September 4, 2024 Safety professionals have lauded using a “buddy system” to mitigate workplace injuries in high-risk industries as a best practice, but the move to establish such work teams doesn’t fit all situations, experts say.   Concerns over issues such as passing on inconsistent safety practices and the expense of such programs need to be considered, they say.   In a report issued Aug. 20 by Pinnacol Assurance, buddy systems, where workers are paired, were listed among the recommendations for preventing heat-related injuries. The report, which culled data from the Denver-based insurer’s workers compensation claims, stated that workers are 52% more susceptible to workplace injuries on hot days, including strains, cuts, falls and injuries that occur when an object strikes a worker.   Monica Cabrera, a Pueblo, Colorado-based safety learning specialist with Pinnacol, said “buddy systems are great for monitoring and managing workload and high-temperature environments.”   “For example, if an employee has to go into a confined space, the buddy system benefits them,” she said.   The system also allows for early intervention if a worker shows symptoms of heat-related illness or any other illness or “if they’re just having a bad day and they’re making more mistakes than usual,” she said. “Somebody else can notice that before they actually get injured due to their distraction.”   Kevin O’Sadnick, St. Louis-based risk control manager for workers comp insurer Safety National Casualty Corp., said that while he likes buddy systems — especially for workers in remote areas — employers may be hindered by the expenses associated with deploying pairs of people to do a job that often requires just one worker.   Another concern is when a newer worker picks up the bad safety habits of a longer-tenured worker, he said. “One bad apple turns into two, and you could potentially have a new employee learning bad work habits right out of the gate. … That’s maybe where management would come in; where there’s a lot of checks and balances that maybe need to be in place.”   Buddy systems risk excluding management when communicating safety, said Chris Hayes, Hartford, Connecticut-based risk control assistant vice president for workers compensation and transportation for Travelers Cos. Inc.   Such a system “can help support a risk management program, but on its own, it really lacks the things that we would look for in any serious, very structured risk management program,” he said.   “When you put all the emphasis on peer-to-peer coaching, you lose a lot in translation. If you have peer-to-peer coaching, you don’t have any sort of consistency in what’s being coached.”

August 29, 2024 On a hot summer day in Oak Ridge, Tenn., dozens of men removed pipes, asbestos and hazardous waste while working to decontaminate a nuclear facility and prepare it for demolition.   Dressed in head-to-toe coveralls and fitted with respirators, the crew members toiling in a building without power had no obvious respite from the heat. Instead, they wore armbands that recorded their heart rates, movements and exertion levels for signs of heat stress.   Stephanie Miller, a safety and health manager for a U.S. government contractor doing cleanup work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, watched a computer screen nearby. A color-coding system with little bubbles showing each worker’s physiological data alerted her if anyone was in danger of overheating.   “Heat is one of the greatest risks that we have in this work, even though we deal with high radiation, hazardous chemicals and heavy metals,” Miller said.   As the world experiences more record high temperatures, employers are exploring wearable technologies to keep workers safe. New devices collect biometric data to estimate core body temperature—an elevated one is a symptom of heat exhaustion—and prompt workers to take cool-down breaks.   The devices, which were originally developed for athletes, firefighters and military personnel, are getting adopted at a time when the Atlantic Council estimates heat-induced losses in labor productivity could cost the U.S. approximately $100 billion annually.   But there are concerns about how the medical information collected on employees will be safeguarded. Some labor groups worry managers could use it to penalize people for taking needed breaks.   “Any time you put any device on a worker, they’re very concerned about tracking, privacy, and how are you going to use this against me,” said Travis Parsons, director of occupational safety and health at the Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America. “There’s a lot of exciting stuff out there, but there’s no guardrails around it.”   Vulnerable to Heat At the Tennessee cleanup site, the workers wearing heat stress monitors made by Atlanta company SlateSafety are employed by United Cleanup Oak Ridge. The company is a contractor of the U.S. Department of Energy, which has rules to prevent on-the-job overheating.   But most U.S. workers lack protections from extreme heat because there are no federal regulations requiring them, and many vulnerable workers don’t speak up or seek medical attention. In July, the Biden administration proposed a rule to protect 36 million workers from heat-related illnesses.   From 1992 to 2022, 986 workers died from heat exposure in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Experts suspect the number is higher because a coroner might not list heat as the cause of death if a sweltering roofer takes a fatal fall.   Setting occupational safety standards can be tricky because individuals respond differently to heat. That’s where the makers of wearable devices hope to come in.   How Wearable Heat Tech Works Employers have observed workers for heat-related distress by checking their temperatures with thermometers, sometimes rectally. More recently, firefighters and military personnel swallowed thermometer capsules.   “That just was not going to work in our work environment,” Rob Somers, global environment, health and safety director at consumer product company Perrigo, said.   Instead, more than 100 employees at the company’s infant formula plants were outfitted with SlateSafety armbands. The devices estimate a wearer’s core body temperature, and a reading of 101.3 degrees triggers an alert.   Another SlateSafety customer is a Cardinal Glass factory in Wisconsin, where four masons maintain a furnace that reaches 3000 degrees Fahrenheit.   “They’re right up against the face of the wall. So it’s them and fire,” Jeff Bechel, the company’s safety manager, said.   Cardinal Glass paid $5,000 for five armbands, software and air-monitoring hardware. Bechel thinks the investment will pay off; an employee’s two heat-related emergency room visits cost the company $15,000.   Another wearable, made by Massachusetts company Epicore Biosystems, analyzes sweat to determine when workers are at risk of dehydration and overheating.   “Until a few years ago, you just sort of wiped (sweat) off with a towel,” CEO Rooz Ghaffari said. “Turns out there’s all this information packed away that we’ve been missing.”   Research has shown some devices successfully predict core body temperature in controlled environments, but their accuracy remains unproven in dynamic workplaces, according to experts. A 2022 research review said factors such as age, gender and ambient humidity make it challenging to reliably gauge body temperature with the technology.   The United Cleanup Oak Ridge workers swathed in protective gear can get sweaty even before they begin demolition. Managers see dozens of sensor alerts daily.   Laborer Xavier Allison, 33, was removing heavy pieces of ductwork during a recent heat wave when his device vibrated. Since he was working with radioactive materials and asbestos, he couldn’t walk outside to rest without going through a decontamination process, so he spent about 15 minutes in a nearby room which was just as hot.   “You just sit by yourself and do your best to cool off,” Allison said.   The armband notifies workers when they’ve cooled down enough to resume work.   “Ever since we implemented it, we have seen a significant decrease in the number of people who need to get medical attention,” Miller said.   Collecting Personal Data United Cleanup Oak Ridge uses the sensor data and an annual medical exam to determine work assignments, Miller said. After noticing patterns, the company sent a few employees to see their personal physicians, who found heart issues the employees hadn’t known about, she said.   At Perrigo, managers analyze the data to find people with multiple alerts and speak to them to see if there’s “a reason why they’re not able to work in the environment,” Somers said. The information is organized by identification numbers, not names, when it goes into the company’s software system, he said.   Companies keeping years of medical data raises concerns about privacy and whether bosses may use the information to kick an employee off a health plan or fire them, said Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.   “The device could hurt, frankly, because you could raise your hand and say ‘I need a break,’ and the boss could say, ‘No, your heart rate is not elevated, go back to work,'” Schwartz said.   To minimize such risks, employers should allow workers to opt in or out of wearing monitoring devices, only process strictly necessary data and delete the information within 24 hours, he said.   Wearing such devices also may expose workers to unwanted marketing, Ikusei Misaka, a professor at Tokyo’s Musashino University, said.   A Partial Solution The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health advises employers to institute a plan to help workers adjust to hot conditions and to train them to recognize signs of heat-related illness and to administer first aid. Wearable devices can be part of efforts to reduce heat stress, but more work needs to be done to determine their accuracy, said Doug Trout, the agency’s medical officer.   The technology also needs to be paired with access to breaks, shade and cool water, since many workers, especially in agriculture, fear retaliation for pausing to cool off or hydrate.   “If they don’t have water to drink, and the time to do it, it doesn’t mean much,” Juanita Constible, senior advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said. “It’s just something extra they have to carry when they’re in the hot fields.”

8/25/2024 Florida businesses could see a slight decrease in workers’ compensation insurance rates in 2025, continuing a series of years of lower rates. The National Council on Compensation Insurance, which makes rate filings for the industry, submitted a proposal Friday to regulators that would lead to an overall 1 percent rate decrease, effective Jan. 1. A summary by the organization known as NCCI described the workers’ compensation system as “healthy” and said that while “consumer inflation has been elevated, the inflation for workers’ compensation medical costs remained stable.” It also said a combination of continued claims “frequency declines and moderate benefit costs at or below the level of wage growth, have continued to put downward pressure on overall WC (workers’ compensation) system costs relative to collected premiums.” The summary said a law passed this year (SB 362) to increase maximum workers’ compensation reimbursements for physicians affected the proposal. Without the law, it said the proposal would have been for an overall 6.4 percent decrease. The state Office of Insurance Regulation will review the proposal and can require changes. Regulators approved a 15.1 percent decrease that took effect this year and an 8.4 percent decrease that took effect in 2023.

August 22, 2024   A construction worker has filed a lawsuit against his former employer, alleging negligence and unlawful employment practices. Daylier Leyva Fajardo filed the complaint in the Circuit Court of the 64th Judicial Circuit in Pinellas County, Florida, on August 12, 2024, against Direct Express Construction, LLC.   According to the court documents, Fajardo was employed by Direct Express Construction as a laborer and construction worker from November 2022 until January 20, 2023. On that day, while performing his duties, he suffered a traumatic injury to his right eye when a steel cable pierced it. The plaintiff claims that the defendant failed to provide necessary protective gear such as masks or safety glasses that could have prevented the injury. Additionally, there was no proper supervision or work partner available at the time of the accident.   Fajardo immediately reported his injury to his supervisor Santiago but did not receive any workers' compensation benefits. Despite seeking emergency medical care on his own and requesting assistance from Santiago and Joseph V Cavaleri Jr., the owner of Direct Express Construction, Fajardo's pleas for help were ignored. Instead of providing support or benefits as required by law, Santiago informed Fajardo that he was fired shortly after reporting his injury.   The plaintiff argues that this termination constitutes retaliatory discharge under Florida Statute 440.205 which prohibits employers from discharging or intimidating employees for filing valid claims for workers' compensation. Fajardo asserts that he notified his employer within the legally required timeframe and had every right to request medical treatment without facing adverse employment actions.   Fajardo is seeking various forms of relief including actual and consequential damages plus interest; compensatory damages for pain, suffering, and humiliation; back pay; prejudgment interest; post-judgment interest; damages for all employment and retirement benefits he would have received if not for the defendant’s actions; and any other relief deemed appropriate by the court.   Representing Daylier Leyva Fajardo is attorney Joseph Perea from Miami-based law firm Joseph Perea P.A. The case has been assigned Case Number: 24-003593-CI in Pinellas County Circuit Court.

August 22, 2024 Exposure to dust and other particles may put construction workers at an increased risk of developing chronic kidney disease, according to a study publicized on Wednesday.   Researchers at the University of Gothenburg found that Swedish construction workers studied over five decades had a 15% higher risk of developing chronic kidney disease.   The researchers noted that other recent expert studies showed that outdoor air pollution particles from sources such as industry and vehicle exhaust also increased the odds of developing chronic kidney disease.   The study, which was published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, examined data from more than 280,000 construction workers who participated in health surveys between 1971 and 1993.   The researchers said that the risk could be mitigated by developing improvements to workplace emissions and emphasizing to construction workers the importance of using personal protective equipment.   “Considering the substantial disease burden and costly treatment of CKD, this has large implications for public health and warrants further efforts to reduce occupational and ambient particle exposure,” the researchers wrote.   They next plan to study the link between dust and particle exposure and chronic kidney disease in other professional groups.

The Department of Labor (DOL) has issued a new rule that updates the overtime pay exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for executive, administrative, professional, and highly compensated employees. Here's what you need to know: Key Changes New Salary Thresholds : For Executive, Administrative, and Professional Employees : Starting on July 1, 2024, these employees must earn at least $43,888 per year to be exempt from overtime pay. This amount will increase to $58,656 on January 1, 2025. For Highly Compensated Employees (HCE) : The threshold for this group will rise to $132,964 per year on July 1, 2024, and further increase to $151,164 on January 1, 2025.   Automatic Updates Every Three Years : Beginning July 1, 2027, the salary thresholds for these exemptions will automatically adjust every three years. This is meant to keep pace with changes in worker salaries, giving employers a predictable schedule for future adjustments.   Unchanged Duties Test : The criteria related to job duties for these exemptions remain the same. To be exempt from overtime, employees must still meet both the updated salary requirements and the existing job duty criteria.   Impact on Employers These changes mean that many more workers will qualify for overtime pay unless their salaries are raised above the new thresholds. Employers need to prepare for these updates by reviewing and possibly reclassifying employees to ensure compliance with the new rules. Employers should start by assessing their current exempt workforce, considering factors such as job roles, locations, and compensation levels. This will help them identify which positions will be affected by the new rule and allow them to plan accordingly. It’s also crucial for employers to work closely with legal advisors to understand how these changes will impact their specific workforce and to ensure compliance with both federal and state laws.   Legal Challenges and Next Steps Although the rule may face legal challenges and could be influenced by future political changes, employers should not assume that the rule will be overturned. The best approach is to prepare for the rule to take effect on July 1, 2024, with further changes on January 1, 2025. To sum up, employers need to act now to review their workforce and make necessary adjustments to comply with the new overtime rules. Proper planning and legal consultation will be key to navigating these significant changes.

August 20, 2024 Pinnacol Assurance, a Denver-based workers compensation insurer, released a report Tuesday showing that workers are more at risk for injuries when working in extreme temperatures.   The insurer said its claims data shows that workers in both outdoor and indoor settings are 52% more susceptible to injury when temperatures rise above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.   Common injuries on extremely hot days include strains, cuts, falls and “strikes.”     Workers considered to be particularly vulnerable are those in the construction, road maintenance, landscaping and other outdoor industries, the report states.   “When workers are exposed to excessive heat, their physical and cognitive abilities can be impaired, increasing the likelihood of accidents,” Tom Denberg, Pinnacol’s medical director, said in a statement.   Employers looking to cut down on worker injuries should implement heat safety measures, including providing hydration, rest breaks and shaded areas to ensure a “safer and more productive work environment,” Mr. Denberg stated.   In addition to outdoor professions, employees who work in indoor settings, such as teachers, restaurant workers and maintenance workers, are also at an increased risk of developing injuries due to heat exposure, the report states.

August 19, 2024 Analysis of 1.2 million workers’ compensation claims reveals the costliest claims are driven by the most common workplace accidents, according to Travelers 2024 Injury Impact Report.   The data also shows first-year employees are still among those most vulnerable to injury.   The largest workers compensation insurer in the U.S. examined more than 1.2 million workers’ comp claims from 2017 to 2021.   The findings revealed that the most common workplace accidents make up the majority of claim costs. The report found that the most frequent causes of injury were:     Overexertion (29% of claims analyzed)     Slips, trips and falls (23%)     Being struck by an object (12%)     Motor vehicle accidents (5%)     Caught-in or caught-between hazards (5%)     The top five drivers of severe claims ($250,000 or more), beginning with the costliest:     Slips, trips and falls     Overexertion     Being struck by an object     Motor vehicle accidents     Caught-in or caught-between hazards   “Factors such as inexperience, workforce shortages and maintenance issues are all contributing to these unfortunate and often avoidable accidents,” said Rich Ives, senior vice president of Business Insurance Claim at Travelers. “While the number of injuries overall has been trending downward in recent years, our analysis shows that there’s never been a better time for businesses to invest in workplace safety and injury prevention.”   The 2024 report found that employees in their first year on the job continue to be the most vulnerable to workplace injuries, accounting for 35% of all workers compensation claims.   This year’s analysis also uncovered increases in missed workdays due to injuries.   On average, injured employees missed 72 workdays, up one day from last year’s report.   The construction industry continued to have the highest average number of lost workdays per injury (103 workdays, up from 99), followed by transportation (83 workdays, up from 77).   Injured small-business employees missed an average of 82 workdays, up from 79.   “There are tangible consequences to any injury, and many include long-term, sometimes permanent, effects,” said Chris Hayes, assistant vice president of Workers Compensation and Transportation, Risk Control, at Travelers. “By understanding where the risks were in the past, businesses can better identify what to look for and tailor their risk management and employee safety strategies accordingly to help prevent injuries from happening.”   Findings were based solely on indemnity claims, where the injured employees could not immediately return to work and incurred medical costs.

August 16, 2024 Washington — NIOSH is seeking respirator manufacturers and other participants for a new project aimed at determining how well the devices protect workers who have facial hair when beard bands are used.   Beard bands, which can be made from silicone or rubber, are an accessory used to keep hair or beards in place. According to a notice published July 25, the agency is looking for beard band manufacturers to participate in the project as well.   “The COVID-19 outbreak highlighted the ongoing need for effective respiratory protective devices for workers, especially in health care,” the notice states. “In the first phase of this study, respirator fit will be evaluated using the NIOSH-approved filtering facepiece respirators selected to participate in the study when worn on persons with facial hair. Then respirator fit will be determined for the same individuals wearing a beard band under the respirator.”   Additional study phases may include other kinds of tight-fitting respirators, including particulate-only elastomeric half-mask respirators or full-facepiece respirators. The study might also look at Simulated Workplace Protection Factor on respirator users with facial hair.   “The SWPF refers to the ratio of the concentration of the contaminant in the ambient air to that inside a respirator under conditions that simulate the work environment or various work activities,” the notice states.   “The study will provide data useful to support OSHA and NIOSH policy regarding the appropriateness of using beard bands with filtering facepiece respirators and particulate EHMRs or full-facepiece respirators. This study may lead to increased means for employers to conform with the OSHA respiratory protection requirements and possibly increase compliance with respiratory protection guidelines and standards among bearded workers in various industries.”   Anyone interested in participating in the study must submit a letter of intent by Sept. 23.

August 16, 2024 A study by the American College of Cardiology has found that chronic occupational noise exposure in power loom weavers was associated with increased blood pressure levels.   The study, which the college said was presented this week at the ACC Asia 2024 conference in Delhi, India, also said a worker’s chance of suffering from high blood pressure increased by 10% for each year of exposure.   “In addition to treating the high blood pressure through appropriate means, we must find ways to mitigate the exposure to the noise if we want to reduce the cardiovascular risk of these patients,” Golam Dastageer Prince, a doctor from Bangladesh and one of the study’s lead authors, said in a statement.   Researchers looked predominantly at 289 male workers in Bangladesh between January and December 2023 and found that the study population did not wear hearing protection.   The study’s authors said the goal is to raise awareness of noise-induced hearing loss but also to focus on improving workplace safety by using appropriate personal protective equipment.   The study participants were found to have a 31.5% rate of high blood pressure with an additional 53.3% being considered prehypertensive.   The study focused on workers exposed to more than 85 decibels of occupational noise for long periods of time.