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It's my sincere desire not to
waste your time by sending unwanted emails. In addition to past
and current clients, this Newsletter is sent to those that have requested
information or who have visited with us at a conference, professional
meeting, or trade show. If this email has reached you by mistake
and you
do not wish to receive future issues, please reply to this email with
"REMOVE" in the Subject Field and I'll immediately
remove your name from our distribution list. I want this
newsletter to provide some real value so I welcome any comments,
suggestions, or ideas for future articles. Thank you and have a
great holiday season.
Hiram
Perez ,
President
hiram.perez@cam-enviro.com
CAM
Environmental Services
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| CHECKING
OUT OSHA's REVISED 300 LOG |
Filling
out OSHA's Form 300, the "Log of Work-Related
Injuries and Illnesses," is a yearly task for every
employer. The form is essentially a report card of
a company's ability to perform work safely. The
first thing many purchasing departments look at when
evaluating a potential contractor is the OSHA 300
Log. The 300 Log is correctly viewed by many in
industry as a reflection of a company's safety programs
and safety culture.
Employers in
2004 will be faced with a form that has been revised in
several important ways. Among the most significant
revisions is the addition of a column for Occupational
Hearing Loss and new recording requirements for hearing
loss. This will require employers to identify and
mitigate noise hazards in the workplace.
Other
changes include the use of different formulas for
calculating incidence rates. These changes will
have to be taken into consideration when making
year-to-year comparisons of some columns. Also,
existing computerized forms, templates, and/or software
packages should be checked to make sure that they
incorporate the new calculation methods.
Employers
are required to begin using the new OSHA form on January
1st, 2004. The revised OSHA 300 form is available
at the Record Keeping page of OSHA's website or you
can click here.
CAM Environmental
can provide a wide variety of Industrial Hygiene
monitoring including noise surveys. For more information on CAM's
IH services, email us at info@cam-enviro.com.
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| MANAGING
REACTIVE CHEMICALS AT HOME AND WORK |
Workers at a
sign company were cleaning up at the end of the day pouring
leftover solvents and chemicals into a 55-gallon waste
drum. They didn't realize that two of the chemicals
they were mixing were waste nitric acid and lacquer
thinner. The two chemicals reacted. The drum
explodes injuring 31 people.
It's a common thing to do at home or at
work: you take leftover solvents, paints, and other
chemicals and pour them all into a common container for
disposal. Although we've all heard not to mix ammonia
and bleach cleaners at home, mixing left over solvents,
pesticides, and chemicals at work or in the garage seems to
be a common occurrence. Well, this practice can be
deadly.
Making matters worse, the National
Fire Protection Association (NFPA) hazard ranking
diamond system, commonly used in industry, is not an
effective guide to determine chemical reactivity.
Sixty percent of incidents examined by the US
Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) in
2002 involved chemicals that were either not rated by the
NFPA or are considered to have "no special hazard"
(an NFPA instability rating of 0). So where do you go
for accurate information on chemical reactivity?
Fortunately, there are a number of helpful tools
available online.
One of the best is the Chemical
Reactivity Worksheet, available free from NOAA's Office
of Response and Restoration. This program contains
an extensive database of chemicals and allows you to create
of mixture of any of them. The worksheet then
calculates the potential hazards of the mixture. For
example, our mixture of ammonia and bleach cleaners warned
that "contact with substance releases toxic gas"
in addition to "heat generation by chemical reaction
may cause pressurization."
Another good source of information is the Process
Safety page from the American Institute of Chemical
Engineers which includes the free book, "Essential
Practices for Managing Chemical Reactivity Hazards."
You can also get this book as well as additional information
through OSHA's
Chemical Reactivity Safety webpage.
CAM Environmental
provides hazardous waste sampling, characterization, and
consulting services. For more information on our
hazardous waste services, email us at info@cam-enviro.com.
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| THIS
MONTH'S SAFETY FACT |
Based
on 50 years of training more than 100,000 automobile
drivers from around the country, the Smith
System Study has identified the most common error that
you and I make when we get behind the wheel. What
would you guess that mistake would be? Not using
seat belts? Drinking? Yelling at the kids in
the back seat? Although all of these are serious
mistakes, they are not the most common. The
most common error is tailgating or following the vehicle
in front of you too closely. If you've ever
had to jam on the brakes at the last minute and felt your
heart almost jump out of your chest, you know what an
"inadequate following distance" is. So
what is the appropriate following distance? Most of
us learned the "2-Second Rule" when we took
Driver's Ed back in High School. You remember--pick
a landmark and when the car in front of you passes it,
start counting "one Mississippi, two Mississippi."
We were all taught that if you reached the same landmark
before you got to "two Mississippi," you were
following too close. There's just one problem with
this method--2 seconds just isn't enough. The
2-Second Rule has been abandoned by most state DMV's and
is no longer being taught. Smith
System recommends at least a four (4) second following
distance--even longer if road or weather conditions are
poor. A longer following distance gives you the time
you need to identify upcoming hazards and stop or avoid
them safely. Now for the people who think that
increasing their following distance on Houston's highways
is an open invitation for other cars to cut in front of
them, according to the authors of the study, increasing
your following distance does not significantly increase
your commute time since the jerk that just cut in
front of you usually changes lanes again in a couple of
minutes anyway so the net effects balance out. Whether
people cut in front of you or not, the main point is that
you arrive at your destination safely--and isn't that your
main priority? Of course it is.
CAM Environmental
provides a variety of Program Safety services designed to
create or maintain a safe workplace. For more information on our
safety services, email us at info@cam-enviro.com.
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| ABOUT CAM ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES |
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Since 1986, CAM Environmental offers a variety of
field sampling, testing, and
consulting services including:
-
Asbestos Surveys &
Air
Monitoring
- Industrial Hygiene Monitoring
-
Abatement Design Specifications
- Program & Contract Safety Services
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Project
Management
- Environmental Site Assessments (ESA's)
-
Lab Analysis of Asbestos, Lead, & Mold
- Data Management
-
Field Sampling (Air, Soil, or Water)
- Contract & Staff Augmentation
-
Hazardous Waste Sampling & Characterization
- TDH, OSHA
& HAZWOPER Training
-
Indoor Air Quality Investigations
- Mold Investigations, Clearances, & Analysis
CAM
maintains a technical staff of over 75 people
operating from 6 locations in 4 cities. For
additional information on these services, please contact
your nearest CAM office or visit our website at www.cam-enviro.com.
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