There’s no shortage of things to talk about with your crews this week:

OSHA’s rescheduled Trench Safety Stand Down is this week, resources from NUCA, and NAHB, and trench fatality information from Marko Kaar.

OSHA’s FAQ on cloth face coverings, masks, and respirators.

Music track information:

“Dream Catcher” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Welcome to another week! Today’s focus is on heat stress prevention again, with a focus on hydration and severe weather.

Here’s a great toolbox talk from Ergodyne, including a urine color chart, mentioned in the audio message. Again, your mileage may vary with this, use it wisely!

Happy Safety Month! There’s a lot to talk to your workers about this week, today’s news gives you ideas for discussing working in areas of unrest, protest, and potential violence.

Music track information:

“Dream Catcher” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The day after a holiday weekend, during a pandemic, is a great day to talk about heat stress and hydration!

These short audio messages are returning to their original format – toolbox talk, tailgate meeting, or other short safety communication prep for a safety professional or supervisor. Basically, let me give you a prompt each week for current events or relevant safety topic to cover in your onsite communications. Or, maybe you’re inspired to record your own audio or video messages for your organization (you totally should).

There’s a lot to talk about related to hydration, so we’ll start with that this week, and move into other heat stress topics in the coming weeks as the weather heats up.

Here’s some of my go-to resources for hydration information:

OSHA’s Campaign to Prevent Heat Illness landing page

Korey Stringer Institute – Korey played for the Minnesota Vikings and died of heat stroke at training camp in August 2001.

Ergodyne blog – PREVENTING HEAT STRESS AT WORK: YOUR GUIDE TO HEAT STRESS RISKS & SOLUTIONS – start with this post, and click around their site for more related topics and toolbox talks

Safeopedia’s heat stress info landing page

EHS on Tap podcast – I was interviewed on the topic of heat stress 3+ years ago, the discussion is still relevant! It’s a podcast on Soundcloud, but you don’t need an account to listen.

Italian Journal of Emergency Medicine– a quick read on a case of a young person and their experience of extreme heat stress where consumption of energy drinks is partially at fault.

Electrical Contractor Magazine article on heat stress and energy drinks, suitable for printing & posting at your worksite.

Reopening is a mindset! Let’s talk strategies to ensure you prevent “scope creep” for safety pros and the workers you protect at your organization.

Reopening! Are you? The past week marked a change in mindset, operations are beginning to go “back” to some sort of normal. You need a plan.

Check out yesterday’s blog post, and refer to it often for more free resources on reopening from organizations, associations, and agencies.

May the Fourth be with you! Construction Safety Week is postponed, OSHA’s Fall Safety Stand Down is postponed. NAOSH Week chugs along, but does anyone really know what it is?? Listen to this week’s news for why you should care, and how you can leverage these observances.

Check out this classic post on leveraging the media and get inspired to share what your organization is doing to be proactive and safety-minded.

Here’s two social media shareables for this week:

Today’s quick info is about habits! How to make good ones, how bad ones fall by the wayside, and how you can use habit stacking to reinforce those new habits you want to keep.

Have you made some new habits during this time of isolation and physical distancing?

Let’s talk less about COVID-19, ok a little bit, and talk more about training! You may be starting to emerge from reactive communication and training, and able to think more proactively about planning some future training.

If that even remotely describes you, I hope you’ll check out this webinar on Wednesday, I’m talking more about blending technology and innovation with traditional methods for delivering safety training. You can register for that webinar here.

Today I’m talking about preventing hearing loss in school age children. I’ll be speaking more on this topic at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society ergonomics summit on April 15, 2020.