June is National Safety Month, an awareness campaign organized by the National Safety Council to help protect people from injury and accident. This year’s theme is “Safety Starts with Me,” which encourages companies to protect their workers as well as helping everyone to watch out for each other, to be on the lookout for dangers not only to themselves but to their co-workers and others. From the NSC: “…while leadership from the top is important, creating a culture where there is a sense of ownership of safety by all, makes everyone in the organization a safety leader.”
Each week in June has a theme:
- Week 1: Preventing Slips, Trips and Falls
- Week 2: Employee Wellness Week
- 3: Emergency Preparedness Week
- 4: Ergonomics
The month also is focused on two more overall topics, summer safety and driving safety.
“On the Journey to Safety Excellence, successful organizations engage everyone in safety and create a culture where people feel a personal responsibility not only for their own safety, but for that of their coworkers, family and friends,” said Janet Froetscher, president and CEO of the National Safety Council. “While safety is important year-round, June is a great time to get everyone involved as the nation observes National Safety Month.”
According to the National Safety Council:
- Unintentional injuries and deaths in the United States are at unacceptable levels.
- Unintentional-injury related deaths were estimated to total 122,900 in 2011, up 1.7% compared to 2010.
- The latest estimate is 42% greater than the 1992 total of 86,777 (the lowest annual total since 1924).
- The cost of unintentional injuries to Americans and their employers exceeds $750 billion nationally, and causes great suffering among individuals and their families.
For more on these issues, visit our prior posts on issues that include workers’ compensation, work-related injuries, slip and fall injuries, and wrongful death claims.
