June is annually recognized as National Safety Month. Throughout the month, NSSGA will be sharing resources and content to help keep safety values front and center, as it is a core value of our members. This year, we're dividing the month into four key safety themes. Each week will feature specific content. Check out the themes below: 

Safety Month Webinar Total Worker Health: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Employee Wellbeing – Join us on June 6 at 1:00 p.m. EDT for a webinar focusing on Total Worker Health® (TWH). TWH is a holistic approach to growing the well-being of workers with proven solutions that create better opportunities for health and safety. In this webinar, Josh Ierna with Tilcon Connecticut (A CRH company) will share their company’s story, highlighting successes and lessons learned. 

EAP Poster Templates – Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) are voluntary, work-based programs that offer free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals, and follow-up services to employees who have personal and/or work-related problems. Make your EAP easy to find by personalizing these templates and posting them in spaces where employees frequent. 

Keeping Toolbox Talks Fresh – Toolbox Talks are discussions at the beginning of a shift that bring awareness to safety and health topics, and are routine throughout the aggregates industry. But we all know they can get stale. This resource offers innovative practices to help keep your Toolbox Talks fresh, engaging, and effective.

Safety Shorts – NSSGA’s Safety Shorts Podcast is a quick resource for you to use with your team during Toolbox Talks. The latest episode, featuring Sarah D’Amico, talks about safety as personal. 

Take Control: Prevent Serious Injuries and Fatalities – To help companies address serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs), NSSGA created the "Take Control: Prevent Serious Injuries and Fatalities" program that identifies activities with a high potential to cause SIFs and walks through critical controls that should be implemented to keep an SIF from occurring.

988 Lifeline – This 24/7, free and confidential service provides support for people in distress, offers prevention and crisis resources and best practices for health and safety professionals. The 988 Lifeline is available as a phone call or as a chat; be sure to share it with your workforce. 

Guarding Video – MSHA’s Guarding PowerPoint has been a valuable resource for the industry for a long time. The H&S committee has modernized it and adapted the PowerPoint into a video for ease of viewing.
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Machine Guarding eTool – This OSHA eTool provides animations and videos of moving machine parts, for example rotating and transversing, and actions, for example shearing and bending. 

On Guard: Keeping Workers Safe Around Machines and Moving Parts – This online article from the Safety+Health magazine, published by the National Safety Council, describes machine guarding as a fixture on OSHA’s annual list of top ten violations. 

OSHA Machine Guarding – This OSHA website gives an overview on machine guarding for moving machine parts. It covers OSHA standards, hazard recognition, possible solutions and additional resources. 

Safeguarding Equipment and Protecting Employees from Amputations – This OSHA resource describes requirements and methods for machine guarding to prevent amputations, which are among the most severe workplace injuries that often result in permanent disability.

Take Control: Moving Machine Parts – This excerpt from the Take Control: Prevent Serious Injuries and Fatalities program covers how to safely work around moving machine parts. This section includes a list of high-risk tasks, critical controls, a video, discussion questions, a poster and relevant Fatalgrams.    

Lockout/Tagout and Stored Energy – This OSHA resource talks about lockout/tagout relating to stored energy sources. The resource goes through some examples scenarios, as well as descriptions of where stored energy can be found on the jobsite. 

OSHA Electrical – This OSHA website provides an overview on working with electricity, including OSHA standards, working with electricity in construction, hazard recognition, possible solutions, training and additional resources.

Rip & Share: Know How to Work Around Overhead Power Lines – This Rip & Share covers important safety information about working around overhead power lines. The article responds to three fatalities where workers exited their trucks around overhead power lines and were electrocuted. 

Stored Energy – This MSHA Alliance resource describes the definition of stored energy and some examples. The resource also describes best practices for working safely around various types of stored energy. 

Take Control: Electrical & Stored Energy – This excerpt from the Take Control: Prevent Serious Injuries and Fatalities program covers how to safely work around electricity and stored energy. This section includes a list of high-risk tasks, critical controls, a video, discussion questions, a poster and relevant Fatalgrams.

Workplace Safety Awareness Council Electrical Hazards – This PowerPoint resource is provided by the Workplace Safety Awareness Council and was produced under an OSHA grant. It reviews the common hazards of working with energized electrical equipment, including electrical shock and burns, blast and arc flash. 

11 Tips for Effective Workplace Housekeeping – This online article from the Safety+Health magazine, published by the National Safety Council, provides eleven actionable items that you can implement on your site for good workplace housekeeping. 

Addressing Distractions on Mine Sites – Distractions on mine sites can be deadly. It is important to recognize distractions, understand what causes them, and proactively work to minimize or eliminate distractions. This resource describes ways you can address one of the greatest causes of accidents and injuries. Use the Distraction Self Audit Guide to identify current practices around distractions and where improvements can be made. 

Rip & Share: A Stretch & Flex Routine for Everyday – This Rip & Share provides a warm-up and stretch routine that can help to decrease or prevent the severity of over-exertion injuries. 

Rip & Share: Listen to Your Body – This Rip & Share explains the prevalence of over-exertion injuries in the metal/nonmetal mining industry and provides some best practices to limit these injuries. 

Risk Assessment 101 – A risk assessment is a proven way to manage the many hazards associated with aggregate operations. This resource describes the difference between a hazard and risk and provides a risk assessment matrix that helps evaluate how risky a hazard is based on its probability and severity.  

Enhancing Housekeeping with Technology Safety Share – Housekeeping is critical for maintaining safe and efficient working environments, but keeping sites clean and organized can be a persistent challenge. To address this, one member company took a tech-savvy approach to improve housekeeping standards: using QR codes linked to photos of properly maintained areas.

Week 1: Training & Culture of Care

Week 2: Moving Machine Parts

Week 3: Electricity & Stored Energy

Week 4: Housekeeping & Slips, Trips and Falls