North American Occupational Safety and Health Week
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North American Occupational Safety and Health Week, or NAOSH Week, occurs every year during the first full week of May. NAOSH Week is intended to raise awareness about occupational safety, health and the environment. The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) joined with the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE) in 2002 to raise the public's awareness of occupational safety, health and the environment in North America during NAOSH Week. This is one tool the 96-year-old ASSE and its 31,000 occupational safety, health and environmental professional members use throughout the year to promote job safety aimed at preventing injuries and illnesses. Several organizations representing thousands of businesses have partnered with ASSE and CSSE to support NAOSH Week, including U.S. federal agencies such as the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
During NAOSH Week, ASSE and CSSE members, OSHA and NAOSH partners develop and implement activities throughout North America to promote NAOSH Week. ASSE members have held fleet safety classes, ergonomic awareness events, distributed catastrophe preparedness information, distributed free teen worker safety and preventing roadway crash brochures, developed and presented teen worker safety courses, helped Habitat for Humanity, held a personal protection equipment (PPE) fashion show, donated PPE and much more. In past years, NAOSH themes have included: mining safety; transportation safety, as transportation accidents are the number one cause of on-the-job deaths; youth workplace safety; and more.
Each year Congress passes a resolution supporting North American Occupational Safety and Health Week and occupational safety, health and environmental practitioners who work to prevent accidents, injuries and occupational diseases, create safer work and leisure environments and develop safer products. They are committed to protecting people, property and the environment globally and work to make sure that the millions of people who go to work each day return home safely.
To support NAOSH Week efforts, each year ASSE sponsors the kids “Safety-on-the-Job” poster contest for ASSE members’ children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews and chapter-sponsored schools.[1] The poster contest prizes, which include savings bonds, are awarded to children who best illustrate safety at work in their poster. Children aged 5-14 can enter the contest which is broken down into five age groups with first, second, third and fourth place winners in each age group. The poster contest winners, participants and their families are honored at several events in Washington D.C. during NAOSH Week at the U.S. Department of Labor and at the U.S. Capitol Building. The winning poster in each age group is also featured on the international NAOSH poster for that year distributed and displayed worldwide.
Also, 2007 was the first year that Occupational Safety and Health Professional Day (OSHP) was celebrated. OSHP Day falls on the Wednesday of NAOSH Week. The day was established to honor occupational safety, health and environmental professionals who have dedicated their lives to protecting people, property and the environment. There is a special web page focusing on safety and health professionals' experiences at work, how they got into the profession and the history of safety.[2]
Each year ASSE urges everyone to get involved in NAOSH Week in an effort to better educate the public about the positive benefits a safe workplace provides not only for workers, but for their families, friends, businesses, their local community and the global community.
