Newsletter Archive

• May 2008 (pdf)
• April 2008 (pdf)
• March 2008 (pdf)
• February 2008 (pdf)
• January 2008 (pdf)

• December 2007 (pdf)
• November 2007 (pdf)

News & Information


Alaska Chapter 2008 Safety Summit Call for Speakers

Last year's Safety Summit was a great success - and a direct result of great speakers!

The Alaska Occupational Safety Summit Program Committee invites those interested in presenting at its 3rd Annual Professional Development Summit, September 29 - 30, 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska to submit an electronic proposal to Alaska.Safety.Engineers@gmail.com by May 20, 2008.

Attached is a Call for Speakers, with proposal details and policy included. We are looking for dynamic, technically-oriented presentations for professional safety and health managers. The Committee will review and consider presentation proposals for all aspects of occupational safety and health.

Please forward to your chapter members for consideration and call me if you have any questions - thank you.

Editor's Briefs - April 2008

By Tyler Nguyen, Newsletter Editor - tyler.nguyen@esa.sccgov.org

Since 1991, the Santa Clara Countywide Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Program has provided residents with a safe, convenient disposal service with year-round access. The County and 14 cities participate in the countywide program and share costs based on the number of households served from each jurisdiction. Participating jurisdictions include: Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Monte Sereno, Mountain View, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga and Sunnyvale. The City of Palo Alto (650) 496-6980 operates a separate HHW Program for their residents only.

This Program provides the general public and small businesses with a safe, immediate solution to HHW recycling and disposal. Residents are encouraged to use safer and less toxic alternatives and purchase smaller quantities of hazardous products. Improper storage and disposal of hazardous waste is associated with accidental poisonings, worker health and safety, equipment damage, and environmental contamination of surface and groundwater. Heavy metals such as lead, zinc, copper, nickel, mercury and cadmium enter the waste stream via residential sewage and urban run-off.

Before collection programs were available, options for managing HHW were limited to disposal in the trash, pouring down the drain, or storing the waste indefinitely. Products stored for more than a year, are seldom used and the risk of accidental poisoning of children and pets significantly outweighs any potential benefit of saving the product for future use.

For additional information please call the Household Hazardous Waste program at (408) 299-7300. Also check out their web site under Santa Clara County Department of Environmental Health at http://www.sccgov.org/portal/site/deh/.

The Internet and the Safety Profession

By Catherine Jones

Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our informal survey two weeks ago on how access to the Internet affects your job. Here's a quick look at some of the results.

The majority of you (53.8%) are online everyday searching for safety information, while others casually surf the net two or three times a week. (Only 8.3% admitted to obsessive use of the Internet.)

Google is by far your preferred search engine (82.7%), followed by Yahoo, MSN, Dogpile, Ask, Exalead, Refdesk and Blingo.

The top 10 safety items you're researching on the Internet (in reverse order):

The majority of you (51.3%) report having an online component in your safety programs, with approximately 5% of you waiting for your company to deliver on its promise to purchase an online component.

The top resource material for the online component of your safety program are (in reverse order):

Your top reasons for not purchasing online safety training resources are (in reverse order):

• A few of you are very skilled Internet researchers and report being successful in your search efforts all the time (or very close to all the time). The majority of you (66%) find what you're looking for most of the time and 18% only half the time.

• When it comes to finding safety information online, your pet peeves include:

As one of you put it: Safety related sites are like Safety People. There are some very good ones, and some very bad ones; and they don't wear signs.