Safety

Guest Post by Tom Reddon Today’s forklifts are a mere throwback to the days of old when forklifts from your grandpa’s time featured the bare essentials. The future of forklifts is here, and it means increased productivity on a whole new scale for businesses and warehouses. The Past The forklift came about due to the […]

Methanol is a natural by-product of wood alcohol, natural gas and coal. It has also recently garnered attention for being used in biofuel. But don’t let the “green” of this chemical fool you. Methanol is very dangerous and can cause death when mishandled. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how to handle methanol in a […]

Where and How Sulfuric Acid Can Be Found Sulfuric acid is one of the most hazardous and common chemicals you may encounter. It’s actually an international commodity chemical produced in large quantities all around the world. While sulfuric acid has primarily industrial uses, it’s also found in common household products such as drain cleaner and […]

by Michael Hoonhorst, CPE Many safety and facility engineers think that when designing workstations, we should design for the “average” person.  First of all, the “average” person does not exist.  There are many different dimensions of humans.  For instance, someone might be average height, but have a reach distance that is less than average.  So […]

Used many years ago in soaps, sodium hydroxide – also known as lye – is still a widely used chemical today. Its uses range from food processing to petroleum refining, but it can be a very dangerous chemical. Here we’ll examine its usual uses, and the specific properties that make sodium hydroxide a threat to […]

We have all heard of ethanol, somehow, somewhere. But what is it, exactly? How is it used? And most importantly – how can ethanol be dangerous in the workplace and beyond? (Photo: Corn and Cornier by Seth Anderson) In this information post from the experts at VelocityEHS, we’ll take a look at what ethanol is, […]

Humantech (now VelocityEHS Ergonomics) ergonomist, Jennie Gober, spoke at the 2014 Michigan Safety Conference this week on how to effectively manage ergonomics using technology. In this video, Jennie shares six ways to move your ergonomics process from reactive to proactive by working smarter, not harder. In summary, here are the six ways: 1. Force measurement […]

Today sustainability is not just a buzzword. Captains of commerce, like Wal-Mart, Target, Virgin, and Apple are championing the drive to improve the chemical footprints of entire supply chains. In the past, the word “sustainability” conjured images of extreme environmentalism at the cost of all else; today it encompasses a wide-angled view of the relationships […]

This second post in a series on the NAEM Report, “Planning for a Sustainable Future,” focuses on the growing challenge of enforcing supply chain compliance in a tangled and constantly fluctuating regulatory environment. Supply chain compliance is an ever-evolving global issue. Unless all materials right down to chemical makeup or raw minerals are sourced locally, […]

“Solutions to Control Hazards” by OSHA contains information relevant to the implementation of control hazards in a variety of environments. There are three main groups of control hazards (engineering, administrative work practices, and PPE) that lead to the reduction of exposure to risk factors. This site provides examples, success stories, case studies, and guidelines in […]