, which have come to explain why there are a disproportionate number of fatalities on construction sites compared to general industry work sites. At the end of the day, even when you take into account day workers and temps on a site [...]
