Oil & Gas

On February 4, 2020 OSHA announced it will be launching a national emphasis program (NEP) aimed at reducing occupational exposures to respirable crystalline silica (RCS), and promoting compliance with its Respirable Crystalline Silica Standards for general industry, maritime and construction industries. Background A 2015 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) […]

Welcome to the sixth and final installment in our “Intro to HazCom” series! If you missed our previous posts in this series or want to refresh your memory, just follow the hyperlinks to read about the basics of HazCom (Parts One and Two), the challenges of chemical container labeling (Part Three), the requirements for a […]

EPA issued a final rule in April 2019 that imposes new restrictions on products that contain asbestos. Let’s take a moment to review the new rule and the impacts it may have on human health, as well as your business. The Background Asbestos is a naturally occurring fibrous mineral found in rock and soil. For […]

Welcome to the latest installment of our ongoing Intro to HazCom series! Some of you might be familiar with previous posts, and are waiting for the latest in the series. If so, your wait is now over. But if you’re asking “what Intro to HazCom series?” and are looking for a broad overview of HazCom […]

In our previous post “Intro to Hazard Communication, Part One,” we provided an introductory primer for those of you who may be new to HazCom and needed a little help getting oriented. This post will pick up where our previous one left off, and help you continue on your HazCom journey. Please feel free to […]

This Thursday, November 22, people across the United States will be celebrating Thanksgiving. Many businesses will be closed, and many of us will be taking stock of the people we’re thankful for. Our employees work hard for us year round, and our safety performance depends on them. We should certainly be thankful for their efforts […]

Congratulations! You’ve learned that you’re responsible for managing Hazard Communication (HazCom) for your company’s chemical inventory. That’s a huge responsibility, but it’s also a great opportunity to improve workplace safety and become an EHS leader. You might feel overwhelmed. We get it – we’ve all been there before. It can be difficult to even get […]

Record flooding in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, following Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, has caused a slew of secondary health and safety hazards. Among these issues is the high risk of exposure to hazardous chemicals in contaminated flood waters, including lead, arsenic, benzene, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. With damage to chemical manufacturing facilities, […]

Unprecedented flooding in the Corpus Christi and Houston/Galveston Bay areas caused by Hurricane Harvey has left businesses, residents and first responders in one of the nation’s largest petroleum and chemical processing regions with more to worry about than rising waters. Secondary effects of the flooding have created high risk of exposure to hazardous chemicals in […]

A recent article published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) recapped an important panel discussion which took place at the 2017 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston earlier this month. A group of industry EHS professionals and government regulators had gathered to discuss the effects of continued low oil prices on worker safety in the […]