Jim Thornton News

Wheelabrator Group said it reached a major milestone during the first quarter of 2014 with 1 million hours without a lost time incident. More than 200 Wheelabrator employees and guests marked the event during a safety luncheon at their LaGrange facility, March 13. Featured speakers included Robert E. Joyce, President & CEO of Norican Group (parent company of Wheelabrator and DISA); Poul Erik Arre, Director of HS&E, Norican Group from Denmark; Pierre Tanguay, VP Supply Chain, Wheelabrator Group…

Building ships long has ranked as one of the more dangerous industrial jobs, according to a report in the Daily Press. There's just something about cutting and bending steel, welding thousands of parts, hooking up electrical systems, crawling through tight spaces and working on small platforms hundreds of feet in the air that carries risk. The job is still hazardous, but it's getting safer. Over the last 14 years, the shipbuilding and ship repair industry has seen its rate of recordable injuries and illnesses — cases that require medical care beyond first aid — fall sharply. In 1992, there were 37.8 on-the-job injuries and illnesses per 100 shipbuilding workers, Labor Department figures show. By 2005, that figure had dropped to 10.9 cases per 100 workers, a reduction of 71 percent.