The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) recently released a new safety video showing the need for emergency response agencies, companies, and communities to work closely together to prepare for and prevent the kinds of tragic chemical accidents the CSB has investigated over the past decade.

“Emergency Preparedness: Findings from CSB Accident Investigations,” uses computer animations,interviews, and news footage to depict a series of chemical accidents that illustrate the need for effective training, communications, and community planning.

In the video, CSB Chairman John Bresland says, “Preparations by companies, emergency responders, government authorities, and the public are critical to reducing injuries and saving lives. It’s not only important to be prepared, but everyone must communicate, have an up-to-date plan in place and practice that plan regularly.”

Disaster prevention and response preparation are crucial to keeping people safe and businesses solvent by helping them avoid the catastrophic costs that can result. Communicating these prevention and preparation efforts are essential, too.

Without the information provided through workplace safety and health programs,no employer can survive, because accidents and disease are not simply expensive, but wasteful, according to Ilise L. Feitshans, JD, ScM, coordinator of the 5th edition of the International Labour Organization’s Encyclopedia of Occupational Safety and Health.

Feitshans was at the American Society of Safety Engineer’s Professional Development Conference in June, where she signed on behalf of the ILO a Memorandum of Understanding with ASSE to work together to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses.

“Sound occupational safety and health programs that implement best strategies are the grease for the machinery of powerful economic engines,” she said.

A Geneva, Switzerland based agency of the United Nations, the International Labour Organization works to bring together governments, employers and workers of its member states to promote decent work throughout the world. A 90-year-old organization formed at the Treaty of Versailles, the ILO does the same work as ASSE, said Feitshans, “exporting safety and health information that could save many lives.”

She said, “Occupational health and safety management systems with time-tested prevention strategies and conscientious implementation do much more for the economy than merely reduce the costs of accidents and the overall burden of disease to society. Applying the best practices and well understood methods of reducing risks through a clear occupational health management program prevents needless waste, saves money, and, therefore, is a lifeline that keeps marginal employers afloat in turbulent economic times.”

The ILO Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety is available in hard copy in 12 languages, and the goal of the 5th edition is to “create a living document that is true to the heritage of the first edition of the encyclopedia that was put together by truly great people like Dr. Alice Hamilton, the mother of industrial medicine who invented the Right to Know,” said Feitshans.

“The challenge is to do it in a time of information overload; to serve as a filter to help people who have data to determine if that data is good, shaping destiny in a paradigm appropriate for the 21st Century.”  

Thanks and good luck.