Hazards in the Workplace | 6 Categories of Hazards

At my previous job working outdoors, the head of our Safety department was a Kevin. My workplace had a bit of a reputation for having somewhat of a “good ol’ boys” mentality, where older men were elevated to higher positions without offering others an opportunity to interview for the open position with the reasoning, “they’ve been here for years and we feel they’d be a good fit for this role.”
This particular Kevin could often be found sleeping in his office, especially on days when everyone else worked together to shovel snow, which is a safety hazard and something the head of Safety should be addressing. But I’m getting off track.
He lacked very basic tech skills but would always harp on about how, “a lot of young people these days just aren’t quite as sharp as us older folk.” Yes, that was an actual quote during a company-wide training about “how to manage stress.”
As the safety representative of my own department, I would frequently have to try to communicate with Kevin on safety-related issues. Unfortunately, his voicemail box was always full because he didn’t know how to check them, and any attempt to send him an email would be met with, “I never got that” because he didn’t know how to check that either. This caused me to constantly have to physically print out documents, drive all the way to the other side of the property, and hand-deliver them straight into his mailbox. So his lack of basic knowledge about technology was well-known to me at that point, but I did not think it was this bad.
One day about a year ago, he left a very long voicemail for my department about this incredible feature he found on the internet.
“If you go to the Google log-in page, you’ll see a little button that says “images.” If you click on that, and type (our workplace) into the box, all kinds of pictures pop up of (my department’s section)! I mean there’s pictures of everything here, if you scroll down the list you can even see pictures of what (workplace) was like years ago. I really think this could be a great resource if you all are looking for pictures of (my department). There’s some really great ones here, so I figured I’d let you know about it.”
My coworkers and I just stared at each other, speechless until one of them said, “...did... did Kevin just discover Google images?”

Hi Reddit! It’s about that time of year for Resident Assistant apps for next year. I just figured as a past RA who still has friends that are RA’s (both grad and undergrad) that you should know what you’re getting yourself into if you apply and get accepted. To be upfront, RA’s received a housing waiver and a meal plan as compensation. RA’s are expected to be on duty and hold the duty phone a certain number of times during weekdays (12hrs) and weekends (24hrs) depending on the size of your staff. RA’s also have weekly staff meetings and before the beginning of the semester, Ra’s are required to attend training. During the semesters, RA’s are required to hold a variety of programs and make bulletin boards/door decorations. You might have seen a while ago a petition on the unfair changes to the RA contract for the summer, upper management changed one point slightly, but the rest were added to the RA’s contract – including mandatory office shifts outside of those required by being on duty. This isn’t the first and probably won’t be the last time Campus Res attempts to exploit RA’s. Even before COVID happened, Campus Res was in the business of siphoning funds from on-campus residents and exploiting RA labor. On many SUNY campuses, the RA job is to foster communities and be a resource and guide for students living on campus. Here at SBU, RA’s sign up for that job but end up becoming office assistants and assistant building managers. RA’s still need to check all the boxes for bulletin boards, door decorations, and programs – but emphasis is put heavily on RA’s to perform beyond what is explicitly written in their contracts. WOLFIE WALLET is an incentive for apartment RA’s
The on-campus housing experience can be a good one depending on who you live with and how much money you have. But many of the buildings on campus are not well constructed and are not maintained to a proper level. If you happen to find a building without substantial maintenance issues I suggest you stay there – or move off-campus. There have been mice and cockroach infestations that took weeks and even months to resolve. There are still RA’s living in rooms with insect infestations. There were whole buildings where the water pipes burst and flooded the rooms during the winter. Hot tip – if you live on the top floor your stuff is less likely to get water damage. During a particularly cold winter, RA’s spent New Year’s Eve pulling TV’s, game stations, cameras, and laptops out of puddles of water. But RA’s can’t tell residents that because there’s a gag order on bursting pipes. The winter is particularly bad for some buildings. It’s not uncommon for the heat to stop working in Chapin and West/Schomburg. After a week of living in a room without functioning heat, an RA was told they couldn’t switch rooms because that would show favoritism. The RA lived in that room in the dead of January for an additional 2 weeks before the heat was fixed.Many times in January and February, there are more rooms with heating problems than there are portable heaters to loan out. But Winters aren’t the only time where sh!t hits the fan.
The hot summers are notoriously the worst time to work as an RA, because of MOLD. Specifically referring to West Apartments, the Associate Director of Campus Residences told the entire staff that those buildings were designed for arid Arizona weather and that’s why mold is such an issue. I don’t know about you but I think Long Island varies slightly in climate to Arizona. But that doesn’t matter because they keep building the exact same building (see West J and West K). Mold has been such an issue in some areas that residents had to be moved temporarily to other areas for a deep clean.
SBU likes to say it has an accessible campus but there are only a small number of buildings with elevators. Since SBU isn’t required to put in an elevator with a max of three floors they make sure their new buildings are three floors. The ADA doors most often break or malfunction. It can take maintenance days to fix it. RA’s are required to do regular checks to make sure those doors are propped open. There’s also terrible wifi even though they keep increasing that technology fee. There are also plenty of dead zones in some areas for cell service. RA’s that live in those dead zones have been reprimanded because they couldn’t get a hold of them while on duty. Campus Res’s solution: have the RA sleep in the quad office. Instead of fixing the dead zone for almost an entire semester their solution was to live and sleep in the quad office to maintain cell service while on duty. Although they have now fixed all duty phones to go off wifi – this really highlights the level of respect Prostaff (Professional Staff members ie RA supervisors) and upper management have towards RA’s.
Living on campus can be pretty expensive – but I can guarantee you what you’re paying is not what you’re going to get. I can’t tell you how many times during opening weekend parents harass and complain to RA’s for the condition of the room that their student is moving into. We’re well aware of the conditions of those rooms and we can’t do anything about it without threat of termination. You all deserve better.
Like many students, RA’s struggle with food insecurity. A meal plan was added as additional compensation, because SBU RA’s received the least amount of benefits across the entire SUNY system, but It’s the bare minimum. It doesn’t provide enough for RA’s to live off of. RA’s in apartments receive an even smaller meal plan than those in UGC’s. A more recent policy where RA’s receive Wolfie wallet for key holiday duties (like Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s) is now being downgraded to RA’s receiving a card that has wolfie wallet on it that will expire in 12hrs. The wolfie wallet incentivized taking holiday duties. With the new policy, RA’s are forced to use the wolfie wallet on campus at the nearest dining during their duty. It may not seem like a lot but RA’s deserve to use their wolfie wallet at places off-campus like StopnShop. If you’ve ever eaten on campus you’ll understand why having the flexibility to eat off-campus is so important. Food has been cut from mandatory events for RA’s because of “COVID concerns”. Staff members that provided breakfast for RA’s during the opening weekend (which required RA’s to doing more than 10 additional hours in four days) were reprimanded by the Associate Director of Campus Residences. Additionally, there have been instances during RA training (usually 2 weeks of intensive all-day training) that the whole staff “missed” dinner because of laziness and oversight on their supervisors’ part.
If you join Campus Res you’ll get a firsthand experience of toxic managerial practices. Campus Res will teach you how NOT to manage a team. They pretend to care about your personal life and academic standing but the instant it becomes inconvenient, they won’t hesitate to gaslight your situation and threaten your position. It’s not uncommon for RA’s to be reminded that they are replaceable.
Even within the prostaff and upper management there are toxic relationships. Campus Res is known for being culty and cliquey. It’s not uncommon for high AC/RHD turnover from people leaving the jobs or their contracts not being renewed after just a year. Lots of great supervisors have been let go because they weren’t on their supervisors’ good side or advocated too strongly for their RA’s and/or residents. There are so many instances of workplace unprofessionalism that listing them all would take too long. Some examples are: supervisors shit talking other supervisors in front of RA’s; AD’s discussing the private health concerns of an RA with another RA and asking their opinion on the matter; supervisors taking lengthy personal calls in the office (ie hours); supervisors delegating the work outline in their contracts onto RA’s; supervisors were selective on policy enforcement based on how much they favorited the RA and/or agreed with said policy; Prostaff have slept with residents; Prostaff have bought drugs off residents. Campus Res stresses how important it is to use an individual's proper pronouns, but I’ve witnessed AD’s misgender someone on their staff constantly and then get upset that they’re being corrected so often. There have been issues during evaluations that supervisors told their RA’s (particularly women of color) that they have to “fix their face”. One RA was having a particularly difficult semester with family issues and class work, and after explaining these issues to their supervisor, they were told that they were being dramatic and they need to smile more or it will be reflected in their evaluation. Evaluations in general are usually a toss up. Depending on your immediate supervisor, your evaluation could ruin you. Resident feedback and co-RA feedback is rarely taken into consideration for these RA evaluations as well and has even been lost and not sought after. So we don’t even know if we’re doing an ok job for the residents!
Beyond the minimal financial stability being an RA can bring, it is not without a serious mental and emotional toll.
An RA was assaulted by a resident when they were trying to break up a party. A member of said party was on the eboard of the USG, which is overseen by the Associate Director (AD) of Campus Residences. The incident was promptly buried because the AD of Campus Residences told the ac to resolve the matter quickly. It was swept under the rug. The RA that responded to the incident and was assaulted was reprimanded for inciting the incident. No mental or emotional support was offered.
RA’s were voluntold to do mandatory daily mold checks in each room of each suite/apartment of each building for the entire summer. RA’s were not given masks or gloves. RA’s were also not allowed to tell residents what they were looking for as there was a gag order placed on discussing mold and so RA’s started to refer to mold as avocados. RA’s weren’t given any formal training on the matter (per usual).
RA’s (along with residents) were forced to live and sleep in spaces that would not pass a NY state inspection. An RA had an allergic reaction to the mold in their space, they asked to be moved to a space without mold. The RA was denied under the premise that RA’s can’t be given special treatment. That RA went on to develop an upper respiratory infection that her physician confirmed was due to her living conditions and air quality. Again, management did nothing. The option to switch rooms with another RA was offered but the RA was uncomfortable with putting another fellow RA in those conditions. That RA promptly quit.
During the first duty night of a new RA, a resident had a serious mental health crisis that required emergency health services. The two RA’s that responded were given no support after the incident. In fact, a member of the management team made a joke as to how the new RA had to deal with a difficult situation on their first night.
An RA was being stalked by a resident and management dragged their feet in response. There was no suggestion to go to the Title IX office to deal with the matter. Their suggestion was to just ignore them and not report it. It took months to resolve the matter and the resident didn’t receive the mental health resources necessary for the situation.
There was an incident where a resident put a swastika on the door of the suite of POC. This incident was brought to AD where the AD was hesitant to remove the resident that put the swastika up from campus, because they were a senior. That resident remained on campus throughout the rest of the semester. Later during RA training this same AD discussed whether a swastika was considered a micro aggression. This AD oversees one of the largest on-campus living areas and this AD was also in charge of the diversity committee.
RA’s have become depressed from this job and all the above issues that come with it. RA’s have developed anxiety and panic disorders from the job. The prostaff and upper management pretend to care about the mental health of their RA’s but once it becomes inconvenient they belittle the issue at hand and make no adjustments to their expectations for the job. RA’s are interesting in that they are employees and students. But they’re only employees when it suits Campus Res and they’re only students when Campus Res wants to withhold benefits and change their contracts. RA’s have been reprimanded over choosing to study all night for an exam rather than putting up a bulletin board on time – especially during RA training. RA’s are expected to drop everything in their lives to attend every session for RA training even though RA training does not provide RA’s with information or skills to successfully do this job. The latest RA training was stripped of anything remotely important. RA’s sat through an entire session of FSA but the presentations on LGBTQ+ and by SASC were removed. The lack of training is so evident with newer RA’s who have had to respond to a multitude of incidents and were unable to support the residents due to lack of knowledge on how to be sensitive and also supportive/informative. No matter how naturally good someone is at supporting others, if you do not know the resources available, it is hard to help. SBU residents deserve RA’s that are adequately trained to meet their needs. Anything RA’s learn is usually from senior co-RA’s. RA’s are constantly under threat of their job being terminated if they speak out of turn or advocate just a little too strongly for something. There have been so many great and passionate RA’s that have been chewed up and spit out by the Campus Res Machine. It’s such a toxic climate to live and exist in. RA’s that are financially burdened with college are trapped in this job where they are exploited and allowed no voice. Graduate RA’s are treated as undergraduate RA’s although their needs and accommodations are substantially different. RA’s that have other jobs or research requirements are often overlooked and ignored when scheduling any sort of training or required office work.
Finally, let’s talk COVID.
In the beginning, RA’s voiced many concerns about the initial COVID response. Prostaff and upper management did not make any effort to temporarily postpone any policies or events that increased the level of exposure in the community. RA’s fears and valid concerns were met with hostility and apathy. No PPE (i.e. proper masks or gloves) was offered to RA’s to complete their duties. At that point RA’s were still required to staff the quad offices across campus – which were overstaffed and close quarters despite this making many RA’s nervous. After almost the entire population of RA’s quit due to a multitude of personal reasons – there was a small staff of RA’s left to manage the rest of the community. These RA’s were essentially on duty 2 – 3 times per week covering 4x the number of buildings they would typically be overseeing. There was very little support offered during that time and staff meetings only occurred when prostaff sought it necessary, not seeing the additional support that was needed by the RA’s. RA’s were required to do office shifts on top of their increased workload without additional compensation or hazard pay. Upper management explained that there was a budget crisis and that corners had to be cut, so they stripped down the budget and resources provided to the RA’s to the bare minimum. They constantly reminded the RA’s that they were essential workers but treated them as essentially replaceable. RA’s were given instructions to complete tasks in the quarantine buildings and many RA’s checked spaces of residents who tested positive for COVID. RA’s had many opportunities for COVID exposure and although the RA’s voiced their concerns – prostaff and upper management were resistant to change any policies until absolutely required to.
Upper management promised the RA’s that policies would be put in place for RA’s and residents’ safety during RA training pertaining to COVID. Training never discussed any such policies. Residents are told which day RA’s are coming for health and safeties so many egregious health and safety violations could be hidden, which defeats the entire purpose. This also adds an additional level of exposure within the community. RA’s have advocated to forego health and safeties or conduct them virtually via zoom – to no avail.
No policies for COVID safety were put in place even though RA’s provided numerous alternatives and suggestions to make the job and overall community safer and this was met with apathy. This is one of the main reasons why so many RA’s quit the job.
I know RA apps are currently in the works so just consider what you would actually be signing up for. These instances happened over many years and no attempts by upper management have been made to fix any of these issues. This job is cancerous and not worth your effort.
TLDR: Campus Res doesn’t respect its RA’s or staff, and it’s not worth being one. On-campus housing is massively overpriced and under cared for, so you’d be better living off-campus.

From reading the news, I knew the recent covid surge has been pretty bad, but it wasn't until I talked to friends who are medical professionals working at the Huntington Memorial Hospital today that I realized that even the media isn't doing justice in painting how bad the reality is at the frontline.
I had thought the Huntington Memorial Hospital, compared to other county hospitals, is on the better end of spectrum in terms of medical practices, patient care, and staff protection. But apparently the hospital has implemented new code of conduct detailing that the medical staff 1) cannot refuse working extra hours when asked, 2) cannot refuse to be floated to other departments to help, 3) cannot take covid sick leaves, 4) cannot express negative opinion about the hospital--if receiving media contact, direct the contact to PR.
On top of being overworked and underpaid, medical staff cannot request hazard pay from the workplace despite having to take care of 5 times the volume of patients during the pandemic spike with limited protective gears. My friends also almost got fired from something entirely personal, unrelated to practice, and only about the hospital's image (due to privacy, cannot say on Reddit what it was, but I assure you it's infuriatingly trivial). So basically expressing any negative public opinion about the hospital can get you fired. I just cannot believe how badly the hospital is treating its own medical staff. How can we expect quality patient care if the hospital can't even prioritize in taking care of its own medical staff? I'm at a loss on what to do about this shitshow. I just hope more people in our community can take the covid safety precautions more seriously and take better care of our medical professionals.

I've always been a bit of an odd duck, within my family, within my schooling, and now as a 27 y.o female, with my career.
As I'm sure many of you can relate to, there's always been something about me which irks neurotypical people. I have no idea what is, but my best guess is that they know that I'm masking and it makes them uncomfortable.
Anyway, I'm a medical simulation technician and I LOVE what I do. I was very lucky to find this job, and in fact, there's even evidence that this kind of work is perfect for AspergeASD people.
One thing I've always been told since I begain working ( at the age of 12, because farm life) is that im slow to understand a task, but incredible once I can process what is going on.
In my previous jobs as a simulation technician (I've worked at a few places) they loved how I found creative solutions, and I loved learning from the medical professionals. I even developed a special interest for Moulage (sfx for medical simulation) which is a skill some educators have really appreciated.
However, in my current job it was not appreciated at all. My supervisor (for context sake i'll call her Donna) has never appreciated my interest in making simulations more realistic, and instead wants to focus on making all simulations as monotonous as possible.
Multiple times when I made a mistake Donna would say things 'what's wrong with you?' 'Why can't you understand the task?' And 'never make that mistake again'.
Like many of you, I tend to think literally, and was frustrated to tears that I couldnt guarantee I would never make a mistake again, and that I didn't know what was wrong with me, so I couldn't provide a satisfying answer, or find a way to fix my problems.
Coincidentally, at the same time, I had a friend who is an OT who specialises in working with ASD kids. Every single thing she mentioned about these children and their habits/quirks/personalities etc. Resonated deeply with me and my childhood.
So I went and got diagnosed. It was a massive relief. Both the psychologist and the psychiatrist I saw pretty much said I was a textbook case, and were surprised I hadn't been diagnosed as a child.
So I now had an answer, and some techniques to help me in the workplace. Essentially all I needed was some time and space to process the tasks I had to do before proceeding (unknowingly I had been granted this in abundance at my previous workplace, which is why I thrived there)
However, when I worked up the courage to tell Donna (I'm sure many of you can guess by now that Donna does not believe in mental illness or diversity) The first thing she said to me was 'well that's clearly a work and safety hazard. What if you miss something important? We can't give you time to "process" '
I was (and honestly, still am) livid. You'd think I had ask her to completely re-arrange the entire work structure around me. What makes it worse is that I work at a university, which tends to have a higher than average population of neruro-diverse employees.
So on one hand, I'm happy that I finally have a diagnosis and can find ways to proceed forward, on the other hand im super disappointed that in this day and age Aspergers/asd is still looked at as a problem.
Thanks for reading my rant, it really helped to write it all out.

A rebellion is occurring in Europe over Covid-19 totalitarianism. In Italy, 50,000 businesses have refused to comply with a lockdown order.
Hysteria over Covid-19 has ushered in one of the most extreme forms of totalitarianism in human history. It does not seem that way to most because people aren't being rounded up and put in camps (yet), but we are increasingly living under concentration camp-type conditions; a few days ago, the province of Quebec in Canada initiated a curfew; the rules will see most residents face police questions or fines of up to $6,000 Canadian if they’re out between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. for the next four weeks. Protests are underway.
It is one thing to say you're not allowed to vote, or that you can't form a labor union -- that's horrible enough; it is quite another to suggest that the state has the right to control every aspect of your life, including whether you can attend a religious ceremony or walk in a public park.
This is a grim harbinger of things to come, because if people are willing to throw away all of their rights for a virus with a relatively tiny lethality rate, imagine what we will do if one of those truly deadly bioweapons escapes from a lab.
The corporate media is effectively functioning as a terrorist organization. Worse, in fact; while terrorist groups periodically terrorize people, the media is terrorizing people 24/7. And they are completely censoring scientists/doctors who challenge the state consensus.
The Covid-stats are dubious at best. This is because the tests they use to track the virus have an extremely high rate of false positives. This is not a "conspiracy theory." Eg this article published in Australia's Conversation admits:

However, following the same calculations as in the example above, at a prevalence of 0.03%, even a test with 99.9% specificity would mean only 30% of people who test positive actually have the condition. This means more than two-thirds of positive results would actually be false positives if we were testing asymptomatic people with no increased risk.

Moreover, if you come down with the flu and get a Covid-19 test, you may test positive if you had Covid19 six months ago. So the more tests they do, the more it will appear as though the epidemic is spreading even if the worst is already behind us.
Leftists as a whole (and I am a leftist, of the traditional sort) are ambivalent about the response to Covid because we really want to protect gramma and we really want a basic universal income: well here's the "good" news for leftists who value civil liberties: lockdowns don't work, masks don't work, and social distancing doesn't work (obviously).
Here's what the lockdowns do accomplish: suicide rates are vastly increasing, mental illness is vastly increasing (including among children), poverty rates are vastly increasing, alcoholism and drug addiction are vastly increasing, starvation and malnutrition rates are vastly increasing (especially in the third world), human misery is vastly increasing, and the wealth of billionaires is vastly increasing.
Here's an excellent article on the economics of Covid, one of the few criticisms of Covid totalitarianism from a leftist POV: The Great Covid Class War:

Indefinite closures have never before been used as a disease control method on a global scale. These experimental restrictions were shaped by the discredited Imperial College Model which predicted 2.2 million US deaths. Many epidemiologists and doctors questioned these doomsday projections and pointed out that there was not sufficient data to justify lockdowns. The virus has a low mortality rate, especially for people under 65, and 94% of US covid deaths have occurred with comorbidities. Most statistical analysis does not show lockdown measures to be an effective strategy for reducing mortality.
Lockdown fanatics have helped manufacture consent for a brutal reorganization of labor that will plunge millions of people into serfdom. The work-from-home lifestyle is only possible through the labor of logistics workers who transport, sort, and deliver goods. Currently about 10 million jobs that existed in February have not been replaced. Many workers have been forced to take on part-time, no-contract work, a labor model that is rolling back decades of hard-fought protections.
Internationally, workplace closures and supply chain disruptions will result in the loss of 305 million jobs. 1.6 billion informal economy workers are at risk of losing their livelihoods. This devastation will be compounded by famine and the increased spread of untreated diseases like tuberculosis. In July closed food markets were linked to 10,000 child deaths a month. Food is being discarded and crops are rotting in the fields while the number of people facing acute hunger this year has doubled to 265 million.
At the start of the covid crisis, vocal segments of the American left argued that economic shutdown was a way to resist billionaires and capitalism. This demonstrated a deep misunderstanding of the way financiers can profit from economic contraction. Many on the left chose to ignore the Biblical scale of the destruction that economic stoppages would cause, arguing that the covid crisis was an opportunity. Today the left continues to advance the illusion that meaningful relief is possible, while workers’ pensions are plundered, children’s futures disappear, and 150 million people are pushed into extreme poverty worldwide. Lockdowns were not bungled by incompetent leaders. They were in fact executed perfectly, because their purpose was not public health but rather the rapid installment of a regressive neoliberal agenda designed by the nonprofit industrial complex.
The beneficiaries of this neo-feudal dystopia are the ownership class, tech CEOs, investors, NGOs, and private foundations. Their ongoing immiseration of workers is intentional. 80% of covid loans offered by the IMF to developing countries were contingent on governments implementing austerity programs such as cuts to healthcare and elimination of public sector jobs. In the US, seventeen of the top 25 corporations will make $85 billion more this year than in previous years, and shareholders will reap the rewards. Over the same period, American workers have lost $1.3 trillion.
Remnants of the covid class war will touch every domain of life for decades. Officials have suggested that social distancing will need to continue even after mandatory vaccinations. Masks have become a potent symbol of both physical purity and mutual mistrust. Our fantasy of a sanitized and deathless society has created a world where the home is a prison and friends and family are a health hazard. In this world children are told they are killing their grandparents simply by existing. Right now we are still at the beginning of sweeping changes that may include social credit, immunity passports, a rent-only economy, AI and robotics expansion, financialization of natural resources, increased mass surveillance, the Uberization of everything, and rolling lockdowns for climate change or the flu. We have a limited window of time to reclaim the things that make life worth living: family, community, cultural heritage, the social sphere, public institutions, common spaces, and free movement. That window may be closing quickly, but it is not fully closed yet.

In case it isn't clear yet, here's the reality: people advocating for lockdowns are unwittingly advocating for mass murder.
Most people would be astonished to learn that not even the WHO recommends lockdowns.
I think the problem here is that a small number of epidemiologists seriously overestimated the lethality of Covid-19; the media stirred people up into a frenzy; politicians responded; and the billionaires made out like bandits. Now there is the sunk cost fallacy: nobody in power wants to admit that they royally fucked up and killed millions of people unnecessarily. So we all have to pretend as though Covid-19 is akin to that virus in the film Contagion.
It is somewhat charming, even quaint, that human beings think they can "defeat" a virus by "social distancing" and wearing a piece of paper over their face (lol), or sometimes locking down and sometimes not. Less charming is the selectivity: if you want to go to church or have a family dinner you can be arrested; if you want to go to Wallmart that's A-okay. People are now being encouraged to snitch on their neighbors and family members for violating Covid mandates; I'm eagerly anticipating the new "junior Stasi" badge for kids to wear.
Life is not a safe space. There's risk in everything. I'm at a higher risk to die from a Covid-19 type ailment than most (lungs) but I don't live my life in fear. And I'm certainly not selfish enough to demand that others give up what few liberties they have to endow me with an illusory sense of safety. I wouldn't care if the virus had a 90 percent lethality rate, rather than 0.5 percent or whatever the current estimate is. And I certainly wouldn't be so selfish as to suggest that millions of children should starve to death because I'm nervous about a really bad case of the flu.
Here's how a responsible government would have acted: encourage people to lose weight, get out more, exercise more, get more sunshine, take Vitamin C and D, and treat infected people with one of the many drugs that have proven to help. The very last thing we should be doing is encouraging people to hole up in their houses and become progressively more depressed.
But that's what totalitarianism does best. Here is a relevant passage from Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism:

"Totalitarian government, like all tyrannies, certainly could not exist without destroying the public realm of life, that is, without destroying, by isolating men, their political capacities. But totalitarian domination as a form of government is new in that it is not content with this isolation and destroys private life as well. It bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.
Loneliness, the common ground for terror, the essence of totalitarian government, and for ideology or logicality, the preparation of its executioners and victims, is closely connected with uprootedness and superfluousness which have been the curse of modern masses since the beginning of the industrial revolution and have become acute with the rise of imperialism at the end of the last century and the break-down of political institutions and social traditions in our own time. To be uprooted means to have no place in the world, recognized and guaranteed by others; to be superfluous means not to belong to the world at all. Uprootedness can be the preliminary condition for superfluousness, just as isolation can (but must not) be the preliminary condition for loneliness. Taken in itself, without consideration of its recent historical causes and its new role in politics, loneliness is at the same time contrary to the basic requirements of the human condition and one of the fundamental experiences of every human life."

Here is the Global Covid-19 Civic Freedom Tracker. To sum up: the UN charter of rights is dead. May we resurrect it.

My wife is a frontline mental healthcare worker who does in-home work.
She told me a good while ago that her workplace had begun issuing N95 masks. I took this as good news. She was storing them in her vehicle because she didn't need them for the walk home into our house.
She was told this week that she's been exposed to COVID through one of the families she works with, and wore her mask in. It was the first time I've seen one of her masks.
Unlike a certified NIOSH KN95 mask, hers merely read KN95 on the side. It's a counterfeit.
In order to be a proper KN95 mask, equipment must be certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The CDC has guidelines on what a real KN95 mask looks like here, but this image is the basis for a real KN95 mask:
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/usernotices/images/mask-illustrationMisRep.jpg
Her mask has no certification, it just says KN95 on the side.
Further, certified KN95 masks don't have ear loops. That can't create a safe seal to protect anyone from any serious respiratory threat, as the mask won't properly seal to someone's face with ear loops. Real KN95 masks have head bands.
Dust masks which protect against respiratory irritants - rather than health risks - have ear loops.
I know this because I have EPA and OSHA training and certifications in respiratory hazards due to my profession as an HVAC tech.
She was issued counterfeit PPE, and exposed to COVID.
I'm furious about this.
Is there anything that can be done?

LAST UPDATED on JANUARY 27, 2021
This post focuses strictly on the controversial issue of recommending or mandating cloth masks for the general public during COVID-19. For a regularly updated executive summary of the evolving scientific understanding of COVID-19 in general, see here. Overall, the available scientific and policy evidence indicates that mandating or even just formally recommending to the general public to wear a cloth mask in nonhealthcare settings is unwise. These 23 highly respected Canadian epidemiologists and public health experts have recommended the following standard for all COVID-19 related policies:

COVID-19 control must be balanced with basic human rights. People need to be empowered to make informed choices about their own lives and the level of risk they are prepared to accept. Universal public health measures are appropriate only when they are truly necessary, supported by strong evidence, and when there are no other alternatives...Any requirements for mandatory masks must be based on strong evidence...

Bearing in mind the foregoing standard, what follows is a review of the academic literature demonstrating that the requirement for strong evidence is not being met (the other components of the foregoing standard pertaining to human rights and personal autonomy are discussed in section #2 of this post). Before we begin, it is important to bear in mind that many people act under the false belief that being exposed to someone with the virus - with neither individuals wearing masks - automatically means they will get infected, when in fact the chance of becoming infected becomes significant only for "those spending a total of 15 minutes of contact with an infectious person over the course of a 24-hour period".

• January 2021, The Journal of Hazardous Materials published COVID-19: Performance study of microplastic inhalation risk posed by wearing masks, (Li et al., 2021). The main empirical result was:
  

  Wearing masks poses microplastic inhalation risk, reusing masks increases the risk.
  

• January 2021, PLOS One published, Comparing the fit of N95, KN95, surgical, and cloth face masks and assessing the accuracy of fit checking, (O'Kelly et al., 2021). The authors noted:
  

  This study confirms that NIOSH certification that a mask can perform at N95 levels alone is insufficient if the mask is poor fitting. Proper fit is absolutely necessary if the mask is to offer the wearer protection. Furthermore, our results indicate it is not enough to assume that any N95 respirator will be likely to fit the majority of a population. The most widely fitting mask, the 8511 N95, fit only three out of the seven participants. Other masks, such as the Aero Pro and Xiantao Zong, did not fit any of the participants adequately.
  

• 18 December 2020, in Face masks for preventing respiratory infections in the community: A systematic review, (Saijonkari et al., 2020) concluded:
  

  The reported effect of masks used outside the home on transmission of droplet-mediated respiratory infections in the population is minimal or non-existent.
  

• On 20 November 2020, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews published Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses, (Jefferson et al., 2020). The review noted:
  

  Medical or surgical masks: Seven studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers. Compared with wearing no mask, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness (9 studies; 3507 people); and probably makes no difference in how many people have flu confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 3005 people). Unwanted effects were rarely reported, but included discomfort. N95/P2 respirators: Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (5 studies; 8407 people) or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people). Unwanted effects were not well reported; discomfort was mentioned.
  

• On 18 November 2020, Annals of Internal Medicine published Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers. A Randomized Controlled Trial, (Bundgaard et al., 2020). This is the first and only RCT we have on mask effectiveness against COVID-19 in community settings, but its findings of ineffectiveness are fully expected in light of all the other RCTs we have on other respiratory viruses. The results of the study:
  

  A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear masks, and 2994 were assigned to control; 4862 completed the study. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%). The between-group difference was −0.3 percentage point (95% CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33). Multiple imputation accounting for loss to follow-up yielded similar results. Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.
  

• On 17 November 2020, International Journal of Infectious Diseases published Meta-analysis on facemask use in community settings to prevent respiratory infection transmission shows no effect, (Gómez-Ochoa & Muka, 2020). The authors noted:
  

  there were no significant differences between medical facemasks use only and controls in the odds of developing laboratory-confirmed influenza and influenza-like illness. Similarly, no differences in laboratory-confirmed influenza risk were observed when comparing mask use solely versus combined intervention of face mask and handwashing, indicating that facemask as solely intervention in community is not associated with reducing respiratory infection. Given the studies used medical masks, cloth masks' efficacy is expected to be even lower; a randomized cluster trial showed that respiratory infection is higher among health care personnel using cloth masks than using medical masks (MacIntyre et al., 2015)...Due to these divergent results and the lack of high-quality research in this area, strong recommendations for facemask use in the community context should be issued with caution until new evidence is available to show their effectiveness. This is even more important, considering that several studies showed that mask use is associated with headache incidence and worsening of pre-existing headache (Lim et al., 2006, Rebmann et al., 2013, Szeinuk et al., 2000, Radonovich, 2009, Shenal et al., 2011).
  

• On 27 October 2020, Annals of Internal Medicine published "Update Alert 3: Masks for Prevention of Respiratory Virus Infections, Including SARS-CoV-2, in Health Care and Community Settings" (Chou et al., 2020), to summarize very recent research on masks up until 2 October 2020. The authors noted the serious methodological limitations of the more recent studies and concluded:
  

  The strength of evidence for mask use and risk for SARS-CoV-2 in community settings remained insufficient...Evidence for mask use versus nonuse and comparing masks types in health care settings remained insufficient...There were no new studies on the effectiveness and safety of mask reuse or extended use.
  

• On 25 September 2020, the academic journal Frontiers in Medicine published Effectiveness of Surgical Face Masks in Reducing Acute Respiratory Infections in Non-Healthcare Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, by (Wang et al., 2020). The review failed to find a statistically significant effect and concluded:
  

  Surgical mask wearing among individuals in non-healthcare settings is not significantly associated with reduction in ARI [acute respiratory infections] incidence in this meta-review.
  

• On 22 September 2020, the academic journal Environmental Research published The spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Spain: Hygiene habits, sociodemographic profile, mobility patterns and comorbidities, by (Rodríguez-Barranco et al., 2021). The authors noted (the quote is from section 5.1. - page 7 of the pdf.):
  

  In the case of masks, the results of this study slightly suggest the opposite effect to that of protection, possibly due to misuse of masks by the general population untrained in their use.
  

• On 23 July 2020, University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine has issued an overview of the ongoing research on cloth mask efficacy. The authors stated that:
  

  The increasing polarised and politicised views on whether to wear masks in public during the current COVID-19 crisis hides a bitter truth on the state of contemporary research and the value we pose on clinical evidence to guide our decisions...There is considerable uncertainty as to the value of wearing masks. For instance, high rates of infection with cloth masks could be due to harms caused by cloth masks...The numerous systematic reviews that have been recently published all include the same evidence base so unsurprisingly broadly reach the same conclusions. However, recent reviews using lower quality evidence found masks to be effective...This abandonment of the scientific modus operandi and lack of foresight has left the field wide open for the play of opinions, radical views and political influence.
  

• University of Cambridge biomedical scientists have written in 2020 in the British Medical Journal:
  

  The evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in reducing viral transmission is very weak. Few studies examine the use of face masks in community settings; those that do find no evidence of reduced transmission compared with no face masks...Efforts to communicate a position so strongly in favour of widespread use of masks in the community...in the face of persistent evidence gaps, risk promoting policy based more on eminence than evidence. The unintended consequences of unequivocal advocacy of a contested position go beyond the downsides of policy implementation: they include the potential erosion of trust in science more generally, when the measures put forward fail to live up to their promise, or result in problems that could be, or had been, anticipated.
  

• The gold standard of evidence in biomedical research is the randomized controlled trial. A systematic review of cloth mask research published in 2020 in the academic journal Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that:
  

  Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.
  

• The foregoing finding has been reinforced by a Bayesian analysis of 11 randomized controlled trials. Perski et al., 2020, concluded:
  

  Available evidence from RCTs is equivocal as to whether or not wearing face masks in community settings results in a reduction in clinically- or laboratory-confirmed viral respiratory infections.
  

• A systematic review by Brainard et al., 2020, concluded:
  

  The evidence is not sufficiently strong to support widespread use of facemasks as a protective measure against COVID-19. However, there is enough evidence to support the use of facemasks for short periods of time by particularly vulnerable individuals when in transient higher risk situations.
  

• A systematic review and meta-analysis by Jefferson et al., 2020, noted:
  

  We included 15 randomised trials investigating the effect of masks (14 trials) in healthcare workers and the general population and of quarantine (1 trial). We found no trials testing eye protection. Compared to no masks there was no reduction of influenza-like illness (ILI) cases (Risk Ratio 0.93, 95%CI 0.83 to 1.05) or influenza (Risk Ratio 0.84, 95%CI 0.61-1.17) for masks in the general population, nor in healthcare workers (Risk Ratio 0.37, 95%CI 0.05 to 2.50).
  

• A most recent systematic review of 18 randomized controlled trials and of 11 other systematic reviews by Dugré et al., 2020, concluded:
  

  This systematic review found limited evidence that the use of masks might reduce the risk of viral respiratory infections.
  

• A systematic review and meta-analysis of potential health risks of face masks by Bakhit et al., 2020, concluded that:
  

  There are insufficient data to quantify all of the adverse effects that might reduce the acceptability, adherence, and effectiveness of face masks. New research on facemasks should assess and report the harms and downsides. Urgent research is also needed on methods and designs to mitigate the downsides of facemask wearing, particularly the assessment of alternatives such as face shields.
  

• A peer-reviewed paper from August 2020 by Martin et al., 2020 assessing the overall wisdom of recommending masks for the general public, noted:
  

  There is very limited evidence that cloth face coverings reduce the burden of respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19...Few studies examine the use of face coverings in community settings: when taken in aggregate, those that do find no statistically significant evidence of reduced transmission compared with no face coverings...Rather than communicate a falsely unequivocal message about the value of face coverings, researchers should articulate scientific disagreement, the nature of scientific uncertainty, and its implications for how we act to improve knowledge and action.
  

• The World Health Organization admits to this day that:
  

  Non-medical, fabric masks are being used by many people in public areas, but there has been limited evidence on their effectiveness...
  

• A September 2020 empirical study (preprint) by (van den Broek-Altenburg et al., 2020) highlighted the foolishness of rushing to recommend or mandate masks for the general public. One of the study's key findings was that:
  

  ...Wearing a facial mask outside work increased probability of COVID-19 infection.
  

• Multiple studies from multiple research groups indicate that cloth masks for the general public are likely to be ineffective and even counterproductive in nonhealthcare settings since they may (a) be used inappropriately, (b) exacerbate other health problems and (c) lead to risk compensation behaviors through a false sense of safety - see (Li et al., 2021), (O'Kelly et al., 2021), (Bundgaard et al., 2020), (Gómez-Ochoa & Muka, 2020), (Jefferson et al., 2020), (Schwarz et al., 2020), (Saijonkari et al., 2020), (Wang et al., 2020), (Chou et al., 2020), (Long et al., 2020), (Rodríguez-Barranco et al., 2021), (van den Broek-Altenburg et al., 2020), (Klompas et al., 2020), (Neilson, 2016), (Chodosh et al., 2020), (Borovoy et al., 2020a and 2020b), (Luckman et al., 2020), (Hanna et al., 2020), (bin-Reza et al., 2012), (Chughtai et al., 2013), (Chughtai et al., 2019), (MacIntyre et al., 2015), (Rancourt, 2020a), (Jefferson & Heneghan, 2020), (Fikenzer et al., 2020), (Shakya et al., 2017), (Lazzarino et al., 2020), (Aggarwal et al., 2020), (Hardie, 2016), (Jacobs et al., 2009), (Chandrasekaran & Fernandes, 2020), (Tong et al., 2015), (Saunders-Hastings et al., 2017), (Rancourt, 2020b), (Person et al., 2018), (Donaldson, 2020),(Aminnejad & Hormati, 2020), (Giacalone et al., 2020), (Szepietowski et al., 2020), (Bakhit et al., 2020), (Hunter et al., 2020), (Onishi, 2020), (Dugré et al., 2020), (Perski et al., 2020), (Xiao et al., 2020), (Brainard et al., 2020), (Grote & Izagaren, 2020), (Jefferson et al., 2020), and (Martin et al., 2020). Less reliable, but more vivid cautionary tales (here 1, here 2, here 3, here 4, and here 5) in the recent media portray the human story behind these dry academic findings.
  
• Dr. Martin Kulldorff (Professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks) on masks;
  
• Dr. Sunetra Gupta (Professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases) speaking in October 2020 on the topic of masks;
  
• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (Professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations) speaking in October 2020 on the topic of masks;
  
• An open letter from September 2020 signed by 418 medical doctors states:
  

  ...Masks belong in contexts where contacts with proven at-risk groups or people with upper respiratory complaints take place, and in a medical context/hospital-retirement home setting. They reduce the risk of droplet infection by sneezing or coughing. Oral masks in healthy individuals are ineffective against the spread of viral infections. Wearing a mask is not without side effects. Oxygen deficiency (headache, nausea, fatigue, loss of concentration) occurs fairly quickly, an effect similar to altitude sickness. Every day we now see patients complaining of headaches, sinus problems, respiratory problems and hyperventilation due to wearing masks. In addition, the accumulated CO2 leads to a toxic acidification of the organism which affects our immunity. Some experts even warn of an increased transmission of the virus in case of inappropriate use of the mask. Our Labour Code (Codex 6) refers to a CO2 content (ventilation in workplaces) of 900 ppm, maximum 1200 ppm in special circumstances. After wearing a mask for one minute, this toxic limit is considerably exceeded to values that are three to four times higher than these maximum values. Anyone who wears a mask is therefore in an extreme poorly ventilated room. Inappropriate use of masks without a comprehensive medical cardio-pulmonary test file is therefore not recommended by recognised safety specialists for workers. Hospitals have a sterile environment in their operating rooms where staff wear masks and there is precise regulation of humidity / temperature with appropriately monitored oxygen flow to compensate for this, thus meeting strict safety standards.
  

• Almost 100% of known transmissions of corona happen from extended interaction (home, work, public transit) - you are very unlikely to get it from a stranger passing you by the sidewalk or by a grocery aisle - see here and here.
  
• Cloth masks are ineffective against transmission of COVID-19 through aerosolized respiratory droplets (i.e. smaller droplets <5 μm that remain in the air for hours) and this airborne route of transmission has just been emphasized by many experts to be the most likely primary means of infection. The solutions that would work to address this route are not cloth masks, which can filter only larger droplets (>5 μm), but "social distancing, limiting interaction indoors, avoiding air recirculation, improved natural and artificial ventilation, and innovative engineering solutions which collect and neutralise aerosols to provide clean air in personal and community spaces" (Wilson et al., 2020). For more details, see also the peer-reviewed letter to the WHO signed by 239 experts, this paper from August 4, 2020, as well as the corroboration from (Donaldson, 2020).
  
• This Finnish governmental report concluded that the majority of systematic reviews of empirical studies on mask efficacy found no benefit to wearing masks.
  
• Data from US areas with widely different frequencies of mask wearing do not support the idea that cloth masks are effective: e.g. California versus Arizona, as of late July 2020. A CDC study from mid-October 2020 found that "the overwhelming majority of people getting coronavirus wore masks". In November 2020, a preprint widely shared on social media as putative evidence that mask mandates in the US have been effective was withdrawn by its authors because the new data - i.e. rising infections in areas with mask mandates - do not support their initial conclusions.
  
• Oxford University Professor Carl Heneghan explained on 13 August that UK's recent experience suggests masks for the general public have been ineffective. In a interview from 29 August he stated: "the high quality trial evidence for cloth masks suggest they increase your rate of reinfection".
  
• This analysis from 20 October written by a strong advocate for masks, as well as this collection of graphs from around the world depicting number of COVID-19 cases before and after the start of mask mandates strongly suggests that universal wearing of masks has been an ineffective intervention.
  
• The Beijing Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has re-assessed the evidence and announced that wearing masks outdoors is not necessary. This change is in line with research at the University of Illinois, Chicago "Masks-for-all for COVID-19 Not Based on Sound Data" & 16 July follow-up commentary.
  
• Widespread use of cloth masks has been pushed by the media as a (putative) solution to a specific problem: the risk of asymptomatic/presymptomatic transmission of COVID-19. We have recently learned that the problem is smaller than initially believed. The World Health Organization has acknowledged on 8 June that there is strong evidence from detailed contact tracing showing that asymptomatic transmission is possible, but rare. Under pressure, it has backpedalled the acknowledgment one day later, but the rabbit is out of the bag and independent peer-reviewed empirical research (see here 1, here 2, here 3, here 4, and here 5) supports the initial acknowledgment of inefficient asymptomatic/presymptomatic transmission (R0 <0.1, compared to R0 of 2-3 for symptomatic transmission; that's 20-30 times less!). Even if one believed that cloth masks work, a cost-benefit calculus of public health policy would still show that healthy/asymptomatic people need not wear them. If alive, Richard Feynman would probably say that addressing COVID-19 with cloth masks is a great illustration of cargo cult science.
  
• Because the topic of masks has become morally-loaded ("Do the decent thing, and wear a mask"; "Be a good human and protect the vulnerable"), we must be aware of people's tendency to "often choose morality over hard evidence" and control for it. We need to look at the totality of available evidence, to see the general patterns that emerge, the outliers, and the variance in the quality of the research designs involved. We need to keep in mind Carnap and Hempel's total evidence rule, lest we jump to silly conclusions. We also need to keep in mind that because of mob pressure, there is an asymmetry as to which science gets publicized and which science gets banned and overlooked. We know that researchers like Michael Osterholm who expressed reservations about masks have been harassed by the pro-mask crowd. The science one gets to see these days on social media is the science approved by the mob - there are very clear signs of pervasive COVID-19 related censorship, including the purging of sites that showed evidence that masks are ineffective.
  

Note: This is the expanded and updated section #1 of my older long post on masks. I exceeded the maximum numbers of characters allowed, and therefore had to split the initial post, with the former section #1 moved here as a separate thread. I will regularly update it.

I work in a back-office role for a private non-medical service company that has employees in most of the United States. We're required to do (what I feel) is an excessive amount of online training for Safety.
Coursework includes Drugfree workplace, Data Protection, Occupational Safety and Health Programs, Health and Safety for Office Employees, Basic First Aid, CPR Refresher, Bloodborne Pathogens, Asbestos Hazard Awareness, Behavior Based Safety, Intro to OSHA, Slips/Trips/Falls, Fire Extinguishers, General Safety Orientation.
My previous company was larger global and publicly traded company in the same industry based out of the US. Their annual training requirements were much more abbreviated and limited to harassment and information protection. Other requirements were to read a workplace policy document and sign a digital signature that it was read. Very short and to the point.
Management is a bit abrasive about complaints revolving around this topic. Online searches on this topic turn into a rabbit hole. I'm hoping for some insight on if this is excessive - and that some of this can be covered by just a digital document and signature. Not looking for any certain details - just if I'm correct or incorrect in suggesting that there is a path to abbreviating this experience.

HACCP Certification is the abstract of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point helps in determining the risk or hazards in the food safety throughout the supply chain. HACCP Plan is an internationally accepted plan to recognize a risk-based system. This helps in managing the manufacturing process,0 preparation, packaging, distribution of the food. This system is designed to prevent, control, monitor, reduce or eliminate the risk of hazards (microbial, chemical, or physical) from raw material to finished products. Certification to HACCP helps the business to reduce the risk of producing unsafe productions and bring transparency in the process. HACCP plan is the preventive process to produce safe products. The HACCP is a system ensuring CCPs are in the streamline with the standard guidelines. Adoption of the HACCP Plan helps in analyzing and formulating the CL (Critical Limits) for each product as per their standard requirements. HACCP management team helps in coping with the errors or the new dangers arising in the process and production of the food pathogens and poisoning due to changes in the habit of production or consumption. BENEFITS OF HACCP CERTIFICATION
Better execution of the HACCP plan helps in better results for the organization in terms of monetary. It helps in achieving several benefits to the organization as well as to others in the process. The main benefits of HACCP are:
Saves your business in the long run in the market
Avoids food damage and recalls
Food Safety Management System gets into a streamline
Ensures compliance by the law
Food poisoning decreases
Organizes the Critical Limits at an earlier stage
Organizes the teamwork in the organization
Due diligence in the court
Other Benefits are:

• Long term cost savings
• ensure increased business profitability
• Cuts all risks of health hazards
• Increases the food safety practices
• Helps build efficiency within the workplace
• HACCP records are a legitimate if worst cases
• HACCP procedures combine with other types of systems in food businesses

Also check HACCP Certification
REQUIREMENTS OF HACCP CERTIFICATION
HACCP follows the procedures based on the Principles of HACCP to identify and control any hazards that could pose a danger to the preparation of safe food. It helps you to:

• Identify what can go wrong?
• Identify what actions to implement corrective plans?
• How to ensure the corrective actions?
• What records or documentation are required?

Answering these questions helps in complying with the requirement of the HACCP Plan.

• Conduct Product testing if any hazard or risk involved
• Scrutiny of requirements as per the compliance of the standard
• Application for a certificate for achieving HACCP Certification
• Carry out inspection all CPPs are verified
• Evaluation of the product
• Verify product safety and quality for usage by customers
• Take enforcement actions (if any required)
• Make quality enhancement (if need arises)
• Conduct Internal audit
• Testing of products and safety by the third party
• Closure of observations
• Evaluation of the product

The requirements are based on the Seven Principles of HACCP.
WHAT DOCUMENTS AND TERMS ARE NEEDED TO ESTIMATE COST FOR A HACCP CERTIFICATION?
The initial step to ensure HACCP Certification is to precisely identify the risk and hazards involved in the food products (if any). To comply with the guidelines of the standard an organization needs to keep certain documentation and records of data as required:

• Name of the product
• Brief description of the product
• Ingredients use in the process
• Nutritional value Chart (Per 100gm)
• Manufacturing and Expiry date
• Storage conditions
• Manufacturer Details

Also Check HACCP Certification in Sri Lanka
HACCP CERTIFICATION PROCESS
To make the HACCP Certification process simple and quick. Hiring a consultant will guide you and your business through the following steps to achieve HACCP Certification by providing

1. Gap Analysis
   
2. Training
   
3. Testing
   
4. Documentation & Test Report
   
5. Process Audit
   
6. External Audit
   
7. Certification and beyond
   

I work in a testing lab and I see a lot of false and speculative information about the situation in testing labs and felt like I should clarify some things:
1) Yes, there is a backlog. However, sample processing has not stopped. There seems to be speculation that labs aren’t doing any work. We are working harder than ever to try and clear the backlog and to increase capacity. Last week, pretty much every day we broke our record for samples processed. My lab is open 24/7 and I have been working the night shift + overtime (as have many others) to help.
2) Lab capacity is an issue and is difficult to increase rapidly. The major reason for this is staff. The first stage of sample processing is quite labour intensive and slow as unbagging of the tubes needs to be done in a microbiological safety cabinet due to the risk of the exposure to the virus to staff. SARS-CoV-2 is a category 3 pathogen (same as HIV and Rabies) and remember these are human clinical samples and could contain anything so staff safety is a priority. The sample is then inactivated and the excess disposed of so further steps can be done outside of a cabinet. All the steps after this unbagging can be automated and millions have been invested in liquid handling robotics to speed up the process and increase capacity.
This unbagging and inactivating of samples is not an exciting job and extremely repetitive. Diagnostics as a whole is not very interesting as most of the work doesn’t involve any research or development, which most scientists want to do. It is therefore difficult to attract scientists to these roles, yet it requires competent staff to handle hazard group 3 pathogens. People can obviously be trained but this takes time.
3) Capacity has not decreased, demand has increased. We believe this is mostly due to many schools and workplaces returning, which require negative tests for pupils/staff who have been in contact with a positive person. This is against government advice, which is to self-isolate if you have been in contact with a positive case. (Not saying I agree with this advice). Also, many other common viruses are beginning to circulate, which give similar symptoms to COVID19.
4) A lot of these labs were set up from nothing, no equipment, no staff, no protocols. It has actually been an incredible achievement to scale up testing from what was pathetic during the peak of the pandemic to one of the best testing rates per capita in the world.
I’m not defending the government or the management of the labs over the current testing situation. Testing should have been better much earlier and the staffing issue has been known about for weeks/months. And they should have known that demand would increase around this time of year – capacity has been stable for months with no push to increase until relatively recently. But temember, that testing is not just a political miracle, it takes a lot of human work and know that people are working hard to improve the situation.
Feel free to ask me anything.
Edit: If anyone is looking for a job and have the relevant skills, consider applying to work in a lab: https://talentsplace.recruitmentplatform.com/demo/Reed_TS/apply/AAACzwAA-798352f9-2da8-46c0-b5a5-8a9754c518bc/apply.html?jobId=P0OFK026203F3VBQB688MF6R0-82633&langCode=en_GB

Dear Whole Foods Leadership and Coworkers,
For the safety of myself, my family, and my teaching career, I am quitting. It has become abundantly clear during this pandemic that Whole Foods is obsessed with pushing us, the workers, to keep up production at the expense of our health and our customers' health. As of December of this year, Whole Foods Market has had outbreaks at nearly every store in the company. My location, Birmingham, Michigan, has had multiple cases of COVID, including a streak of seven cases in eight days leading into the week before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I’m not ready to absolve leadership and this company's complete lack of respect and caution for team members’ general welfare.
Team members have had to put themselves at risk constantly. Part time team members have seen their benefits removed over the last two years, and they haven’t seen these benefits return even during a global health crisis. I know team members who have lost family members and come to work understanding that if they do not have the PTO to support them, they won’t get paid. Instead, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey decided that the best remedy for sick team members was to ask everyone to simply share their limited PTO.
Whole Foods does not have team members’ well being at heart. There is no core value at Whole Foods of greater importance than pushing sales and Amazon Prime. When sick workers tried to organize in Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse facility as a response to a lack of protective gear and hazard pay, said workers were fired rather than immediately addressing these concerns. A team member who tracked COVID-19 cases for better transparency within the company got fired in May.
There has been no effort made by Jeff Bezos or John Mackey to spread their immense wealth back to the workers (their wealth has in fact grown enormously during the pandemic). They are more than able to redistribute some form of payments to workers whether it be retroactive hazard pay, better benefits, free PTO for sick team members or all of the above. Instead, we have been treated to meager bonuses and short-lived, token hazard pay.
Yet despite this indifference, Whole Foods and Amazon have certainly been active during the pandemic. Whole Foods may have neglected to enforce the mask mandate in our stores, but the company had no trouble introducing strict new dress code policies. As a result, team members who supported Black Lives Matter were told that they could not wear any BLM apparel or buttons - an attack on our rights as employees. Not only did Whole Foods take up the position that it would remain at best agnostic on a noble, fundamentally humanitarian movement, the store banned us from expressing our support. The dress code went, likely out of fear of dividing their consumer base.
These grievances are widespread, as evidenced by recent actions at Whole Foods stores across the country. The June walkout and class-action lawsuit in Cambridge, Portland and Wauwatosa’s walkouts on Labor Day, along with the Whole Worker-sponsored “Sick Out” back in March, are examples of workers trying to send a message to store leadership and upper management: our health and safety are not being adequately protected. Most of us understand this to be true, but few feel comfortable voicing their concerns, fearing retaliation from our management. Meanwhile, COVID cases continue to rise in our stores.
If we allow this to continue, the company will remain completely disconnected from the interest of their workers, taking advantage of our fear and desperation in these trying times.
No one would argue that the COVID outbreak is the fault of Amazon’s, but the company has no excuse for such cruel reactions to this pandemic. This company has more than enough resources to keep us safe. Whole Foods team members have expressed widespread support for the following policy changes:
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• Reinstatement of the two dollars extra an hour indefinitely as a reward for workers feeding their communities during the crisis.

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• Return of gain sharing, which was based on the idea that the workers who saved the company money on labor should share in its spoils.

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• The return of the old dress code policy, as a sign of respect for the free speech and expression of Whole Foods workers. This includes our right to voice our support for contemporary civil rights movements such as Black Lives Matter.

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• Return of health benefits for those contracted as part time workers.

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• Expanded PTO coverage and payments to factor in the increased risk of exposure to COVID, as well as the burden workers must address at home with their loved ones during the pandemic. This should include paid leave for those who have to care for a child or relative and cannot risk exposure to COVID.

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• Mandating mask or face shield coverage for customers when entering the store. Considering the overwhelming evidence to support masks reducing the spread of COVID, Whole Foods should not make any exceptions for entering the store without a mask on. They can easily accommodate those who do have actual medical conditions with face shields or curb-side pick ups.

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• Mandatory yearly raises independent of performance. Workers generate all of this company’s wealth, and there is no reason why Whole Foods cannot even adjust our wages to keep up with inflation - let alone compensate workers for their seniority and part they play in the production within the company.

Speaking personally and practically, one of the best ways to achieve these demands is in the formation of a union and collective bargaining. This is not an outrageous goal to anyone, except perhaps to those who run the company. Nothing will make Whole Foods change its harmful behavior without a union, which offers us a chance to truly affect our working environment. I suggest that any workers interested in organizing and trying to protect their rights reach out to either a local UFCW, IWW, or Whole Worker Union. Any of these groups would be more than happy to help us locally and nationally. You should also know that by federal law neither Whole Foods nor Amazon nor any company that you work for can tell you that you cannot organize, and they cannot tell you to remove any sort of union apparel as long as it falls within the guidelines listed in the GIG handbook.
With this in mind, Whole Worker is creating union pins to protest against the new dress code. More information will come through their Telegram chat (link below). Wearing a union pin is a legally protected form of worker activism and sends a signal to leadership and your co-workers. It sends a signal that Whole Foods’ open door policy works and that a team member led union is absolutely necessary.
Additionally, if anybody is looking to whistleblow, air grievances, or find an anonymous platform to speak out, they can contact Michael Sainato at “The Guardian” or Lauren Gurley from “VICE”. They have experience covering workplace issues at Whole Foods, and will talk to anyone interested in sharing their experiences.
Amazon and Whole Foods could provide us with the benefits we need, but they choose not to in order to save money for the very few who own the company. When we ask strongly enough for something, we may get it in time, but on their grounds. These measures that I have listed -- at least in my opinion -- are not very radical and the least the company could provide; however, they are widely popular amongst Whole Foods and Amazon workers everywhere.
There is no way to justify this lack of transparency with the staff when outbreaks occur in the workplace. There is no reason that people should be denied raises in the middle of a pandemic simply because they are on a "final notice." These decisions are the result of incredible moral cowardice and weakness, and it falls squarely on the shoulders of those who run the company and make the rules.
I work with some very good people. My Team Leader, ATL, and friends in Meat and Seafood are incredible people who have sacrificed a lot to help their families and friends. No one knows how much they made working here so much better. I also do not blame the immediate leadership at the location. I would like people to know I did this because I only want to help you all.
I do not believe these demands are all that workers should settle for, but they are a start. Workers sometimes have differences of opinion; some of us have completely different politics. But you are all part of a community, and you deserve to have that voice and security within that community, at the very least in the form of a collective bargaining agreement. The company will only respond to our needs when it is forced to do so - and that is not acceptable.
You may come from a store that has already actively protested against what Amazon and WFM has taken away from us; you may come from a store like me, one that the word “union” is never even uttered within its walls. Some have even casted the thought of unionizing aside out of respect for leadership who they have close and loving relationships with as people. Chances are, whichever store you are in, TMs are trying to organize, unionize, or just even speak up; they are looking for you to speak up with what you want to see changed.

Marked changes for good have emerged from the Queensland government following lowering of dust control limits in 2020 and the introduction of stands such as Recognised Standard 20. The critical and much needed changes in the allowable limits for respirable coal and silica dust in Queensland came into effect. The effected changes in dust control limits in Queensland came as a result of extensive efforts and lobbying from Safework Australia which also extended in effect to all metalliferous mine workers and quarry workers across the states in Australia. Workplace safety and health is paramount to the discussions of Queensland and dust control limits as the resurgence of coal mine workers pneumoconiosis in 2015 brought to fore a problem that had previously been dismissed as completely eradicated in the last 30 years. Getting a bit more into the numerical changes to the dust control limits in Queensland, the reduction of respirable coal dust limits were lowered by 1 milligram per cubic meter from 2.5 milligrams per cubic meter to 1.5 milligrams per cubic meter. Silica dust was also reduced by about 0,95 milligrams per cubic meter from 1 milligram per cubic meter to 0.05 milligrams per cubic meter. The drive for workplace safety and health in Queensland was definitely a notable reform on the part of the government with reinforcement to the reforms complemented with mine workers free respiratory health checks for life. This article evaluates history of coal mining in Queensland, the resurgence of coal mine workers pneumoconiosis and analyses products utilized for coal and silica dust suppression from the GRT product range.
Where did coal mining in Queensland start?
The mining of coal in Queensland dates back to the first sightings on the banks of the Brisbane River within a year of the establishment of a settlement on Moreton Bay, through the granting of independent status to Queensland in 1859 to the opening of the railway from Ipswich to Brisbane in 1874. In fact it is believed that John Oxley, the surveyor-general of New South Wales first noticed coal in the Brisbane Rive in 1824 but did not enter details of the supposed discovery. A year later, Major Edmund Lockyer visited the Brisbane River and diarized having passed a very rapid fall coal bed as well as going on to collect a sample of the coal. A few years later, in 1828 arrival of Charles Fraser at Brisbane town in the company of Allan Cunningham and Captain Logan with whom they rowed up the Brisbane and Bremer rivers to the “Limestone Station” present day Ipswich. Fraser noted several beds of coal which were adjacent to lime outcropping from the bank of the streams and falling into the Bremer within a short distance from its tide mark. In 1828 the Australian Agricultural Company was granted the exclusive privilege for supplying coal to the public in the colony and it centered its operations on Newcastle in the interest of removing any prospective competition from other sources. The history of coal mining in Queensland from a documentation and exploratory evidence is then attributed to Lockyer, Logan, Fraser and Cunningham.
Queensland – from penal colony to state
1842 marked a year in which the penal settlement at Moreton Bay was closed and this allowed free access, travel and work within the previously closed fifty mile radius of Brisbane Town. In relation to coal mining, the changes were not much of an incentive with bulk of the coal use in the 19th century mainly as a source of fuel and better option to wood. The transition from manual labor to mechanization created a market for growing use of coal as a steam raising fuel. Geologically in the 1850s, events such as construction of railways, the production of gas for heat and light and the advent of industrial production in South Australia left Queensland coal reserves almost untouched for almost a decade. Post the Lockyer and crew era, 1844-85 brought more news about coal discoveries at a couple of places between the Darling Downs and the Mackenzie River according to the Leichhardt expedition. A few years later, Clarke estimated that the ‘Coalfield of the Condamine’ on the Darling Downs covered an area of not less than 50 thousand square kilometers. The introduction of the steamship is very much tied to the early mining of coal in Queensland.
When did black lung first emerge?
History has it that the first case of coal mine workers’ pneumoconiosis was reported by Gregory in 1831, although it should be stated that initially coal mine workers pneumoconiosis was thought of as a variant of silicosis because of similarity in chest radiographs, with the thought of coal dust to be innocuous. Most of the limits for coal dust were derived from a British study that produced the only quantitative exposure-response relationship available at the time. The basis of coal dust limit of 2 milligrams per cubic meter was chosen on the premise that among miners who worked 35 years with respirable coal dust there would not be any severe cases. However, research on US underground coal mine workers showed that there was no threshold at 2 milligrams per cubic meter under which the coal mine workers pneumoconiosis cases would not occur. More evidence suggested that coal mine workers pneumoconiosis, progressive massive fibrosis and chronic pulmonary disease may actually develop at the current permissible exposure limit of 2 milligrams per cubic meter. Recommendations of exposure limits of 1 milligram per cubic meter in the US, happened in 1995 and only 19 years later limits of respirable dust concentration was reduced to 1.5 milligrams per cubic meter in 2014 as a result of prevalence in coal mine workers pneumoconiosis dating as far back as 2003. Similarly in Queensland, the resurgence of coal mine workers pneumoconiosis in Queensland, in 2015 has also led to much of the marked reforms which have seen lowering of respirable coal dust allowable limits from 2 milligrams per cubic meter to 1 milligram per cubic meter in 2020 about 5 years later.
What is the best practice coal dust suppression?
It is imperative to tackle coal dust at the source given that exposure to coal dust leads to coal mine workers’ pneumoconiosis which may develop into progressive massive fibrosis and eventually become fatal to coal mine workers. Coal dust suppression is massively affected by particle size which also directly affects its reaction rate, sedimentation, solubility and human health. Research shows that coal consists of about 76 elements, and amongst these elements’ toxic elements such as arsenic, mercury and lead which are potentially hazardous to human health. The different functional groups in coal render it predominantly hydrophobic this in addition to free radicals that exist in coal. It is then very important to use effective dust control solutions for the prevention of exposure to coal mine workers at the source. Global Road Technology offers effective coal dust suppression products that reduce the need to constantly use water, do not affect the calorific value of coal and above all make water work. Making water work is achieved through superactivation of water enabling the hydrophobicity of coal to be matched with the hydrophobicity of GRT Activate and GRT Activate UG for your coal dust suppression. A full strategy from Pit to Port can effectively manage coal dust at its source, with additional options including GRT: Haul-Loc, GRT: Wet-Loc and GRT7000. In Queensland, dust control limits are met with innovative solutions from GRT that allow coal dust values to stay below limits and achieved through tackling coal dust at the source.
Author - Troy Adams the Managing Director of Global Road Technology (GRT) Specialising in Engineered Solutions for Dust Suppression, Erosion Control, Soil Stabilisation and Water Management.
Link to Article: https://globalroadtechnology.com/coal-dust-control-limits/
REFERENCES

• Dunne, E.F. 1950. Brief History of the Coal Mining Industry in Queensland. The Historical Society of Queensland, Inc.
• Liu, T., and Liu, S. 2020. The impacts of coal dust on miners’ health: A review. Environmental Research.
• Whitmore, R.L. 1981. Coal in Queensland The First Fifty Years: A history of early coal mining in Queensland. University of Queensland Press. New York.