Armed against fire ants #safetyselfie

WorkSafeBC invites you to post your safety selfies online during NAOSH Week May 3 to 9.

Here’s mine. In this selfie, I’m practising what I preached in my recent post Arming workers and gardeners against fire ants. Long sleeves tucked into gloves, long pants tucked into boots, will (hopefully!) protect me from fire ants and their “stinger that can inject venom under the skin.”

In case you don’t know already, a “selfie” is a picture taken of one’s self. Young people seem particularly fond of taking them. For example, once my son and I went camping and he took 150 selfies while I lit the fire!

Here is the challenge. Take a picture of yourself doing something safely at work.

Be creative, not shy. Have fun with it! Then post it on Twitter with the hashtags #NAOSHWeek and #safetyselfie.

This is one easy and fun way to partake in NAOSH Week. That stands for North American Occupational Safety and Health (NAOSH) Week, and it’s an annual, continent-wide event where employers, workers, and all partners in occupational health and safety collaborate to promote injury and illness prevention in the workplace. It was started in 1997 with an agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

They decided the first week in May each year will focus on occupational health and safety, and so it does. In fact, I write about it every year. So many employers and workers put such efforts into it, and I’ve seen many impressive examples at awards each fall. One of many examples is the Ritchie Brother’s spoof of the TV show Law & Order, which I wrote about in February: Time to start planning for NAOSH Week.

The theme for 2015 is Safety & Health: Make Safety a Habit.

You can register your company’s participation in NAOSH Week and receive a Certificate of Participation and maybe win an iPad (if you register by May 3). Download the planning guide and postcard; order caps, t-shirts, and banners; and sign up to sponsor NAOSH events through WorkSafeBC.

So get ready to share your #safetyselfie (but don’t endanger yourself while taking it!).