Zero may be the worst possible mark in the academic realm, but in the workplace, it’s exactly what safety professionals are aiming for.

 
The Electrical and Safety Utilities Association (EUSA) has been working with its member companies towards a similar goal. Launched in 2004, ZeroQuest was established as a tool for instituting an integrated health and safety system in the workplace, envisioned to lead the industry towards its target of zero lost time injuries by 2011.

Seatbelts took awhile to catch on when introduced to the market but have become an acknowledged, life-saving device for drivers. Workers in industrial plants, too, have come to accept safety devices as a necessary part of their routine. In some cases, they use them as automatically as seatbelts.

Despite this progress, why are workers still getting injured or killed by machinery?

Canada’s health care sector is always struggling to make ends meet. Whenever they do have money to invest, health executives tend to devote spending on new hospitals, better medical equipment or surgical suites, to help improve patient care.

What that means, says Cameron Mustard, President of the Institute for Work & Health (IWH), is that “over the last 15 years there hasn’t been a lot to spare for investments in efforts to protect the health of workers in the sector.” 

Four years ago on Christmas day, an employee working for a company that recycles lead from used batteries paid dearly for failing to wear personal protective equipment.

He had just finished moving a container pot filled with molten metal from a furnace to a cooling area when the pot suddenly exploded just as he was reversing his forklift truck. The molten metal, also known as slag, splashed the worker. When the worker jumped out of the forklift truck to go to an emergency shower wash station, more misfortune struck. He slipped on the slag, and ended up receiving third degree burns to both legs, second degree burns to the back of his neck, and third degree burns on his left palm.

When it comes to chemical safety, ignorance is your worst enemy.

Ross Armstrong doesn’t pretend to be a chemical expert. The safety supervisor at Boart Longyear Canada has developed a keen eye for spotting important health data on a material safety data sheet (MSDS) over the years, and the workers come to him when they have concerns about chemicals used at the plant. Still, he’s no chemist and he "has no problem finding out" all he can about these substances.

Health and safety experts outline some basic steps to follow for safer chemical handling in the workplace. 

We still don’t get it he says!

Alan Quilley has an edge. He seems ticked off  with most of our “business an usual” approaches to safety — mainly because it just isn’t working.

Speaking to a packed auditorium of safety professionals at the CSSE conference in Victoria, B.C., the bearded and bespectacled Quilley is animated and engaged and appears relaxed and comfortable up on stage before his peers — even though he’s about to take direct aim at them. He says he’s not afraid to be the person who points out our flaws and helps spark the debate about change. “I want to be that voice,” says Quilley. “We are not doing very well.”

Janet Sellery, the Stratford Festival of Canada’s health and safety manager, is the 2007 COS Safety Manager of the Year!

When patrons take their seats at the Stratford Theatre they are transported to another time and place, witness tempests and sword fights, epic battles, and experience a full range of human emotions.

But the people who help stage these fantasies need to ensure they aren’t risking their own safety for our entertainment.

To mount the elaborate and awe inspiring productions we see at Stratford, there are dozens of craftspeople and artisans, stagehands, administrative staff, actors and directors and a team of creative people working off stage to produce top quality and artistically meaningful entertainment.

Have you ever considered the hazards and controls involved with twelve people in gold flight suits tap-dancing on the wings of an airplane over a cloud of fog?  This is an issue that our Technical Director, Elissa Horscroft, had to resolve so that this spectacular moment could be included in the curtain call of My One and Only at the Avon Theatre.  Try to imagine a business where these kinds of issues are common.

Don Sayers has been in the training game for longer than he’d care to admit. And he’s learned a thing or two along the way about what makes training effective.  

Sayers, the principal force behind Don Sayers & Associates, presented a three-hour workshop on effective safety training at the CSSE event in Victoria, B.C.

Wandering effortlessly across the stage, Sayers is clearly comfortable when he’s teaching and training — even training trainers. Get him talking about safety training and adult learning, and you’d better be ready for a far-reaching discussion.