We've just released the January issue of The Monthly SUN.

Topics covered in this issue:

• Company Corner? - Safety Unlimited Selected as an OSHA Outreach Training Program Provider
• Regulatory Review - Workplace Injury and Illness Summaries
• Did You Know? - NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards
• Support Sanctuary - Advance Purchases

The Monthly SUN

Some of our customers may not be aware of the many advantages they will gain by doing an Advance Purchase with Safety Unlimited. Here are just a few:

The first, and most obvious, is the tremendous savings. In fact, the more courses you buy, the more you will save, up to 75% off the actual price.

Advance Purchase courses also have no expiration dates. This means that you do not have to take the courses right after you purchase them, like you do with other courses. You can take the courses whenever you need to and never have to worry if they will expire.

Along the same lines, the courses you purchase will automatically receive free upgrades. So if a course is updated because a large amount of time has passed from when you first purchased the course to when you take it, you will still be able to take the latest version of the training you signed up for.

Finally, your Advance Purchase courses allow for incomplete training substitutions. This means that if a student does not complete their training, they can be removed from the course and replaced with someone else.

For more benefits – and further information on Advance Purchases– please go to our webpage on Advance Purchase and Volume Pricing.

Support Sanctuary Advance Purchases, Volume pricing, Course savings

Did you know that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) offers a pocket guide to chemical hazards? If you have a chemical spill at your workplace, this guide allows you to learn about the hazards of that chemical.

In particular, the guide provides NIOSH recommended exposure limits (REL), OSHA permissible exposure limits (PEL), immediately dangerous to life and health (IDLH) values, measurement methods, personal protection and sanitation recommendations, respiratory selection recommendations, exposure routes, symptoms, target organs, first aid information, and much, much more. The guide, in effect, provides Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) information for all chemicals tested by NIOSH.

The ability to identify a chemical's hazards quickly helps you determine the risks of exposure and how to clean up a spill (or whether you should tackle it yourself at all).

You can search the guide online, using a variety of search criteria, to identify a chemical, identify its hazards, or identify a chemical by entering potential hazards. The guide is organized into three main, searchable areas:

1. An index of chemical names, synonyms, and trade names;
2. An index of Chemical Abstracts Service Registry (CAS) numbers; and
3. An index of Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (RTECS) numbers.

The guide is available in print format, or can be downloaded from the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) website.

Did You Know? CDC, NIOSH, NIOSH pocket guide, Hazardous materials

Every year, between February 1 and April 30, all employers with 11 or more employees are required by OSHA to post occupational injury and illness summaries from the prior year.

The summary is usually a single page that compiles all of a specific company's injuries, illnesses, and fatalities by category, and the total number of days missed due to injury or illness.

Posting these summaries allows the employer to identify problem areas and work to prevent them in the future. It also allows the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to compile figures on injuries and illnesses and determine trends. This in turn helps OSHA determine whether regulations need to be added or tweaked to reduce injuries and illnesses in specific industries.

While employers are responsible for compiling and posting the injuries and illnesses from the past year, employees should understand how and when to report an injury or illness. It is the responsibility of the employer to teach their employees how to report injuries and illnesses.

Regulatory Review Injury and illness summary, Workplace injuries

If you have not already heard, Safety Unlimited, Inc. has been selected by OSHA  to provide online versions of the 10 Hour Construction and 10 Hour General Industry courses. These courses are part of OSHA's Outreach Training Program – a program whose training aims to prevent work-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths by providing the knowledge and tools workers need to identify, correct, and prevent workplace safety and health hazards.

OSHA considers the Outreach Training Program to be an essential component of their efforts to make training available to workers and to teach them about job hazards and their rights under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.

OSHA anticipates that these training programs will be helpful to many students as an orientation to occupational safety and health. We plan to implement online versions of the 10 Hour Construction and 10 Hour General Industry in the very near future, so be sure to stay tuned to this newsletter for updates.

Company Corner OSHA Outreach Training Program, 10 Hour Construction, 10 Hour General Industry

We've just released the January issue of The Monthly SUN.

Topics covered in this issue:

• Did You Know?: OSHA Construction Animation Videos
• Safety Matters: Child Safety Seats
• Support Sanctuary: Track Your Training
• Safety Tip of the Month: Winter Road Safety

The Monthly SUN

As you know, your employer is responsible for ensuring you have a safe and healthful work environment. This is no different during the winter. But what about outside the workplace? What about your route to and from work?

According to the National Weather Service (NWS), 70% of injuries during winter storms occur due to vehicle accidents, and 25% result from being caught out in the storm.

You can't always avoid accidents caused by other drivers, but you can be prepared for travel in winter weather or storms (if they are not severe enough to shut down the roads).

The most obvious step you can take is to check the NWS site, the Weather Channel, the local weather service, or a smart phone application to determine what kind of weather to expect. Other steps include conducting a winter inspection of your vehicle and preparing and carrying an emergency kit in the vehicle – for those of you who work from an employer vehicle, these are musts and should be overseen by your employer.

Items you should check on your vehicle include the breaks; cooling, electrical, and exhaust systems; tires; oil; engine, and your visibility elements such as lights, wipers, and defrosters. Ensuring these are in good condition can prevent accidents.

It's also a good idea to have at least half a tank of gas in the car at all times in case you find yourself stuck in traffic – you don't want to run out of fuel in winter weather.

An emergency kit will come in handy if you are in an accident or become trapped in your vehicle. Such a kit should include blankets or sleeping bags, a cell phone or two-way radio, windshield scraper and snow brush, a flashlight, extra winter clothes, a shovel, tow chain, and traction aids (sand or cat litter), emergency flares, jumper cables, water, snacks, and roadmaps (in case the weather prevents satellite reception).

For more information, see the National Safety Council's handout Winter, Your Car and You.

Safety Tip of the Month Winter safety NOAA, Weather, Winter weather, National safety Council, National Weather Service

Have you ever wanted a single spot to store all your employee's online and classroom training documentation, rather than run from a website, to a file cabinet, to the employee, and back again to get all the information you need? If so, we have good news.

In the upcoming weeks, Safety Unlimited, Inc. will roll out a tool that will allow corporate administrators to track training and other events for their employees. What is more, this tool will not just work with training taken through Safety Unlimited, but will also be able to track training that took place outside of our own training. This includes other certifications, training events that occur at your workplace, and training licenses – virtually any training or certification event you can imagine.

Not only will you be able to record these events, but you will also be able to set expiration dates for certification, allowing you to determine when new training is required. You will also be able to upload documents, such as PDF versions or scanned copies of certifications.

Other features you will be able to document include the authority requiring the certification, the type of authority, the specific regulation, the certifying company and/or person, and more.

If you are a corporate administrator interested in using this new feature, contact us to learn more details. If contacted, we can also provide further information on when the features will become available and how to use them.

Support Sanctuary Documentation tracking, Training tracking, Event tracking, Certification tracking

Did you know that crashes are the leading cause of death for children aged 3 to 14? The good news is, with the proper safety measures, these numbers can be reduced, and this can be done through the proper use of child safety seats.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an estimated 8,959 lives were saved by child restraints from 1975 to 2008.

Not only should child safety seats be used, but, as mentioned above, they should be used properly. The NHTSA recommends the following guidelines when selecting, installing, and using a child safety seat in the car:

1. Select a car seat based on your child's age, height, and weight.
2. Keep your child in the car seat for as long as possible, as long as your child fits the seat's height and weight requirements.
3. All children under 13 should ride in the backseat.
4. Follow your car seat manufacturer's instructions and your vehicle owner's manual on how to install.
5. Get help. Certified technicians are available to check your car seat installation for free. Find your nearest inspection station.

For more information, including car seat recommendations for specific age groups, go to the NHTSA website on child safety.

Safety Matters Child car safety seats, NHTSA, Child restraints, Seat installation

Did you know that every year in the United States more than 800 construction workers die and nearly 137,000 are seriously injured? This is because construction workers engage in many activities that may expose them to serious hazards, such as falling from rooftops, using unguarded machinery, or being struck by heavy construction equipment.

In an effort to reduce the number of injuries and deaths in the construction industry, OSHA has released a series of computer animated videos based on actual construction incidents. Running for approximately 2 to 4 minutes, each video begins with a worksite accident and ends by giving corrective actions for preventing these types of accidents in the future. Because of their accessibility to the construction worker, OSHA recommends these videos be used for employer and worker training.

Sample topics include falls in construction, sprains and strains in construction, and struck by accidents in construction.

While the videos are animated and do not present live events, it should be noted that the videos do deal with death at construction sites and, therefore, might be disturbing for some people.

Did You Know? OSHA construction videos, Animated videos, Construction workers, Construction hazards, Construction injuries and deaths