California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

California employers are responsible for maintaining a safe work place and adopting an Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP) to protect workers from job hazards. But employers are not the only ones responsible for safety on the job – California workers have responsibilities for maintaining a safe workplace as well. Do you know your safety responsibilities?

Each year, workers suffer approximately 125,000 caught or crushed by injuries that occur when body parts get caught between two objects or entangled with machinery. These hazards are also referred to as “pinch points.” The physical forces applied to a body part caught in a pinch point can vary and cause injuries ranging from bruises, cuts, and scalping to mangled and amputated body parts, and even death.

Those who drive for a living would be the first to agree it can be mighty dangerous out there on California’s crowded roads. Although the common factors of inexperience, recklessness, and aggressive driving contribute to many vehicle accidents, it doesn’t explain why so many professional drivers get into accidents. A driver may be trained, experienced, and competent behind the wheel, but the very flood of vehicles competing for space on the roads today presents added danger to all drivers. Even the very best drivers must learn to operate their vehicles with life-saving EXTRAS.

Working under cold conditions can lead to various injuries or health effects, which are collectively known as cold stress. Construction workers may experience cold stress when working:

• Outdoors on a cold day.
• In a refrigerated room.
• In an unheated building.
• In cold water, rain, or snow.
• While handling cold objects or materials.

Other workers who may be susceptible to cold stress include field workers, cold storage workers, and workers who work with refrigerated or frozen foods.

Asphalt is a black, sticky material that comes from crude oil. It is used in paving, roofing, waterproofing and some glues. Asphalt is often confused with coal tar or pitch. Coal tar and pitch come from coal, not oil. Asphalt is a solid or semisolid substance. It is mixed with solvents to make it more liquid, and easier to work with. Some of the solvents used to mix with asphalt are naphtha, toluene, and xylene. These solvents are hazardous substances, flammable, very smelly and increase the potential hazards of working with asphalt. There are many different types and grades of asphalt in current use.

Every year, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) reports approximately 500,000 collisions with 200,000 injuries and 4,000 fatalities as a result. Unsafe speed, improper turning, failure to yield the right of way, and obey traffic signals were the most frequent causes, which led the Department of Transportation (DOT) to estimate that two-thirds of traffic fatalities may be caused by aggressive driving.