On Monday Governor Baker announced the State’s Plan to safely reopen the Massachusetts economy, while minimizing the health impacts of COVID-19. The guidance includes mandatory sector-specific standards and recommended best practices for sectors that are eligible to open in Phase 1, including laboratories that were not already considered essential.
On April 10, 2020, OSHA published interim guidance regarding the enforcement of employers’ obligation to record and report employees’ COVID-19 cases.
OSHA recently issued a guidance document on Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19 that focuses on determining employees’ risk of occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2 in order to identify the appropriate control measures that can be put in place to protect employees from exposure.
We have been getting many questions from clients on appropriate precautions to take when working with COVID-19 positive samples in the lab. The World Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), and the American Biological Safety Association (ABSA) have all published extremely informative guidance on this topic
Watertown announced yesterday that due to the COVID-19 emergency they will be postponing the effective date of their new regulation (Biotechnology and the Use of Recombinant DNA Molecule Technology) from May 1 until July 1, 2020.
There is a lot of talk lately on the news and social media about the use of masks for helping to flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections.
The terms risk and hazard are used often in the safety world, many times interchangeably. They have very different meanings, however, and when using these terms, care should be taken to use them appropriately.
The Coronavirus pandemic continues to impact all of us in profound ways. Most importantly, employee safety continues to be at the forefront of our efforts which extends to Safety Partners employees, families, clients and friends.
As I mentioned in last week’s blog, Prevent Blindness has deemed March as Workplace Eye Wellness Month. This non-profit organization is currently promoting awareness about the dangers of blue light exposure from computers, televisions, and device screens including smart phones and tablet screens.
Prevent Blindness, the nation’s first eye health and vision care nonprofit organization, has deemed March as Workplace Eye Wellness Month. Did you know that thousands of people are blinded each year from work-related eye injuries? According to the CDC, each day about 2,000 U.S. employees sustain a work-related eye injury that requires medical treatment.
If your facility is registered with the MA DEP as a Large Quantity Generator (LQG) of hazardous waste, don’t forget that 2020 is a year when biennial reports must be filed. Biennial reports are due by March 1st of even numbered years for any facility that exceeded the LQG threshold during the preceding odd numbered year, even if your facility is no longer registered as an LQG.
If you’ve ever attended safety training, you surely have heard the terms PEL, TLV, REL and STEL. Do these letters really have a meaning or are they just a bunch of alphabet soup? These acronyms all represent different occupational exposure limits (OELs) that are derived by different organizations.
