In the past twelve months, our blog has been viewed over 40,000 times. More importantly then the viewership is the comments the readers have placed. These comments provided to us by readers across the globe provide motivation to continue. As one reader commented, he uses these incidents listed here in his safety toolbox meetings.
The accidents of last year ran the gambit from incidents with no injuries to incidents resulting fatalities. We have counted over 30 deaths in 2012 in the aluminium industry. Our industry can learn from all incidents (as it has in the past). Though the root cause of so many accidents are not known at time of posting. We feel that a little knowledge is better then no knowledge.
For instance, there were several fatal incidents relating to lock out tag out programs (LOTO) not being properly followed. An aluminium plant may have anywhere from 5-10 lockout tagout procedures a day. That's 25-70 LOTO a month, and 300-1750 LOTO a year! At some point complacency occurs. Complacency results in shortcuts, the worker(s) not being in the proper mindset. All to commonly an accident results.
Our industry had numerous successes that need to spotlighted. For instance Novelis' Berea plant in the United States surpassed over 1,000,000 hours without an injury. The APSB toured that plant in 2012 and was amazed at how well safety is incorporated in everyone and everything at that facility. The plant manager, the safety manager, the department managers, and the employees all need to be recognize for the hard work in ensuring worker safety in their facility.
Predicting what is in store for our industry in terms of safety is foolish. 2012 has been gone for 11 days. Nevertheless, there have been 3 incidents so far this year. The incidents involve dust explosions, equipment fires, etc. The incidents will be posted in the near future.
As so many have you done in the past, feel free to send links to news articles about accidents in our industry. Our rule is simple, we do not name the company nor location if a worker is injured or killed. As well as we never mention anyone's names.
Our industry had numerous successes that need to spotlighted. For instance Novelis' Berea plant in the United States surpassed over 1,000,000 hours without an injury. The APSB toured that plant in 2012 and was amazed at how well safety is incorporated in everyone and everything at that facility. The plant manager, the safety manager, the department managers, and the employees all need to be recognize for the hard work in ensuring worker safety in their facility.
Predicting what is in store for our industry in terms of safety is foolish. 2012 has been gone for 11 days. Nevertheless, there have been 3 incidents so far this year. The incidents involve dust explosions, equipment fires, etc. The incidents will be posted in the near future.
As so many have you done in the past, feel free to send links to news articles about accidents in our industry. Our rule is simple, we do not name the company nor location if a worker is injured or killed. As well as we never mention anyone's names.
2 comments:
Congratulations on completing one year of very valuable work. I am an ex- aluminium smelter employee and find your information very useful. The next step of your yeoman work is to record how much the aluminium plants have gained in reducing their accidents. Best of Luck.
Thank you Chandrashekhar for the kind words. The APSB is up for the challenge!
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