by Brianna Crandall — March 16, 2016—Earlier this month, The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) and CPWR — The Center for Construction Research and Training released a collection of construction safety materials in Spanish known as the Safety Toolbox Talks (Charlas Informativas de Seguridad Ocupacional). This collection of 52 Toolbox Talks has been available in English only for just over two years and is widely used on construction sites across the country, with more than 100,000 downloads in the first year alone, notes ASSE.
The Safety Toolbox Talks are guides designed to easily disseminate safety and health information in the workplace. They incorporate effective elements identified through NIOSH research, such as case studies, discussion questions, and site-specific actions, to promote a safety culture.
The Safety Toolbox Talks provide content for a year of weekly on-site discussions, covering 52 workplace safety topics relevant to the construction industry including: biohazard safety, carbon monoxide poisoning, confined spaces, fall protection, eye protection, silica, trench safety, and workplace stress, among others.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 27.3 percent of workers in construction were of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity in 2014, which illustrates the importance of creating Spanish-language content for this workforce. Safety materials printed in Spanish have previously been challenging for construction company safety professionals to obtain, says ASSE.
The fatality rate among Latino workers increased in 2013 to 3.9 per 100,000 workers, up from a rate of 3.7 per 100,000 in 2012. At the same time, the number and rate of fatalities for all other races declined or stayed the same, according to BLS. So the joint effort is seen as an important step in increasing awareness of hazards and protective measures, and reducing the rate of injuries and fatalities among Spanish-speaking workers.
The release of the Spanish version of the Safety Toolbox Talks is part of a collaborative effort between ASSE and CPWR that, in addition to providing resources, aims to evaluate the effectiveness of currently utilized workplace safety tools as well as the means used to approach workers. In the upcoming months both organizations will be working on a pilot project to conduct research on the use of the 52 Toolbox Talk series (TBT Series) by small employers in construction firms, with the goal of improving content, delivery methods and results.
The Spanish and English versions of the Safety Toolbox Talks can be found on CPWR’s Handouts and Toolbox Talks (Charlas Informativas de Seguridad Ocupacional) Web page.
