Category: Engineering, Product Liability, Safety Investigating Product Failure: Understanding the Development of a New Product TASA ID: 79 Unlike Athena, a new product does not spring, fully formed, from the brow of the Vice President of Marketing. Most likely it arrives prematurely and requires heroic efforts just to survive. Usually, but not always, its problems and weaknesses will have been resolved by the time it's released for sale: The operative phrase being "Usually, but not always." Read more
Category: Safety Soft Contained Play Equipment, The New Frontier for Playground Accidents! TASA ID: 658 Playground injuries have been cause for litigation for decades. Park playground equipment and elementary school playground equipment share the load for these injuries along with home playground equipment. In addition, soft contained play equipment is not new to the consumer. Read more
Category: Engineering, Product Liability, Safety Human Factors Focus on Warnings, Part l: Labels, Signs, and Tags TASA ID: 568 Failure to warn has become a common cause of action in products liability and tort litigation. Over the past 15 years, much scientific research has been conducted on the subjects of warning design and effectiveness. As discussed here, a warning is a label, sign, or tag used to communicate hazard information. (Note: Part II, a sequel, will discuss visual and auditory warning devices and alarms.) The purpose of a warning is to modify human behavior and ensure safety compliance, i.e. to give the worker or user an opportunity to avoid harm. Read more
Category: Food Safety and Production, Safety Injuries in Food Manufacturing TASA ID: 2482 Food manufacturing has one of the highest injury and illness rates compared to all industries. Repetitive motion, (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011) manual handling, slips and trips, and being hit by moving objects (Health and Safety Executive, 2011) are among the most common sources. Read more
Category: Construction, Safety Open Roof Holes and Roofing Injury Prevention TASA ID: 3404 A roofing foreman and crew arrive at the season's first commercial re-roofing project, as he directs his team to load tools and materials to the rooftop, workers set up ladders to gain access to the roof above. Onsite less than five minutes and without notice, one of the roofers inadvertently loses his balance, falling onto a weathered skylight, shattering the opaque-plastic, falling 60-feet to the concrete floor below, and perishes from blunt force trauma. Read more
