OSHA implements National Emphasis Program to eliminate highly hazardous chemicals in the petrochemical industry 13 JUNE 2007
OSHA has published a directive implementing a National Emphasis Program to help eliminate workplace hazards associated with the release of highly hazardous chemicals at petroleum refineries.
National Safety Council Report: Accidental Deaths on the Rise 12 JUNE 2007
Accidentaldeaths in the United States are rising at an alarming rate, more than 20 percent over a 10-year period, according to the latest data available.
EPA Advances Public Health and Environmental Protection with New Pesticide Screening 11 JUNE 2007
As a leader in endocrine disruptor research, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the final stages to begin screening pesticides for their potential effect on the endocrine system.
For those working within the Pharmaceutical Industry, long-term occupational exposure to harmful chemicals such as methylene chloride can present a significant threat to employee safety.
Hazard Communication (HAZCOM) is an important part of The Occupational Health and Safety Administration's (OSHA) attempt to maintain employee safety in the workplace. The following is from OSHA: Hazard Communication.
How does HAZCOM apply to pharmaceutical drugs?
"The HCS only applies to pharmaceuticals that the drug manufacturer has determined to be hazardous and that are known to be present in the workplace in such a manner that employees are exposed under normal conditions of use or in a foreseeable emergency. The pharmaceutical manufacturer and the importer have the primary duty for the evaluation of chemical hazards. The employer may rely upon the hazard determination performed by the pharmaceutical manufacturer or importer."
According to the EPA, the Pharmaceutical Industry consists of establishments primarily engaged in one or more of the following:
Manufacturing biological and medical products;
Processing botanical drugs and herbs;
Isolating active medical principles from botanical drugs and herbs;
Manufacturing pharmaceutical products intended for internal and external consumption in such forms as tablets, capsules, ointments, powders and solutions. The Department of Commerce formerly classified this industry under the 1987 Standard Industrial Classification code 283; the sector is now classified under the 1997 North American Industry Classification System as 3254
From October 2004 until September 2005, OSHA issued 1,729 citations to the Chemical and Allied Products Industry (which includes the Pharmaceutical Industry) and fines totaling $1,560,644. The average worker incidence rate was 3.2 per 100 full-time employees in the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Don't let your employees become an OSHA statistic. Contact the ehsSUITE team today to see how we can help improve worker safety and lower employee lost time and Worker's Compensation costs.
Environmental
According to the EPA, the releases reported in TRI data were distributed as follows:
Air: 57%
Underground Injection: 25%
Surface Waters: 17%
Land: 1%
This differs from the average distributions of all other industries which is:
Air: 59%
Surface Waters: 30%
Land: 10%
The Pharmaceutical Industry is held responsible for a large portion of the volatile chemicals in the air such as: methanol, dichloromethane, toluene, ethylene glycol, and acentonitrile. With such harmful releases and transfers, it is imperative to keep careful records and have well-developed plans for maintaining compliance.
Click here to learn about a few of the Federal Statutes and Regulations associated with the Pharmaceutical Industry
Some questions to ask yourself:
What can our company do to stay competitive?
Are we losing too much time, money, and other resources dealing with non-compliance?
Are we using the most cost-effective methods to stay compliant?
If not, are we looking to alternatives to our existing compliance system?
Please feel free to browse our website or contact us to see if ehsSUITE is just what your Pharmaceutical Corporation needs to stay competitive.
The graphical analysis feature provided as a standard tool of ehsSUITE allows users to quickly and easily produce graphical displays of data and information using trend, bar, pie and many other data visualization techniques.
The event and task feature of ehsSUITE is a collaborative calendaring and scheduling application that synchronizes the agendas of your entire organization to provide users with flexible, more personalized means to instantly view, plan, manage, and coordinate their compliance schedules.
ehsSUITE is the only comprehensive metadata-driven application for compliance management. What this means is that all information delivered to the user, such as calculations, validations, alarms, reports and dashboards, is defined in user-configurable tables and are easily managed using configuration wizards.
The ehsSUITE has a real-time data collection and handling application that allows users to connect to external sources of data, combine with manual data input and provide a sophisticated infrastructure capable of distributing data in real-time, allowing your company the ability to more efficiently manage data for the protection of air and water quality, land systems, and ground water.
From English to Spanish, from Spanish to German, from German to Dutch and back to English...ehsSUITE speaks any language with a simple click of a mouse. The ehsSUITE platform is the only compliance management software with a built-in language translator.
The beating heart of ehsSUITE is its notification manager. As one great entrepreneur once said, "Set it and forget it!" Once notifications are set in ehsSUITE, you can relax and focus on more important issues than managing a calendar and reminder list. That is because ehsSUITE has the ability to proactively manage events, tasks, and deadlines.
The ehsSUITE provides a simple and intuitive place for building and maintaining compliance plans for Environmental, Health and Safety, and Plant Security.
The ehsSUITE provides a simple and intuitive place for building and maintaining compliance plans for Environmental, such as SPCC, SSM, SPCC, SWPPP; Health and Safety, such as Emergency Response, and Plant Security.
The event and task management capabilities of the calendar tool integrated throughout ehsSUITE provides the user with a range of options from the simplicity of simply managing calendar-based events to the functionality required to manage complex compliance projects.
The ehsSUITE calendar tool is a collaborative calendaring and scheduling application that synchronizes the agendas of your entire organization to provide users with flexible, more personalized means to instantly view, plan, manage, and coordinate their compliance schedules and tasks.
With ehsSUITE, web-based displays and dashboards have never been easier or more useful to build and maintain. The page editors provide the users of ehsSUITE a simple and intuitive toolbar to configure powerful data visualization and communication displays and dashboards.
The ehsSUITE provides a regulatory database that may be maintained by the user or may employ the optional BNA XML feed to keep regulations current. All regulations are configured to conform to the BNA standard that provides the user enough flexibility to manage regulations by citation.
The ehsSUITE manages safety equipment by providing the tools necessary for adding equipment, images associated with the equipment, procedures for proper use and deployment, and linking the equipment to an area or facility location.
The ehsSUITE incident management system is a powerful work-process system allowing the user to easily configure incident management systems to correspond to the legacy systems and procedures in place.
The ehsSUITE allows the centralization of MSDS documents to an easier to manage location. Display of the latest MSDS is easy and convenient through the ehsSUITE's web browser.
In addition to providing real-time data, configurable dashboards, reporting in Microsoft Office, and many other features that extend the business value of ehsSUITE software to our users, our Design and Development team has taken it one step further by adding a spreadsheet tool.
ASP.NET AJAX is not just for developers! AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) results in an interactive and client-centric web application which allows the management and display of information to be dynamic and interactive.
Safety