Safety Intevention Grants discussed at Safety Council

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

The Safety Inter­ven­tion Grant pro­gram was the pre­sen­ta­tion topic at Galion Safety Council’s Feb. 21 meet­ing, at BJ’s Fam­ily Restau­rant. Mike Lampl of the Bureau of Worker Compensation’s Divi­sion of Safety and Hygiene and Steve Wurzel­bacher, researcher at the National Insti­tute for Occu­pa­tional Safety and Health, pre­sented details about the pro­gram. BWC and NIOSH admin­is­ter the pro­gram, which started in 1999, to research ways to cre­ate a safer work envi­ron­ment in wholesale-retail trade and other industries.

It pro­vides a 2-to-1 match­ing grant of up to $40,000 to help employ­ers pur­chase equip­ment, which does NOT include per­sonal pro­tec­tive equip­ment, rou­tine equip­ment or equip­ment replace­ment, employee train­ing or prop­erty improve­ments. There is also a mora­to­rium list of spe­cific items that are not applic­a­ble for the grant.

The employer must agree to pro­vide infor­ma­tion for the study before uti­liz­ing the new equip­ment, as well as two years after the instal­la­tion. This includes quar­terly reports, a one year case study and an onsite visit by the two organizations.

Accord­ing to a hand­out about the pro­gram: “The study will ana­lyze the effects of adding equip­ment to a mate­r­ial han­dling process to deter­mine if the addi­tion reduces injuries to the back and shoul­der areas.”

The goal is to pro­vide employ­ers with infor­ma­tion to help reduce injuries and improve mate­r­ial han­dling processes, and Wurzel­bacher said they would like to have at least 40 com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pate; right now there are 20 participants.

“This is not about reg­u­la­tion, but research­ing evidence-based solu­tions to apply to the work­place,” Wurzel­bacher concluded.

For more infor­ma­tion or to apply for the grant, visit www.ohiobwc.com/employer/programs/safety/empgrants.asp.

Also dur­ing the Safety Coun­cil meet­ing, Jim Wise, regional busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ager at BWC, intro­duced him­self. He said he is cur­rently work­ing on out­reach and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with employ­ers about some new pro­gram­ming and grants avail­able. Wise also said that less than 5 per­cent of Ohio employ­ers par­tic­i­pate in a Safety Coun­cil, which BWC would like to improve.

Galion Safety Council’s next meet­ing is March 21 at 11:30 a.m., in the ban­quet room of BJ’s Fam­ily Restaurant.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.