New chemical reference pages from NIOSH

In March, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) added six pages to their list of chemicals covered under their Occupational Safety and Health Topics. The six new pages cover 2-Butoxyethanol, Methyl Alcohol (Methanol), Phenol, Hydrazine, Chloroform, and Carbon Disulfide.

NIOSH maintains an index of their chemical topics pages on their website.

Link: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/chemical.html

Safety message for facility services staff

I've been having many discussions lately, both verbal and email, on the topic of management support for occupational safety throughout our system campuses. One recent example of a clear message of management support for safety over expediency comes from the latest newsletter for UW-Milwaukee's Facility Services Department. On page one, director Dave Danielson gives both general support to the safety attitude he wants from his employees, and specifically mentions certain tasks and injury causes for extra attention.

In addition to that safety endorsement, page 4 discusses back safety and makes use of the signage developed by UW-Madison. (Jeff Nytes from UW-Madison presented an overview of their back safety program at our recent campus meeting in September.) Page 5 has a report on campus sustainability issues.

EH&S Newsletters

[Note: an updated version of this posting will be available at our OSLP website.]

Sometimes, the delivery of environment, health and safety information to your target campus audience is best done via newletter. For those times, we provide the following examples from which to take inspiration. (If you would like your campus EH&S newsletter listed here, send your suggestion to our office.)

Newsletters from University of Wisconsin System campuses

River Falls—Risk Management Safety Newsletter.

Oshkosh—Shop Talk: A newsletter for and about facilities professionals at UW-Oshkosh keeps their facilities department employees up-to-date with the latest news and provides a safety tip in the “Safety Corner.” On the Facilities Management main page, links to the most recent Shop Talk editions are at the lower right of the page.

Madison—Safety First. A newsletter from the UW-Madison Department of Environment, Health and Safety for the campus community. [added Aug. 20 -- Lab Safety Spectrum & Radiation Review Newsletters]

Stevens Point—Safety Notes is an occasional newsletter typically focusing on one EH&S topic.

Milwaukee—Go to the Environmental Affairs web page, and click the Newsletter link in the left column for the most recent edition.

Newsletters from other campuses

Here are links to a small sampling of newsletters from other colleges and universities:

Rutgers—Link to the spring 2008 edition of the REHS News. This was an award recipient at the CSHEMA conference in July 2008.

UC Davis—Safety Signals.

Northwestern—Two newsletters: NUtrino: News and training for radiation workers at Northwestern University, and Research Safety News.

University of Maryland—Safety Talk.

Case Western Reserve—Safety Comes First.