workplace safety

In 2010, Omar Thornton killed eight colleagues in Manchester, Conn., before killing himself. Private employers used to create their own rules about guns on their property. But over the past five years, many states have adopted laws that allow employees to

National

Do Guns On The Premises Make Workplaces Safer?

10:39am January 22, 2015

by Yuki Noguchi

Private companies used to make their own rules about guns on their property. But a growing number of states have adopted laws allowing workers to keep guns in their cars in the workplace parking lot.

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World News

Fire Doors And Sprinklers Debut At Garment Factories In Bangladesh

11:57am January 17, 2015

by Amy Yee

In April 2013, the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh collapsed, killing over 1,100 workers employed in the garment factories in the building. Now there's an effort to make sure all garment factories are safe.

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Employees of the U.S. Radium Corp. paint numbers on the faces of wristwatches using dangerous radioactive paint. Dozens of women, known as "radium girls," later died of radium poisoning. One of the last radium girls died this year at 107.

Mae Keane, One Of The Last 'Radium Girls,' Dies At 107

2:49pm January 15, 2015

by Rebecca Hersher

In the 1920s, working-class women were hired to paint radium onto glowing watch dials — and told to sharpen the brush with their lips. Dozens died within a few years, but Keane quit, and survived.

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Economy

Lab Explosion Injures 2

12:47pm April 14, 2014

Two people were injured after a lab explosion in Wake Forest Innovation Quarter in downtown Winston-Salem Monday.

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A worker stands on top of a storage bin on July 27, 2011, at a drilling operation in Claysville, Pa. The dust is from powder mixed with water for hydraulic fracturing.

Sand From Fracking Could Pose Lung Disease Risk To Workers

1:50pm April 01, 2013

by Nell Greenfieldboyce

The sand is pumped underground along with water and other chemicals to extract oil and natural gas trapped deep in rock. But researchers found that air samples taken at some drilling sites contained high enough levels of very fine silica particles to be dangerous to workers.

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A worker makes a cut in the side of a sandstone block at the Cleveland Quarries facility in Vermilion, Ohio, earlier this month. The legal limit on the amount of silica that workers can inhale was set decades ago.

Silica Rule Changes Delayed While Workers Face Health Risks

3:07pm February 07, 2013

by Nell Greenfieldboyce

Regulations to restrict the amount of silica dust that workers can inhale were set decades ago, and workplace safety experts say that limit needs to be cut in half. A proposal for new rules was sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget for a 90-day review, but almost two years later, it's still under review.

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