Date:             Thursday, May 15^th, 2025

Time:            9:00am-3:00pm

Location:     Needham Risk Management Training Center:

                        1955 Ferndale Rd., Castleton-on-Hudson, NY 12033

Cost:              $225 (or free to schools participating with NRM)

Instructor:  Michael Needham, CSP, CSC, CFPS, CIT, CHMP

To register, please follow the link to our website: https://safetyandhealthtraining.com/event/conducting-safety-and-health-investigations/

This program is designed to provide attendees with the necessary tools and knowledge to conduct audits of their workplace and identify safety and health hazards. A checklist covering many basic OSHA compliance requirements will be provided.

Topics will include:

• How to conduct an audit
• How to document results
• Following up on findings

Who should attend?

• Supervisors
• Managers
• Safety staff
• Other personnel who have safety responsibilities

Eastern New York ASSP Members, the Chapter Board is excited to welcome you back for another year of learning, networking and giving back to the employers and communities in which we work and live!  We’re going to kick off the year on September 19th with a joint Social Meeting with the Eastern Upstate New York Local Section, if you’ve not already registered, I’d encourage you to consider while we still have some nice weather and a great opportunity to meet other Safety and Health professionals at Peebles Island State Park.  We will follow this up with our first technical meeting on Tuesday, October 8^th at the Toro Cantina, 111 Wolf Road, Albany, NY (formerly Wolf’s 1-11).  This is a new location for us and we were pleased to see their new event space and willingness to work with us as finding a host location has taken a bit more time and effort than any of us anticipated.  The speaker will be Mary McCoy from C.T. Male and she will provide an update on the proposed changes to the Heat standard as well as some best practices to consider, regardless of the outcome of the regulatory process. 

We have several other topics on our list that are being planned for technical meetings in November, February, March and April, however if you have a topic or presenter that you feel would add value to the membership, please don’t hesitate to let us know.  The Region 8 Operating Committee Meeting is coming up later this month as well, which the Chapter will have representation, as we attempt to learn from other Chapters and Regions to help maximize the impact that the ASSP can have for each of you.  We’re always looking for volunteers to join the team, including those interested in joining the Board and the best way to get a lens into the Chapter workings is to attend an event and talk to any of the great volunteers who’ve helped make these events possible.  

Thanks for making the time to invest in yourself and those who benefit from your role as a safety and health professional, look forward to seeing you at a future meeting and don’t hesitate to reach out to any of us if you have questions, jobs or events that you’d like posted to Chapter website or any other ideas and suggestions.  Lastly, don’t forget, the October meeting will be at a new location, Toro Cantina on Wolf Road!

Respectfully yours,

The Eastern New York ASSP Chapter Board

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has a variety of resources to help small businesses keep their employees safe on the job. One of the most popular is the Small Business Safety and Health Handbook, available in English and Spanish. OSHA worked with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to comprehensively update this publication in 2021.  

The handbook features a set of self-inspection checklists to help employers identify and address workplace hazards. The checklists cover a range of workplace safety and health topics for general industry workplaces, such as electrical safety, fire protection, hazard communication, materials handling, and personal protective equipment. OSHA recently added new checklists for ergonomics, heat illness prevention, infection control plans, workplace violence, and young workers. Each one includes a list of relevant OSHA standards and other resources from OSHA and NIOSH.

The handbook summarizes the benefits of an effective safety and health program. It also reviews key safety and health resources for small business, including the OSHA On-Site Consultation Program and the NIOSH Small Business Resource Guide. For more information, visit OSHA’s Small Business page.

“The revised Small Business Handbook is a valuable tool to help employers identify where to take action to make their workplaces safer and more healthful for their employees,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Jim Frederick. “Safety has to be a continuous process that involves preventing injuries and illnesses, and saving lives.”

“Small businesses face many unique challenges and providing a safe and healthy work environment shouldn’t be one of them,” said NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D. “The updated Small Business Handbook is an easy-to-use tool to help keep your most valuable asset – your employees – safe and healthy on the job.”

If you are having difficulty getting ASSP emails delivered to your inbox, it’s likely they are being blocked by your ISP or company’s spam filter. In these situations, you can whitelist chapter emails by adding updates@easternnewyork.assp.org to your contact list when using personal accounts like @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, etc. For work emails, you will need to ask your IT department to whitelist list emails from updates@easternnewyork.assp.org.