As you begin to read this post, stop for a moment and answer the following questions: Are both of your feet flat on the floor? In order to see your screen, how are you holding your head and neck?  What kind of chair are you sitting on? When you leave the office at the end of the day, how does your body feel?

Millions of people spend 40 hours a week or more sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen all day. It is something that employees across a variety of industries and careers share.

 OSHA has come up with the top 4 tips for sitting (ergonomically) pretty.

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) recommends these 4 tips for computer workstations:

1. Hands, wrists and forearms straight, in-line and roughly parallel to the floor
2. Feet fully supported by the floor or a footrest if the desk height is not adjustable
3. Thighs and hips supported by a well-padded seat and generally parallel to the floor
4. Knees about the same height as the hips with feet slightly forward

OSHA and other ergonomic experts also recommend taking several breaks throughout your workday to break up prolonged periods of sitting still in the same posture.  These breaks can include making small adjustments to your chair or backrest, stretching your fingers and hands, or standing up and walking around every few hours.

It may seem simple enough to follow these guidelines, or disregard them if you’re sitting “comfortably,” but several types of injuries can stem from improper posture and equipment in the workplace, including neck strain, tendonitis and bursitis in the shoulders, hands or wrists, lower back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Companies may drag their feet on purchasing more ergonomically correct (and therefore more expensive) equipment, but it is likely to be a cost-saving approach in the end.  Some experts estimate that “the return on investment of properly executed ergonomic programs have been estimated as high as 16 to 1, i.e., $16 saved for each dollar invested” through worker’s compensation and other injury claims.

Try to think about these suggestions throughout the week. 

Does it feel awkward to sit correctly?  If so, chances are your normal position isn’t quite ergonomically correct.  Are you experiencing any of those aches and pains at the end of a long day? 

Try bringing to your employer’s attention issues you see with your current equipment and suggestions on things that may work better or try gathering a group of coworkers to get up and do those stretches once or twice a day. 

You may be surprised at what a difference a few minor changes make.

This week’s post was written by Dr. Ken Ferguson, an independent consultant evaluating project risk and risk mitigation related to new nuclear reactor projects. He has a PhD in Nuclear Science and Engineering from Carnegie – Mellon University and a B.S. in Physics from the University of Michigan.

The nuclear power industry is committed to safe operations. The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan reinforces the value of attention to even more effective safety performance from nuclear power reactors. One nuclear technology effort that has promise for such an outcome involves Small Modular Reactor (SMR) designs. Numerous SMR designs are being developed and confirmed which can deliver power levels much lower than the current range of one thousand megawatts offered in nuclear power plants in operation. An additional factor regarding the utilization of SMRs is the directive by the Obama administration for government facilities to have plans by 2020 to reduce their carbon emissions by 80 %. A significant part of this goal can be met by the use of small sized reactors by the Department of Energy and Department of Defense.

Why the attractiveness to the electric utility sector? The fundamental advantage is that the capital outlay and investment for an SMR is billions of dollars less than for a larger reactor. SMR deployment includes adding more modules as time progresses and the actual need for more megawatts is recognized. In a simple economic model, the revenue generated by the first modules help fund the deployment of future modules. In addition, SMR deployment can involve a manufacturing approach rather than on-site construction of larger nuclear plants. This shift has the promise of reducing uncertainty in project completion time that can be experienced in large size nuclear plant projects.

The details of SMR development have important safety features and advantages. A variety of designs are considered to have “passive” safety features in that external actions such as electrical initiation of safety pumps and power sources are not required. Inherent physical behavior such as gravity induced coolant flow and natural circulation of coolant are the basis for safe shutdowns. This basis of safety can also reduce plant cost due to the elimination of certain pumps, valves, electrical wiring, etc.

As with much nuclear technology innovation, an important project risk involves the details of regulatory acceptance and related timing to achieve that acceptance. For SMRs, examples of regulatory action and attentions that need to be accomplished and monitored include:

1. Can events in one module impact another module (“common mode failure”)?
2. Can one control room operator be allowed to be responsible for more than one module concurrently?
3. What is the proper security staffing (many SMR designs are intended to be sited underground)?
4. Does an SMR qualify to have a smaller land zone to control during an accident than currently required for larger plants?
5. What tests and analyses are needed to properly validate the SMR designs?
6. What new regulatory requirements are appropriate to the features of SMR designs?
7. What will be the extent of regulatory agencies global cooperation and information exchange on these matters?

This past Tuesday, a dust storm unlike any other hit the Phoenix area, obscuring the sun and pretty much everything else. In its wake it left downed trees, power outages, and a thick layer of dust over everything. 

Dust storms are not uncommon in our area during the monsoon season (roughly June through September), but this one left even life-long residents in awe.

Deemed a haboob (which in Arabic means “strong wind”), this dust storm was estimated to be around 5,000 feet high and up to 100 miles wide, reaching speeds of 50 miles-per-hour.

This storm also traveled an unusually long distance, around 150 miles from where it originated near Tucson. 

Phoenix residents had plenty of warning that the storm was on its way, but it never hurts to remember that we need to be prepared – for another haboob, a major thunderstorm, or whatever other disaster, natural or not, may strike.

The importance of being prepared in an emergency applies to businesses as well as individuals. 

For example, Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix had to shut-down for approximately 45 minutes during the haboob.  That meant delaying flight take-offs and re-routing flights scheduled to land in Phoenix.  They also had to deal with the unexpected occurrence of having the smoke alarms go off in the baggage claim area due to the dust blowing in through the doors.

Any business, regardless of what line of work it is in, should have an emergency preparedness plan.  This is extra important for businesses that are tasked with the protection of public health and safety. 

This issue has come up most recently in this blog by way of nuclear facility safety – during earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding and wildfires. 

Our business helps organizations stay aware of, and therefore be prepared for, changes in regulations that are put into place to help them remain safe. 

The haboob was a great big dusty reminder of why it is important to always have your eyes open to safety and to know what to do when something unexpected happens.

I’m sure the general public is more attuned than usual to the effects of natural disasters on nuclear facilities, given all of the recent media attention set off by the Fukushima disaster this past March.

Most recently, the Missouri river floods in Nebraska and the Las Conchas fire in New Mexico have threatened two nuclear power stations and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, respectively. 

With the media’s eye on these incidents, it makes one wonder…how prepared are places like this to handle natural disasters, big or small?

Recently, there has been a lot of focus on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its (real or perceived) lack of action regarding nuclear safety. 

Gregory Jaczko, NRC chairman, recently visited the Cooper Nuclear Station during the flooding. 

Mr. Jaczko was shown firsthand the measures that the plant was taking to prevent the floodwaters from entering sensitive areas of the plant.  He seemed satisfied with the measures taken at Cooper Nuclear Station, stating that, “Fundamentally, this is a plant that is operating safely.”  So far, this appears to be true.

More recently, the 36 square miles that house the 2,000 buildings that make up the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) were threatened by the Las Conchas wildfire, now the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history. 

Audits conducted by the Department of Energy (DOE) on LANL in 2007 and 2009 identified fire vulnerabilities at the facility and stated that, “there are increased risks associated with fire-related events…If such an event were to occur, not only would the safety and health of employees and the public be impacted, but the environment could be damaged as well.” 

As the Las Conchas fire moved closer to LANL, they shut the facilities down and evacuated everyone.  As of today, the lab is reopened, after a thorough check of all of the buildings for any damage.

In both of these cases, it seems like the worst-case scenario was avoided…unlike the Fukushima event.  

Most of the time, that is the case.  Even in the Fukushima event, they had all of their safety measures in place, but it was no match for what Mother Nature unleashed on the area. 

It just goes to show that, try as we might, even with all of the computer models and everything else we use to make predictions, we can never really know the extent of what can happen.

All we can, and should, do, is try our best, learn from our mistakes and in the meantime, hope that nothing too catastrophic happens.

By Ted Polakowski

I have been reading the newspaper accounts over the last few weeks of how enraged we have become regarding the closeness of regulator to regulated. 

Back in early May there was a front page New York Times article titled “Nuclear Agency Beset by Lapses.”  The article explained that several years ago, workers at a nuclear power plant caused a leak in a critical cooling water system as they were cleaning a badly corroded section of the pipe. 

Further investigation found that the company who owned the power plant, knowing that there was a corrosion problem, routinely lowered the minimum thickness of pipe that was deemed safe – seemingly after each time it cleaned up the corrosion. 

And how could the plant owner do this alone? Well it seems that they didn’t; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) routinely either ignored or condoned the action by not taking further action. 

The rest of the investigative report in the New York Times seemed to indicate that the oversight approach taken by the NRC was one not of policeman but more of a benevolent family member – my words not theirs. 

More recent news articles indicate that the same lax oversight conditions also existed between regulator and regulated in Japan. 

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on the disaster released on June 1, 2011, suggested, that the regulatory structure of Japan’s nuclear industry lacked independence.  Because of this closeness of regulator and regulated, the Japanese nuclear power plant was just not robust enough in light of how big a tsunami might beset the plant.

So, let’s assume all this is true. 

What I am pondering here is why should either party, the regulator or regulated, not take on its own responsibility?  It seems like the regulated is playing a game of “how much can I get away with?” and not “what is prudent for safeguarding my facility, my people, and the environment?” 

It looks like we are getting to believe that as long as we can essentially fool each other into believing whatever action (or non-action) we are trying to get the other side to accept (or at least not to object to) constitutes the result we want.  But does it?  

Have we as EHS professionals, who populate the ranks of the industrial sites as well as those of regulator, forgotten that we win or lose based upon the actual record we generate, not what the either side said was OK? 

I believe we have to get back to the point where each and every one of us takes ownership of our jobs and approaches it in the absolute, not in what we can get away with.   

What do you think? 

By Randal Meske

In a beautiful, remote area in Mexico on a brief getaway with some friends, we experienced the usual precautions necessary to stave off Montezuma's revenge: bottled water to brush our teeth, ice cube avoidance (which didn't bode well for the margarita lovers), etc. 

Despite the fact that the causes for these concerns are far-reaching and include issues ranging from local geology to non-constant water flow in some of the delivery systems, we from the United States tend to exaggerate Mexico's potable water issue as we bask in her sunshine and enjoy her lovely beaches.

Other countries have similar challenges, yet escape the scrutiny of Mexico. 

In the early 1980s, I was an exchange student in Germany. The day I arrived at my host family, I was encouraged to make myself at home and to expect to be treated as a member of the family. So, about 2 hours later, I waltzed into the kitchen, grabbed a glass, and began to fill it with tap water.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, my German host mother was quietly watching me as I brought the water glass to my lips for a drink. Her ensuing yelp scared the daylights out of me, and I nearly dropped the glass!  I learned that one just doesn't drink tap water there...at least not in that household.

My German host father followed the incident with an account of an article he read that stated that a drop of drinking water in Germany had already been through something like 7 human beings prior to my turn.

Evidently, this number was much higher than most other places in the world. This isn't exactly the kind of information that makes one want to jump up and sprint for the faucet! 

You don't read about regular instances of "Bismarck's" revenge in Germany, and you do brush your teeth with their tap water.  However, being relegated to bottled water to quench your thirst seems more like Mexico than the United States to an American. We're pretty spoiled in the United States in that regard.

So, where do these water ways lead other than to bring back fond memories as a student abroad for yours truly? 

Water regulation and management are critically important today.  How the world treats, transports, and consumes water will only increase in importance with time. 

According to a U.N. report called Water, a shared responsibility, the United Nations World Water Development Report 2 (WWDR 2): "Over 13 percent of the world's population - over 800 million people - do not have enough food and water to lead productive lives. Providing the water needed to feed a growing population and balancing this with all the other demands on water, is one of the great challenges of this century." 

So, my questions are: what role do Environmental, Health, and Safety regulations play in the monumental challenge of water management?  Should all countries rethink how they approach water programs, implementation and enforcement?  What thoughts and experiences do you have regarding water management in general? 

Please share your comments with us!

This weeks post was written by guest blogger Chris Hinchcliffe, Senior Environmental, Health & Safety consultant for Delta Simons Environmental Consultants.

On 17 February 2011, Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings Ltd was fined £385K after being found guilty of corporate manslaughter under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. This was the first case in UK law under this Act. The court took into account that a greater fine would have tipped the company into insolvency and thus the judge allowed the business to pay the fine over a 10 year period. Charges against the sole director were dropped due to the worsening state of his health.

The company allowed an employee to work in a narrow 3.5 metre deep pit with no supported sides and it collapsed and killed him. The court findings were that they allowed employees to carry out such work knowingly and supplied no training, method statement, risk assessment or adequate information.

The Act applies across the UK and also extends to offshore installations covered by UK criminal law. The Act creates an offence whereby an organization will be guilty if the way in which its activities are managed or organised causes a person’s death and amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed to that person. This breach must lie mainly with the senior management team. The Act extends to companies and partnerships but not to individual directors.

A business can face an unlimited fine if convicted and ordered to publicize the conviction, which could have significant PR implications. Cotswold Geotechnical only has four employees currently and larger businesses should note that normal fines will seldom be less than £500K.

The outcome of the case should lead businesses to review their health and safety policies to ensure their management systems and work instructions are up-to-date. Staff should be fully aware of those policies and trained regularly on any important changes. Line management should supervise and audit work so that breaches are detected and corrected early.

Do you think that fault should lie with the corporation?  Do you think similar legislation would pass in the United States?

I was at breakfast last Thursday perusing USA Today.  Of course the headlines were all about the aftermath of the earthquake, then the tsunami, and finally the nuclear power plant problems.  One of the articles included a poll taken after the disaster that indicated that 70% of Americans have more concern about the safety of nuclear energy since Japan’s crisis began.  Now, that is not surprising.  But the article went on to say that  “a plurality of Americans now oppose building more nuclear plants, a  significant change from the 57% that supported nuclear energy when Gallup asked a similar question less than two weeks before.”

In situations like this we know that emotions sometime overrule rational thought and can cloud decision making.  I began thinking about one of the first blog posts I did last year just as Citation Station was beginning.  In that post I talked about the premise of how I believe that striving to be compliant with law and regulation can have an additional benefit of allowing one to also be running a top notch prevention program that avoids the problems the laws were promulgated to prevent.  When I think about Japan I think about a society that truly believes in that premise.  Being in a high risk area for earthquakes, the Japanese have some of the most stringent building requirements in the world.  Some say that they are much more stringent than those in the United States.  When you analyze the post-earthquake, pre-tsunami period of this recent disaster, I believe you would find that the country fared extremely well from the quake itself. There were no building collapses in the city close to the epicenter and it seems as if the regulations prevented a catastrophe as has been seen in many other less regulated areas.  From a loss of life and property standpoint the prevention system worked as designed.  If you look at the post-tsunami outcome you see a very different picture.  Villages were wiped out. There was massive loss of life and treasure, and when you look at the regulatory makeup you find much less regulation and therefore much less prevention.

Now let’s add the nuclear power plant problems into the mix.  The earthquake knocked out power, but that was considered as a possibility in Japan’s safety regulations and there was a backup system of on- site emergency generators to keep water being pumped through the reactor and over the spent fuel rods.  The generators kicked in and everyone must have breathed a sigh of relief.  Then came the tsunami and the wall of water that flooded out the emergency generators and fouled the fuel supply. Luckily, there was a third safety system required by Japan’s nuclear regulator, that of battery backup.  The batteries kicked in and would work for up to eight hours – seemingly enough to repair whatever went wrong with the primary system or the backup system.  But as we now know, that rebuild time was not enough. 

The question before us, I believe, is:  Learning from this, second only to the Chernobyl disaster, should we just walk away from what might be considered the best non-carbon based source of power or should we re-examine at our regulatory system and determine whether there is yet more prevention that we need to build into the system?  I hope that we move away from emotion based decision making and towards a much more fact based analytical approach to determining how we provide our future power generation. 

What do you think?

On December 20, 2010, the Fall 2010 Unified Agenda was published by the US Department of Labor for regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The Unified Agenda confirmed the next steps toward the adoption of final rules, which will overhaul the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (HCS).  The rulemaking process, which began in September of 2006, is expected to end with a final rule being completed in August 2011.

OSHA’s current HCS regulations require any employer with hazardous chemicals in the workplace to implement a hazard communication program, including container labeling requirements, material safety data sheets (MSDS) and employee training. The new rules aim to bring US requirements in line with the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) which is being implemented worldwide, including adoption by the United Nations and European Union. 

In a fact sheet on their website, OSHA identifies four major changes to the HCS following the implementation of the new GHS rule. First, GHS will provide additional criteria to improve hazard classification based on health and physical hazards.  Second, a new labeling standard will be implemented, including required signal words, pictograms and hazard statements.  Third, the new regulations will require safety data sheets in a 16-section specified format. Finally, GHS regulations do not specifically address training of employees, but the proposed HCS does include some training requirements for workers within two years of the final rule, to ensure understanding of the new labels and safety data sheets.

Expected benefits of the rule include consistency in international trade markets and increased safety for workers handling hazardous chemicals. Under current regulations in the US and internationally, companies are often required to comply with differing hazard communication requirements based on the multiple countries where their products are used or sites are located.  As more countries adopt GHS regulations, companies could potentially spend less money focusing on complying with varied requirements.  Increased consistency of information provided on labels, clear pictograms and standardized precautionary statements should also improve the safety of workers exposed to and working with hazardous chemicals.

OSHA characterizes costs of implementation of GHS as a “one-time transition cost” for affected industries and companies.  Costs are likely to include reclassification of chemicals and training of workers on new label and safety data sheet information and modified HCS standards.

What actions does your company need to take to be ready for the implementation of new GHS requirements?  Will the customer be better served using the new requirements?  Do you think the benefits will outweigh the costs?

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board has released a 14-minute safety video warning of the hazards of welding and other hot work activities in and around storage tanks containing flammable materials. 

Entitled “Dangers of Hot Work,” the video presents key lessons from the CSB’s hot work safety bulletin, released on March 4, 2010, in Wausau, Wisconsin, near the Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) facility where three workers were killed in July 2008 during a hot work-related explosion.

Hot work is defined as burning, welding, or similar spark-producing operations that can ignite fires or explosions. Since the release of the CSB hot work safety bulletin last March, there have been at least an additional eleven hot work accidents resulting in five fatalities and 14 hospitalizations. Included in these events is the explosion and fire at the Navajo Refining Company that killed two workers and injured two others in Artesia, New Mexico, where a crew of insulators was reportedly working on a crude oil storage tank.

The video uses 3-D computer animations to depict three hot work accidents at Partridge-Raleigh, an oil production site in Central Mississippi; the Bethune Waste Water Treatment Plant in Daytona Beach, Florida; and the Motiva Enterprises Refinery in Delaware City, Delaware. 

The video also features an interview with John Capanna, who suffered burns over ninety percent of his body following a hot work accident while he performed maintenance activities at a refinery in New Jersey in 1979.

Mr. Capanna warns: “Don’t think that something this tragic couldn’t happen to you or somebody you love. This could happen to anybody.”

 
Also featured in the video is Casey Jones, the wife of crane operator Clyde Jones, who was fatally burned at the Bethune Waste Water Treatment Plant in January 2006.

Mrs. Jones says, “As a wife, I just assumed that he had a normal, everyday 7:00 to 3:30, Monday through Friday job, safe as my job. I would have never dreamed in a million years he would have been killed in an explosion.”

Hot work accidents occur throughout many industries in the U.S., including food processing, pulp and paper manufacturing, oil production, fuel storage, and waste treatment. CSB Investigations Supervisor Donald Holmstrom states in the video, “We typically hear about hot work accidents weekly. It has become one of the most significant types of incidents the CSB investigates, in terms of deaths, in terms of frequency.” 

Emphasizing key lessons from the safety bulletin, Chairman Bresland states, “Hazard assessments and combustible gas detectors should be routinely used to identify and monitor for flammable atmospheres before and during hot work. Effective gas monitoring will save lives.”

View the video below:

Free DVDs can be requested by completing the online request form at http://www.csb.gov/videoroom/videorequest.aspx?.