With a nod to the academy awards, Occupational Health & Safety magazine recently listed its 2013 Best and Worst Actor awards in the area of environmental health and safety area. The group took into account positive actions in the area of workplace safety and in general safety performance, as well as any toxic torts or major Workplace Accidents the companies involved were responsible for.
The magazine's editors also invited readers to vote on their favorites -- and to submit additional Best and Worst Actor nominees, which you can do by clicking on the source link for this post. Here's a roundup of some of their choices:
Best Actors in the category of environmental health and safety:
- OSHA, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the Center for Construction Research and Training for their joint, two-year educational campaign on construction fall prevention.
- The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for revealing the danger to workers from inhaled silica during hydraulic fracking.
- Imperial Sugar CEO John C. Sheptor for his keynote speech before the American Industrial Hygiene Conference & Exposition demanding that OSHA issue workplace safety standard for combustible dust .
- The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for completing the first major step toward better containment at the Chernobyl nuclear reactors.
- Art Garfunkel and friends for offering $2 million in gold for any research breakthrough that would end blindness.
Worst Actors in the category of environmental health and safety:
- The New England Compounding Center, responsible for producing tainted steroid injections that caused fungal meningitis infections in at least 720 people in 23 states and the deaths of 48 more.
- Carnival / Costa Cruises for the Jan. 13, 2012, Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster
- BP for settling criminal charges from the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the Gulf Oil Spill for $4 billion.
- Toyota, which allegedly failed to report its unintended acceleration safety defect to NHTSA in a timely manner (it paid a record $17.35 million fine in 2012)
Who do you think the best and worst safety actors were last year?
Source: Occupational Health & Safety magazine, "Awards Season Arrives," Jerry Laws, March, 2013 issue
