May is Coming! Deep Thoughts and Other Craziness

EPISODE 12 PODCAST OUTLINE

Welcome

Welcome!

Thanks to our sponsor Formetco! As well as other fans of the show!

Deep Thoughts

May is National Mental Health Month, National Better Hearing Month, and National Older Americans Month

Thanks to my remote engineer Chuck.  BTW – It’s Learn A Note not Find A Note

Online classroom for climber certification currently available

                OSHA 10 and 30hr classes

                Qualified Climber Classroom – Currently planning one for June 4th – Safety Month

                Defensive Driving Class

Working on a safety related book for the Outdoor industry with Dave Westbrook at Billboard Insider

Mail and Comments thebillboardsafetyguy@gmail.com

What do you mean by a reason or a season mean?

Least favorite training method?

Announcements and In the News

Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigns as labor secretary

Oregon OSHA Alert Explores Earbud Risks in Workplaces

ALL CHARGED UP; Are We Truly Ready for All Those Batteries

The Aging Workforce: Protecting the Safety & Health of Older Workers

Business coalition pushes back on Cal/OSHA’s proposed walkaround rule

New California law requires electrical utility worksites to have AEDs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Welcome to this episode of the Billboard Safety Guy. This is our podcast number twelve. Looking forward to having a good podcast today. I hope everyone's having a great day. A lot of information I hope to share today. First off, I need to say a big thank you to our sponsor, Fermetco. Billboard Everything. Anything you can think of that you would need for a billboard, Fermetco has it. We're working with them on a couple of things I'll tell you about a little later, but thank you for Fermetco making this all possible. And as well as the other fans of the show out there, friends, family, people listening in other areas. I had a chance this weekend to take a look at the report that I get from the carrier of my podcast. It tells me all the places that people are listening and downloading the program. And of course, the number one location is the U.S., but I was somewhat amazed by the fact that there are people in Great Britain, in Africa, in different parts of the world. And some people say, oh, well, that's probably just a VPN address bouncing there. Well, regardless, I find it interesting that I'm showing up in locations like that, no matter how I get there. So thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you for listening in. I get a lot of positive responses from people when I do things that are a little off the cuff or out of the ordinary, and like giving the uh relationship to uh the season of the year and and fun facts about things like that. So I uh I really appreciated the comments I got, but it also made me think that maybe there's something else I should probably do when I don't have fun facts about holidays or things uh that are uh re uh that relate to the time of year that we're doing the podcast. Um so I was going through my computer cleaning out some files, and I came across one that I had written a while back uh about different things that I pondered, deep thoughts. And uh oh well, I'll read you a few of them here. I would pulling them up here so that I could get them word for word for you on where my brain goes sometimes. Um did you ever wonder if you throw a cat out a car window, does it become kitty litter? Um if corn oil comes from corn, where does baby oil come from? Uh here's one that kept me up for a while. When a cow laughs, does milk come up its nose? And let's see, how did a fool and his money ever get together to begin with? Uh how do they get a deer to cross at that yellow road sign? And if it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them? Uh, you know, living in an area that gets overrun with tourists uh at certain periods of time, not that I advocate harm on anyone, and it's just meant in a humorous vein. Uh, it makes you wonder why uh there's not some type of open season on tourists that do dumb stuff. Anyway, no, we love our tourists here. We welcome them all to come here, especially during the peak of time when like the masters is going on and things that bring people in and give our economy a shot in the arm. So um, how about one more? Let's see. What's another word for thesaurus? That's one that I thought was pretty good. Okay, maybe if you know everybody likes them enough, I might go through some of the others that I have. I've got a few more that I could cover. Um, let's see. May is National Mental Health Month. It's also National Better Hearing Month and National Older Americans Month. And all three of those kind of relate to some of the topics that we're going to be covering today. And uh funny thing is, I relate to pretty much every one of those. Um, I'm getting some noise, uh, background noise. Let me uh make an adjustment here. Okay. That was a very uh technical adjustment I had to make. It was called closing the door. So anyway, uh we'll get back to those may being uh these different months because I think they have some pertinent places here and things that should be considered this month. Uh oh, here's something I've got to do a correction on. Last month I thanked my remote engineer Chuck, and I thank him again for always listening in and giving his advice on how to set everything up so I get the optimum sound on all of my podcasts. But I made a huge baupa. Uh, the app that he has is not called Find A Note, it's called Learn A Note. So if you're looking to improve or learn how to play the piano, I would suggest you check out his app called LearnAnote, and it's available pretty much anywhere. Um online classroom for climbers certification uh is currently available, and I am currently working, pardon me, with Vermeco to set one up, and the class is going to be held on June 4th. So if you are interested or you know of someone that's interested in becoming a qualified climber, they'll be available, the classroom will be available on June 4th for everyone that wants to sit through it. Uh, I would encourage you to contact for Metcode to start finding out the details now because we're going to limit the first one to 10 people. And the reason for that is so that we can kind of work out some of the bugs and get it going uh a little better for the next one when we have the bigger groups that come in. Uh, we're still available for we, I am still available for OSHA 10 and 30-hour courses as well as defensive driving. However, I will tell you this: my defensive driving certification is coming up for renewal, and I am going to let it go. Not that there's anything wrong between me and National Safety Council, it's just that they are having a changeover in some of their materials, and there's uh an expectation to purchase more. And I don't do enough training on defensive driving to warrant spending the money to continue to carry it. So if you have an interest in defensive driving class, you need to contact me right away because by the end of the year, that's one of the ones that I'm gonna remove from my list of classes that I I teach. Uh let's see. Um down here. I am where we go. I'm going to oh, I'm I'm going to tell you uh something I've been teasing for a few podcasts now. I am the the project I'm working on with Billboard Insider is I am working with Dave Westbrook on a safety book, somewhat of a pseudo-safety manual for the billboard industry. So that by the end of the year, there should be something that's released. We had to work out some details on how we were going to approach it. It looks like, due to the fact that there are many people outside of the U.S. that listen to my podcasts, that rather than offering it in a regular hardback print form, we are going to offer it as an ebook. That way it's uh something that everyone can download uh once they decide, you know, that they need that in their location. So that's one of the big things that's coming up. I did have some emails this time. Always love emails. Um, I had a couple of interesting ones. One was asking me questions about training, uh employee training and training personnel, and they asked me what my least favorite training method was. And I can tell you without a doubt, the most disliked, hated form of training is workshops. And I know if you're a trainer or you're a safety person, you probably felt like I just stabbed a dagger in your heart because everybody wants to do workshops. Well, let me tell you from the outside looking in, what it appears. Whenever you're going over a topic and you suddenly say, Okay, let's break up into groups of three. I'll give you a topic, you work it out and tell us what the outcome is. You know what that seems like? It seems like you don't know the material, and we're having to teach ourselves through this. So, and it also is one of those things I've never seen the whole group value it because what usually happens is you have an alpha person who comes in who says, Okay, let's plan this. I'll I'll do the speaking part, let's go through what we're gonna do. And everybody else in the group is like, Yeah, okay, whatever. You do it, you run with it. I just got to sit through this class to get credit, or I've got to sit through this class because I paid to be through something else that's gonna happen later on. Or, as in my case, sometimes I have gotten up and walked out because I just despise sitting in a workshop. I told this to a uh a friend of mine who is a PhD, who's an instructor for OSHA, and they were dumbfounded. They said, you know, I had never thought of it that way, but I can totally understand how this is. And I said, I challenge you, I challenge all instructors, if you use workshops, sit back and watch. See if you don't have people that are the self-appointed leaders of the group, see if you don't have other people who just sit back and say, whatever, and see how many people really hate workshops. I don't mean just not their favorite, I mean they hate them. So that's my least favorite training method. Uh, last time I was talking about some of my philosophies, also, my personal philosophies on people that come and go in your life. And I made a comment about some people had left an impression, some had left a mark, and some had left a scar on me. And then I also made a comment about uh some people come for a reason or a season. And I had person send me a note saying, What did you mean by a reason or a season? Well, I feel like people show up in your life to sometimes teach you a lesson or you to teach them a lesson. And sometimes they come for a short period of time or a long period of time, which is a season. It doesn't mean that they can't come back into your life again. But I think that if you kind of categorize it this way, sometimes you can evaluate the way people treat you, and it doesn't necessarily seem like it's something that is so devastating. Maybe they're there to learn something, maybe you're there to teach them something, maybe you're supposed to learn something. And maybe they were only meant to be there for a short period of time if they left and moved on. So that's enough of my soul searching for that. So let's get into some of the newsworthy stuff that I've found that I wanted to share. Uh, one of the first things is the change in the labor department. Lori Chavez de Remer resigns as labor tort, labor secret secretary. My tongue is not working. Uh, she stepped down, and a lot of this is under allegations. I'm gonna say allegations, not from me, but from other people, and they're not proven yet at this point. Uh, they said that she was using taxpayer money for personal travel, drinking during the workday, uh, had an inappropriate relationship with a member of her security staff. Um, there's a number of things there that are not good. Temporarily, um there is a, let's see, Saunderling is acting as secretary of the Department of Labor. Now, why is all this important on our podcast today? Because these are the people that oversee OSHA. And it's something that if you're a safety person or you're involved in safety, it's good to know uh what's going on because it kind of affects some of the stuff that you have going on in your career, and you I kind of want to know who's running the show. Um, she also had a couple of chief her chief of staff, uh Jihun Han and her deputy chief of staff, Rebecca Wright, uh, were placed on administrative leave. So there's a whole lot of shakeup going on at the Department of Labor. So let's see. Here's another topic that I found interesting. If you've listened to me for a while, you know that I have been telling people you need to get ready with a plan on what you're gonna do with all the batteries that are being used and working in the field now. In this month's the April edition of Professional Safety Journal put out by the ASSP. Uh, there's an article, all charged up. Are we truly ready for all those batteries? And this is some great information. It talks about uh how they're uh viewing different types of batteries as far as rechargeable and non-rechargeable and the six different types of lithium-ion batteries that there are out there. And they're putting together plans with uh what you should be ready to do with all these batteries. Essentially, a program, you need to have an inventory and assess what battery hazards there are, establish control charging practices of batteries, store batteries safely and reduce storage density, monitor battery condition and remove any damage units immediately, develop emergency response and training programs, ensure compliance with codes and transport regulations. I mean, this is like gold. If you're if you're using a lot of battery-powered tools in the workplace, you probably should go to assp.org and download a copy of this article to use as reference because this is what's coming down next. I guarantee you very soon you will start seeing OSHA inspectors asking what you're doing with your uh battery program. And you'll also probably see the EPA wade into this a little bit because there's some environmental hazards associated with the improper disposal of lithium batteries. So, all right. Now then one of the other topics that I found very interesting is Oregon OSHA Alert explores earbud risk in workplace. And it says here, Oregon OSHA conducted multiple workplace fatality investigations where earbuds played a role. In these incidents, earbuds were identified as a contributing factor, including a fatality where a worker was struck by a slow-moving excavator because he lost awareness of his surroundings while listening to music on his earbuds. And they have published a hazard alert with regards to that to let employers know that employees wearing earbuds have a difficult time hearing moving equipment, alarms, warnings, horns, shouts, things like that, and that the onset or worsening of hearing loss through excessive earbud volume could result from wearing these earbuds in the workplace. And uh I think it's good that they're pointing this out and they're making employers aware of the fact that they need to address this in the workplace and possibly even have a policy of no earbuds worn in certain areas because it's necessary to have your full functioning hearing there. But also, I'm glad they're bringing up the fact that listening to music at high volumes like that can do permanent damage to your ears. Now, I have lost a lot of my hearing. I I have been told I have lost as possibly as much as 60% of my hearing, and a lot of that they are saying is because of the tinnitus development that I had after having COVID a couple of times. But I think I was beginning to have hearing problems before because when I worked at General Motors for six years, at night on the assembly line, it was so boring once you learned how to do the job that everyone listened to headphones, battery-powered headphones, FM channels. And you would turn it up loud enough to drown out all of the machinery moving around you because it was just so annoying. And I would listen at that volume for eight hours a day, and even at that, you know, an 85 uh dbi or a decibel threshold. It's not hard to get over that when you've got the speaker right up to your ear, and you start getting to where you hear it at a normal level, the first part of your shift. By lunchtime, you're turning it up because you're developing uh a tone, not deafness, but you're not as sensitive to it because you're you're getting ear fatigue on your hearing. And by the end of the night, you've got it maxed out because you're just trying to hear at that high pitch level. And I think that it's good that uh they're trying to educate people on this, not just the employer, and let them know hey, those loud noises are not just because you have to be safe in the workplace. You need to consider the levels that you're listening at, excuse me, uh, whenever you're using them for personal reasons. Um, I remember one quick you know, rabbit trail here of uh one of my past. Uh, I remember being about eight, nine years old. And I was at my cousin's house, my older cousin's, and I was in his bedroom and he was talking, he was kind of a uh music junkie at the time. I mean, uh he was definitely into albums and and different music, and he put on a uh one of the Beatles albums at the time, and he put a set of headphones on me, and I was amazed. It was like I was in a different world, I could hear every little sound that was played, and it was insane, and then it kind of lasted that way through elementary and junior high school, and then I started noticing that sounds started seeming kind of flat, and they weren't quite as crisp as what they were when I first heard them. But I always tried to chase that first sound by cranking it up more, you know. And then Uh, as I got older, I feel like I've paid for it a little bit. So, anyway, that's my story on that. Um, all right, let's move on. Um, another article that's in the news, and this one is in the same periodical as the previous one, the April 2026 Professional Safety Journal. And um, this one is titled The Aging Workforce: Protecting the Safety and Health of Older Workers. And uh, some of the takeaways from this article here are the segment of the workplace aged 55 years and older is predicted to reach four out of every 10 workers by 2030, driven by the large size of the baby boomer generation, increased launch antivity, and a trend toward later retirement. While age diversity among workers has clear benefits for employers, this unprecedented demographic shift presents new challenges for EHS professionals. Age-related physiological changes such as decreasing visual acuity and musculoskeletal capability can increase the risk of incidence for older workers. Research has shown that comprehensive programs implementing age-friendly workplace modifications decrease incidence and improve productivity and organizational metrics, but most employers have not instituted programs to address the aging workforce. This article outlines an evidence-based practical intervention for enhancing workplace safety and health for all types of workers across the age spectrum, including age-inclusive risk assessments, workplace modifications to support age-related physiological changes, and inclusive strategies for managing return to work after an illness or injury. Now, all of this, and there's more to the article, that's just their key takeaways. I think this is great. There are a number of people who could retire that aren't because of either economics or because I'll be quite quite honest with you, a lot of people are afraid. They don't know what they're going to do with their time. They have devoted everything to their job, and they have not trained or been trained to retire. So a lot of these people are staying in the workplace longer and longer, and it makes it difficult for some of the younger guys coming up. But the trade out there is that these people have been doing the work for so long, it's second nature to them. They have skill sets, they have knowledge, they have education that a lot of people that coming up may not have. So it's like having the ultimate library of information there for you at your fingertips. And a lot of people will take advantage of that and use it in a good way. And some of them will adapt to making accommodations for older workers, and some won't. There are some that their accommodation is to fire them. And they also were viewed as being at the top end of their pay scale. So it was easier for them to take and let them go than it was for them to try to make some accommodations, see if they could move them somewhere else, or if there was something they could do to encourage them to stay, or might maybe even encourage them to go if they had some type of arrangement there. But you know, that's kind of a different story. But it's interesting to me that they're recognizing this, and it's one of those things where there are people that are saying that, hey, you know what, if they're wanting to stay around, I'm gonna take advantage of it and I'm gonna use them. So that's one of the things that I I found very interesting about this article. I think it's one that's well worth reading. Um let's see, I have uh another one here. Let me see. I'm trying to type it up, I apologize, and that's probably rattling really loud over the speaker. Uh, I had everything go black on my uh uh computer, and I'm trying to fix it here on on the cast as quickly as I can. Uh, let's see. Okay. Uh the other one, and this one I found very interesting as well. And this one is in the uh safety and health magazine put out by National Safety Council. It is the April 13th, 2026 article that was posted, and um it says the new California law requires electrical utility work sites to have AEDs. And don't get me wrong, I think this is great. I think it is something that is uh definitely needed. But whenever you look through the article and it says uh the requirements for them to have an AED on site anywhere that there's an electrical utility employee that's working on transmission or distribution lines of 601 volts or more, um it's missing something in my and now you know maybe I'm being too critical, and words sometimes are are misused, or you kind of try to read between them, but let me read you what it says is required. Um regularly test the AED based on the manufacturer's specifications. Okay, that's good. Check the readiness of an AED after every use and at least once every 30 days. Okay, I think that's part of the manufacturer spec. Activate the emergency medical services system as soon as possible once emergency care treatment with an AED to a person and cardiac arrest is rendered, and report AED use to the local EMS agency. All right, kind of jumped a little bit, I think. Uh create a written plan describing procedures in the event of an emergency that may involve AED use, including immediate notification of the EMS system. Well, they missed one. It's required that you know how to do CPR before you administer an AED. I mean, you have to do something in the meantime while you're opening the pack and peeling the pack the back off the stickers and sticking them to somebody's chest. So I I think that they missed the boat on that being the one of the first things that they were supposed to do. I think that uh they might want to back it up a little bit uh just to make sure that they encompass and encompass that part of it at the very beginning. I mean, before you hand somebody that zipped up red pouch, they should know what to do before you put that on somebody, how to assess them, how to know if they're in need. Could you just put them in the recovery position and hold them there until an ambulance comes? I mean, they they kind of missed some of the summary there, in my opinion. So, all right. Um, the one last newsworthy story I had for this podcast was one that is also from the April edition of Safety and Health magazine put out by National Safety Council. And it is business coalition pushes back on Cal OSHA's proposed walk-around rule. Now, CalOSHA was trying to rewrite a rule that they had that said pretty much, and I'm paraphrasing this just on my opinion based from what I read of it. Um, you could have OSHA show up and want to do a walk-around inspection, and the employees could have anybody they wanted represent them in the walk around. So if they wanted somebody in the membership, okay, that's okay. You could do that before, somebody that was a co-employee. If you wanted to have uh the attorney for a um union group, they could have that. Well, that's kind of stretching. That kind of conflicts with the National Labor Relations Act. Um, if you wanted to have your Aunt Melba come in and represent the employees in the walk around, you could certainly do that, but you know, it would be questionable why you would want that. But it's like there's so many things that could go wrong with this. And here's some of the things that uh employers listed in their uh objection to this with CalOSHA. They said it exceeds the statutory authority of CalOSHA, which operates as a state plan program under federal OSHA. It does conflict with National Labor Relations Act of 1935. It violates employer property rights and raises significant constitutional concerns. It endangers employer trade secrets and increases employer liability, and it will discourage employer cooperation and slow down inspections. So this is one of those areas where I think they really need to restrict it to uh someone that is a member of the employee group or one of the unions that represents the employee. They can't just throw it open to anybody. And they're saying to Osha Kalosha is countering with, well, you know, we can't be ex experts in everything. So if we bring somebody in from the outside to walk around, it could help us understand um the employee exposures and you know these other areas a little better. I still think that this is wrong. It's something that they should not try and impose on uh the employer whenever they're going through one of these inspections. So anyway, um we're getting up against our time. I don't like to go beyond 30 minutes, and I just want to let you know how much I truly appreciate you listening in. Um I in my book, I'm uh putting together some of the chapters not written by but assisted by Chat GPT. Uh, I think it's a good tool, but it needs to be used as a tool, not as something to just take and write the book for you. And um there's the dedication page on it that it did make a suggestion for. And I thought what it made was so appropriate. I probably will use it, but I'm also gonna use it today to sign off with. I mean, it's uh one of those things that that kind of hit me right right at home whenever I was reading it. It's uh to the workers who didn't make it home and the ones who still can. This is why we do what we do. Stay safe. We'll talk again soon. This is Jim Pogue, the Billboard Safety Guy, saying thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you again in the near future.