50 Fun Facts About Workplace Safety

Nineteen workers caught by a safety net while building which 1930s landmark formed the 'Half Way to Hell Club'?

The Golden Gate Bridge had movable netting slung beneath its crews on the orders of chief engineer Joseph Strauss. Eleven men still died, ten of them when a scaffold tore through the net.

A giant storage tank that burst in Boston in 1919 sent a deadly 35 mph wave of what through the streets?

Molasses weighing about 13,000 tons killed 21 people and injured 150 when the tank gave way. Witnesses said the rivets shot out of it with a sound like a machine gun.

Guardrails, movable gangways and screens meant only one worker died building which nineteenth-century landmark?

The Eiffel Tower went up with 300 men working on site, and Gustave Eiffel's own precautions kept the toll to a single death.

Which scientist's research papers are still so radioactive that they are kept in lead-lined boxes?

Marie Curie's notebooks are expected to stay radioactive for well over a thousand years, and anyone who consults them has to put on special clothing first.

Which cartoon father works as the safety inspector in Sector 7-G of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant?

Homer Simpson, named by creator Matt Groening after his own father, is unqualified for the post and often neglects his duties or dozes off on the job.

Bronchiolitis obliterans, a lung disease linked to butter-flavouring fumes, is nicknamed after which factory-made snack?

Popcorn gave the disease its nickname after eight former workers at a plant in Jasper, Missouri fell ill. The culprit was diacetyl, the chemical behind the artificial butter taste.

Railroad foreman Phineas Gage survived an 1848 blasting accident that drove what completely through his head?

A tamping iron, the rod used to pack sand over blasting powder, sparked against the rock and set off the charge. Gage lived another 12 years despite losing much of his left frontal lobe.

All 33 men trapped underground for 69 days in 2010 were winched to safety from a collapsed mine in which country?

Chile brought its miners up one at a time in a specially built capsule, while an estimated 5.3 million people watched the rescue on a live video stream.

Which glowing element poisoned 1920s American watch-dial painters who were told to point their brushes on their lips?

Radium was mixed into a luminous paint sold under the brand name Undark, and the women in each factory had been told that it was harmless.

Workers in pressurised chambers beneath the Brooklyn Bridge suffered which illness, then named 'caisson disease'?

The bends, or decompression sickness, put 110 men in the project doctor's care in the first five months of 1872 alone, and three of them died.

Mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs, is caused chiefly by exposure to which fire-resistant mineral?

Asbestos lies behind more than 80% of cases, and the cancer typically appears around 40 years after the exposure that caused it.

Workplace noise limits are set in which unit, named in honour of a telephone pioneer?

The decibel is one tenth of a bel, a larger and seldom-used unit named after Alexander Graham Bell.

The '20-20-20 rule', a break routine recommended to desk-bound office workers, is meant to rest which part of the body?

The eyes get their rest when a computer user focuses on something 20 feet away for 20 seconds, once every 20 minutes.

Ahead of electrocutions and crush injuries, what is the leading cause of worker deaths on construction sites?

Falls lead the toll and are a particular danger to older and untrained workers. OSHA's construction training lists them among its 'Focus Four' hazards.

The builders of which Colorado River dam, Six Companies, ordered their workers to wear hard hats in 1931?

Hoover Dam's crews got their helmets twelve years after Edward Bullard patented the 'Hard-Boiled hat', which he made from steamed canvas, glue and paint.

OSHA files its lockout/tagout rules, which keep machines switched off during repairs, under 'Control of Hazardous' what?

Energy is the word because the rules reach well beyond electricity: mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical and thermal sources can all hurt someone servicing a machine.

Safety trainers teach the '4-to-1 rule' so that workers set which piece of equipment at a stable angle?

A ladder leaning on a wall should stand with its foot about one quarter of its working length out from the support, a ratio written into OSHA's construction standards.

The 2013 Rana Plaza collapse, the deadliest garment-factory disaster in history, happened in which country?

Bangladesh lost 1,134 people when the nine-storey building came down near Dhaka, a day after large cracks had been discovered in it.

Since it opened in 1971, the workplace regulator OSHA has belonged to which US Cabinet department?

The Department of Labor had handled some work-safety issues since 1934 through its Bureau of Labor Standards, long before OSHA existed.

Which chemist's 1815 miners' lamp enclosed its flame in a fine mesh screen so that it could not ignite firedamp?

Humphry Davy's lamp doubled as a gas detector, because its flame burned higher with a blue tinge when a flammable mixture was present.

Which future member of Franklin Roosevelt's Cabinet witnessed New York's Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911?

Frances Perkins found the fire a turning point in her life. Serving from 1933 to 1945, the longest term in her post, she was the first woman in a presidential cabinet.

'Phossy jaw', a disease that destroyed the jawbone, struck nineteenth-century workers who made which household item?

Matches were made with white phosphorus, and its vapour ate away the bones of the jaw. One early patient was a Viennese matchstick maker who had breathed the fumes for five years.

In 1775 surgeon Percivall Pott tied a cancer to soot, the first ever linked to a job, among which workers?

Chimney sweeps knew the growths as 'soot warts'. Pott blamed the soot that lodged in their skin, and the disease still carries the name chimney sweeps' carcinoma.

Which American chemical company's pesticide plant leaked the toxic gas that devastated Bhopal, India, in 1984?

Union Carbide paid $470 million in 1989 to settle claims over the methyl isocyanate leak, which exposed more than 500,000 people living around the plant.

Which fertiliser chemical blew up aboard the ship Grandcamp at Texas City in 1947 and in Beirut's port in 2020?

Ammonium nitrate in the Grandcamp's hold caused the deadliest industrial accident in US history, killing at least 581 people. The Beirut blast involved 2,750 tonnes of it.

Described as America's worst mining disaster, a 1907 explosion that killed 362 men at Monongah happened in which state?

West Virginia's loss at the Monongah mines was one of the events that led to the creation of the United States Bureau of Mines.

Which 1983 film stars Meryl Streep as a real plutonium-plant worker who blew the whistle on her employer?

Silkwood, directed by Mike Nichols from a script by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen, co-stars Kurt Russell and Cher. The real Karen Silkwood died in a car crash.

In The Office episode 'Safety Training', what replaces the trampoline Michael Scott hid to break his leap from the roof?

A bouncy castle is brought in after a watermelon dropped as a test bounces off the trampoline and hits a co-worker's car. The staff talk Michael down before he can jump.

'Welder's flash', a painful burn to the cornea from an unshielded electric arc, is caused by which type of radiation?

Ultraviolet rays from the arc act on the cornea much as strong sun does on skin, which is why the same injury is also known as snow blindness.

Which sewer gas smells of rotten eggs at first but quickly deadens the sense of smell, hiding a lethal build-up?

Hydrogen sulfide forms wherever organic matter rots without oxygen, so it also gathers in swamps, landfills and farm manure stores.

In the American system of fire classes, which letter covers burning cooking fats and greases in commercial kitchens?

Class K is the American label; the European and Australian systems file the very same fires under the letter F instead.

On the NFPA 704 'fire diamond' displayed on chemical tanks, the red section at the top rates which hazard?

Flammability takes the top spot in a system credited to the Charlotte Fire Department, where a 1959 chemical company blaze injured thirteen firefighters.

On American ANSI-style safety signs, which signal word on an orange panel marks a hazard that may cause death?

Warning ranks second in the series: 'Danger', on red, is kept for hazards that will kill, and 'Caution', on yellow, for those that injure without killing.

The letter N in the name of the N95 respirator shows that the mask is not resistant to what?

Oil is the weakness the letter flags, while the number means the mask filters out 95% of airborne particles.

The radiation-safety principle ALARA asks workers to keep their exposure 'as low as reasonably' what?

Achievable is the American wording, used in regulating radiation risks. British law prefers 'practicable', which changes the last letter of the acronym to a P.

Which standard document sets out a chemical product's hazards in sixteen internationally agreed sections?

A safety data sheet follows one international format, which the United States adopted in 2012. The older sheets it replaced could vary from source to source.

In the hierarchy of hazard controls used by safety managers, which measure ranks last because the hazard itself remains?

Personal protective equipment ranks last because the worker is still exposed to the hazard, with only a barrier in between. Removing the hazard altogether ranks first.

Unlike most road vehicles, a standard counterbalanced warehouse forklift truck is steered from which end?

The rear is where a forklift steers, and with no caster action the driver need not keep force on the wheel to hold a steady turn.

Alice Hamilton, a pioneer of industrial toxicology, became the first woman on the faculty of which university in 1919?

Harvard appointed her in 1919, by which time she was a leading expert on workplace illness who led efforts to reduce lead poisoning.

Which German chancellor's 1884 law, the first of its kind in the world, compensated workers injured on the job?

Otto von Bismarck got the law through only at the third attempt, and his system became a model for the rest of Europe and, later, the United States.

Great Britain's national regulator for workplace safety, created by a 1974 act, is known by which three initials?

HSE stands for Health and Safety Executive, a body that ran a 'Myth of the Month' page on its website from 2007 to 2010 to answer its critics.

Which Edinburgh-born physiologist, who tested toxic gases on himself, first sent canaries down coal mines?

John Scott Haldane introduced white mice, as well as the birds, as living detectors of carbon monoxide in the late 1890s. British pits kept their canaries until 1986.

Herbert Heinrich, author of the 1931 accident 'triangle' of 300-29-1, worked for a company in which industry?

Insurance was his trade: he was an assistant superintendent at Travelers when he claimed that each major injury comes with 29 minor ones and 300 accidents that hurt nobody.

Many labourers who bored the Hawks Nest Tunnel through sandstone in the 1930s fell ill and died of which dust disease?

Silicosis followed because the rock was mostly cemented quartz, and the loss of life is counted among the worst industrial disasters in American history.

The European Union's 'Seveso' rules on chemical plants take their name from a 1976 dioxin release north of which city?

Milan lies about 20 kilometres south of the small plant, whose release gave nearby residents the highest known exposure to the dioxin TCDD.

Pliny the Elder described Roman pigment workers tying what over their faces to avoid breathing poisonous dust?

Animal bladders, tied loosely over the face, kept the red pigment dust out of the workers' lungs, which takes the history of breathing gear at work back to the first century AD.

In 1980 a drilling rig working on Louisiana's Lake Peigneur drained the entire lake by piercing what beneath it?

A salt mine swallowed the lake along with the drilling platform, eleven barges and a tugboat. All 55 people working underground escaped.

Track workers in which Scottish city got fluorescent orange 'fire-fly' jackets in a 1964 high-visibility trial?

Glasgow's electrified line from Pollokshields to Eglinton Street was the test bed, and the first jackets were said to be visible at half a mile in normal weather.

Which North Sea production platform exploded and collapsed in July 1988, killing 165 men on board and two rescuers?

Piper Alpha burned under sustained gas jet fires, and 30 of the dead were never recovered. The public investigation that followed is known as the Cullen Inquiry.

The phrase 'safety culture' was first used in an international report reviewing which nuclear accident?

Chernobyl was the subject of the 1986 review, written by an advisory group to the IAEA, and the disaster showed how far managerial and human factors shape safety.