Migna Safety Solutions

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Toolbox Talk Library

Print a talk, read it to the crew, pass the sheet round. Every talk comes with an attendance sheet on the second page — topic and citations already on it, blank lines for names and the date. Every talk is in English and Spanish.

Why the sheet matters. When a GC, a customer or OSHA asks for your toolbox talk records, they want the talk itself and the sign-in sheet that goes with it. Both print together here, so what goes in the file is complete.

100 talks available

Ladders & Climbing · 10 min

Three-Point Contact

Climbing and getting down off ladders and equipment without getting hurt — and why the last three feet are the dangerous part.

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Mobile Equipment · 10 min

Struck-By: Staying Visible Around Equipment

You are invisible to an operator until they prove otherwise. Blind spots, backing, spotters, and swing radius.

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Housekeeping · 10 min

Housekeeping

Slips, trips, spills, lighting and walkways — the hazard that causes the most injuries and gets the least attention.

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Tools · 10 min

Hand and Power Tools

Inspect it, use it for what it is for, keep the guard on — and why a damaged cord is a tool you stop using today.

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Heat & Cold · 10 min

Heat Stress

Drink early, rest in the shade, watch your buddy — and how to tell heat exhaustion from the emergency that kills.

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PPE · 10 min

Eye Protection

Glasses, goggles or shield — picking for the hazard, and what to do in the first seconds after something gets in an eye.

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Respirable Dust · 10 min

Silica Dust

The dust you cannot see is the dust that hurts you — water, vacuums, and why a broom is the wrong answer.

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Ergonomics · 10 min

Safe Lifting

Think before you pick it up — the lift, the carry, and the set-down that causes as many injuries as the lift.

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Fall Protection · 10 min

Fall Protection: The Six-Foot Rule

Six feet in construction, and what counts as protection — plus the anchor point most people get wrong.

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Ladders & Climbing · 10 min

Ladder Setup and Inspection

Angle, footing, tie-off and the three feet above the landing — the setup decides whether the climb is safe before anyone touches it.

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Scaffolds · 10 min

Scaffolds: Before You Climb On

What to check before you step onto a scaffold, who is allowed to change it, and why a green tag is not a guarantee.

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Excavation · 10 min

Trench Safety

A cubic yard of soil weighs about as much as a car. Protective systems, the five-foot myth, and why you never enter to help.

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Electrical · 10 min

Extension Cords and GFCI

Damaged cords, missing ground pins and why GFCI protection is not optional on a wet jobsite.

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Hazardous Energy · 10 min

Lockout/Tagout: Who Owns the Lock

One worker, one lock, one key — and why a tag on its own has never stopped a machine.

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Confined Spaces · 10 min

Confined Spaces: Never Go In After Someone

More than half the people who die in confined spaces went in to help someone else. Why the attendant never enters.

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Fire · 10 min

Hot Work and Fire Extinguishers

Sparks travel 35 feet, a fire watch stays after you stop, and PASS is no use on the wrong class of fire.

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Chemicals · 10 min

Reading a Safety Data Sheet

Sixteen sections, and the four you actually need on site — plus what the pictograms are telling you.

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PPE · 10 min

Hearing Protection

Hearing loss is painless, gradual and permanent — and the plugs only work if they are in properly.

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Heat & Cold · 10 min

Cold Stress

Wet is worse than cold, hypothermia starts in the 40s and 50s, and the umbles tell you before the worker does.

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PPE · 10 min

Hand Safety and Pinch Points

Hands are the most injured part of the body on a jobsite, and the two causes are the line of fire and the wrong glove.

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Mobile Equipment · 10 min

Backing Up and Spotters

Why reversing kills people on foot, what the standard actually requires, and how to be a spotter who does not get run over.

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Mobile Equipment · 10 min

Forklifts and People on Foot

A loaded forklift does not stop, does not steer like a car, and tips before it warns you — for operators and for everyone walking near one.

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Fall Protection · 10 min

Aerial Lifts: Tie Off in the Basket

Boom lifts throw people out; scissor lifts tip over. Different machines, different rules, and the tie-off question people get wrong.

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Cranes & Rigging · 10 min

Rigging and Loads Overhead

Slings get inspected every shift, tags are not decoration, and the ground under a suspended load belongs to nobody.

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PPE · 8 min

Hard Hats and Head Protection

When one is required, why the suspension is the part that saves you, and the ways a hard hat quietly stops working.

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PPE · 10 min

Respirators and the Seal

A respirator that does not seal is a comfort object. Fit testing, the medical evaluation, facial hair, and the check you do every single time.

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Fire · 9 min

Compressed Gas Cylinders

A cylinder with the valve knocked off is a rocket. Caps, chains, upright storage, and twenty feet between oxygen and fuel gas.

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Tools · 9 min

Grinders and Abrasive Wheels

The guard, the eighth-inch gap, the ring test, and why nobody stands in front of a wheel for the first minute.

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Electrical · 10 min

Overhead Power Lines

You do not have to touch a line to be killed by one. Clearance distances, who has to keep them, and the rule about staying in the truck.

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Health · 9 min

Blood and Body Fluids

The instinct to grab an injured workmate with bare hands is the right instinct and the wrong action — how to help without exposing yourself.

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Concrete · 8 min

Rebar and Impalement

Protruding steel does not have to be six feet up to kill somebody, and mushroom caps are not all rated for a fall.

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Culture · 8 min

Near Misses and Speaking Up

The injury you never have is the one somebody reported last month — and it is against federal law to be punished for reporting.

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Machine Safety · 9 min

Machine Guarding and the Point of Operation

The guard that is in the way is the one holding your hand back from the part that cuts — and the reason bypassing one is never a small decision.

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Fall Protection · 8 min

Floor Holes and Covers

The hazard that gets built in the morning and kills someone in the afternoon, and what makes a cover a cover rather than a piece of plywood.

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Emergency Response · 8 min

Evacuation and the Headcount

Getting out is the easy half. The half that gets firefighters hurt is nobody knowing whether everyone is out.

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Weather · 8 min

Lightning and Severe Weather

Thirty miles away is close enough, the safe places are fewer than you think, and the calm after a storm is not the end of it.

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Driving · 9 min

Driving for Work

The most dangerous thing most of us do all day happens on the way to the job — and the phone is only part of it.

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Work Zones · 9 min

Flagging Traffic

Standing in a live road holding a sign, with an escape route picked out before the first car arrives.

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Chemicals · 9 min

Chemical Spills: The First Five Minutes

The decision that matters is whether this is yours to clean up at all — and most people decide wrong, quickly, with a mop.

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Chemicals · 9 min

Asbestos: When You Find It

Old buildings hide it in a dozen materials, the rule presumes it in two of them, and the right response is to stop rather than to be careful.

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Chemicals · 9 min

Lead in Old Paint

Torching, sanding or grinding old paint puts lead in the air and on your hands — and the person it hurts most may be a child at home.

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Welding · 9 min

Welding Fume

The plume is not smoke, galvanized steel is its own problem, and the standard says what to do about both.

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Emergency Response · 7 min

Eyewash and Emergency Showers

Fifteen minutes of flushing, starting in seconds, from a station somebody can reach with their eyes shut.

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Biological · 8 min

Ticks, Wasps and Poison Ivy

The site hazards that are alive: what to check for at the end of the day, and the one that can kill somebody in ten minutes.

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Tools · 8 min

Compressed Air and Hoses

Thirty psi for cleaning, never at a person, and why a whipping hose is worse than the pressure that drives it.

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Tools · 8 min

Hydraulic Injection Injuries

A pinhole leak you cannot see, a fluid stream that goes through skin, and a wound that looks like nothing and costs a finger.

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Struck-By · 8 min

Dropped Objects

A tape measure from thirty feet up is a fatality. Toeboards, tethers, and the exclusion zone below.

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Cranes & Rigging · 9 min

Crane Setup and Ground Conditions

Most crane accidents are decided before the hook ever moves, by what is underneath the outriggers.

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Demolition · 9 min

Demolition: Before the First Swing

The engineering survey, the services, and the order things come down in — because a structure being taken apart no longer behaves like the one that was designed.

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Mobile Equipment · 9 min

Skid Steers and Attachments

The machine with no dedicated standard, a lift arm that crushes, and the interlocks people defeat to save two minutes.

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Hazardous Energy · 9 min

Stored Energy After the Lock

Locking the switch is step one of many. Springs, hydraulics, capacitors, steam and gravity do not care that the power is off.

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Culture · 8 min

The First Week on a New Job

New workers get hurt at several times the rate of experienced ones — and it is almost never because they were careless.

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Health · 8 min

Fatigue and Long Shifts

Nineteen hours awake impairs you about as much as being at the legal drink-drive limit, and the impaired person is the last to know.

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Health · 8 min

Working Alone

Every ordinary hazard gets worse when there is nobody to notice — the fix is a check-in somebody actually escalates.

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Heat & Cold · 8 min

Ice, Snow and Winter Footing

Black ice on a step, snow hiding everything that was already there, and the walk that gets people hurt more than the work does.

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Mobile Equipment · 8 min

Forklift Batteries and Propane

Charging makes hydrogen, batteries carry acid and enough current to weld a ring to your hand, and a propane cylinder gets changed outside.

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Health · 9 min

Carbon Monoxide

No colour, no smell, no warning — and the symptoms feel exactly like a long day, right up until people stop being able to walk out.

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Planning · 9 min

Pre-Task Planning

Five minutes before the work, out loud, with the people doing it — the habit that prevents more than any single hazard talk.

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Fire · 9 min

Flammable Liquids and Static

It is the vapour that burns, it travels along the ground to an ignition source, and a static spark from pouring is enough.

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Electrical · 9 min

Generators and Temporary Power

Backfeed can kill a lineman a mile away, the exhaust kills whoever is closest, and temporary wiring is where the shocks come from.

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Fall Protection · 9 min

Roof Work and the Edge

Six feet applies on a roof too, warning lines have real distances, and a safety monitor is a person with one job and no other.

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Walking Surfaces · 8 min

Stairs, Ramps and Runways

Four risers means a handrail, temporary stairs are where people fall carrying things, and the ramp with the bounce in it is a warning.

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Materials Handling · 8 min

Stacking and Storing Materials

A stack that collapses does it all at once, onto whoever is nearest — heights, interlocking, and the floor load nobody checks.

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Health · 7 min

Sun and Skin

Outdoor workers get far more lifetime UV than anyone else, it accumulates from the days you did not burn, and the damage shows up decades later.

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Culture · 8 min

Mental Health and Asking Twice

Construction has one of the highest suicide rates of any industry, and the whole intervention is one person asking a direct question.

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Emergency Response · 8 min

CPR and the AED

Survival drops about ten percent for every minute nobody starts, and hesitation is the bigger risk. Awareness only — get on a certified course.

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Culture · 8 min

Workplace Violence

Most of it comes from outside — an upset customer, a member of the public, a domestic situation that follows someone to work.

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Health · 8 min

Vibration and Your Hands

White fingers, lost grip and lost feeling — it builds over years from ordinary tools and it does not come back.

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Chemicals · 9 min

Hydrogen Sulfide

Smells of rotten eggs until the concentration that kills you, at which point it smells of nothing at all.

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Health · 8 min

Diesel Exhaust Indoors

A carcinogen you can see and smell, produced by every machine on the job, and worst in the places with the least air.

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Fire · 8 min

Combustible Dust

Wood, grain, sugar, aluminium and plastic all explode as dust, and the first explosion is rarely the one that kills people.

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Fire · 7 min

Refuelling

Engine off, cool, on the ground, nozzle touching — the four things people skip because it is only going to take a minute.

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Electrical · 9 min

Arc Flash and the Boundary

The hazard that burns without touching anything, why de-energising is the only real control, and what the label on the panel is telling you.

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Fall Protection · 9 min

Steel Erection and Fifteen Feet

A different trigger height, two narrow exceptions people misuse, and the reason nobody walks a beam without knowing which one applies.

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Concrete · 8 min

Formwork and Shoring

Wet concrete is a liquid that weighs a hundred and fifty pounds a cubic foot, and the drawings on site are what stops it going somewhere.

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Scaffolds · 8 min

Mobile Scaffolds

Casters locked, push from low down, and the rules about riding one that almost nobody has read.

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Planning · 8 min

Permits and Who Signs Them

A permit is not paperwork, it is a person taking responsibility for conditions they checked — and the signature is the whole point.

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Culture · 7 min

Phones and Distraction

Not a lecture about phones — a talk about the fact that attention is one thing and a site takes all of it.

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PPE · 8 min

Inspecting Your PPE

Every piece of it has a way of failing quietly, and the inspection takes about ninety seconds for the lot.

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Planning · 8 min

Working Around Other Trades

The hazards that hurt you are increasingly not the ones your own crew created — and nobody owns the space between two companies.

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Struck-By · 9 min

Caught-Between and Crush Points

The fourth of the Focus Four. Between a machine and a wall, inside a trench, under a load — the hazard defined by where you are standing.

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Excavation · 8 min

Call Before You Dig

811, the response window, and what the standard requires when the locate does not tell you enough — which is most of the time.

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Planning · 8 min

Site Communication and Hand Signals

One signaller, agreed signals, and a radio channel somebody is actually listening to — plus what to do when the plan and the noise disagree.

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Fall Protection · 7 min

Working Over Water

Vests, ring buoys every 200 feet, and a boat in the water — the requirements people discover after somebody goes in.

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Concrete · 7 min

Masonry Walls and the Limited Access Zone

A freshly laid wall is not standing on its own yet, and the standard says exactly how much ground to keep clear of it.

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Cranes & Rigging · 8 min

Hoists and Material Lifts

Material hoists are not for people, the capacity is posted for a reason, and the ropes have a retirement rule with numbers in it.

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Respirable Dust · 8 min

Abrasive Blasting

Silica in the abrasive, silica in whatever you are blasting off, and a nozzle that will take a hand off at close range.

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Tools · 7 min

Pressure Washing

Three thousand psi cuts skin without touching it, and the wound looks like a scratch for the first hour.

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Tools · 8 min

Chainsaws and Clearing

Kickback happens in the time it takes to flinch, and the tree you are cutting is rarely the thing that hits you.

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Fire · 8 min

Temporary Heat

Salamanders, torpedo heaters and propane: clearance to combustibles, ventilation for the air you are breathing, and cylinders where they belong.

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Work Zones · 8 min

Night Work and Lighting

Foot-candle minimums, the glare that blinds a driver, and the fact that everybody is more tired than they think.

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Planning · 8 min

Working in Occupied Buildings

Everyone around you is untrained, unaware, and entitled to walk wherever they like — which makes them your hazard to control.

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Fall Protection · 9 min

Rescue at Height

The harness stops the fall. It does not get anybody down — and the standard requires you to have already worked out who does.

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Scaffolds · 9 min

Scaffold Erection and Dismantling

The most dangerous hours on any scaffold are the ones before it is finished and the ones after it stops being one.

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Ladders & Climbing · 8 min

Fixed Ladders and the 2036 Deadline

Cages were never fall protection, OSHA has said so since 2018, and every fixed ladder over 24 feet has a date on it.

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Weather · 9 min

Hurricane and Named Storm Prep

Everything loose becomes a projectile, the decisions get made days out, and the most dangerous work is the cleanup afterwards.

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Culture · 8 min

Impairment at Work

Not only alcohol and not only illegal drugs — the prescription that says do not operate machinery is the one people skip past.

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Ergonomics · 8 min

Overhead Work and Shoulders

A shoulder above shoulder height loses most of its blood supply, and the damage is cumulative rather than sudden.

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Emergency Response · 8 min

Burns and First Aid

Cool water for twenty minutes, nothing else on it, and the three kinds of burn that need a hospital regardless of size.

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Health · 8 min

Wildfire Smoke and Air Quality

Outdoor work in bad air is an exposure nobody used to plan for, and the number to act on is published free every hour.

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Toolbox talks are not the training

A ten-minute talk raises awareness on one topic. It does not satisfy an OSHA training requirement on its own, and it is not a substitute for the training your people are actually required to have. When you need that, it is what we sell.

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Not finding the talk you need?

Tell us the topic and we will look at adding it. No account, no email needed — the topic on its own is useful.

These talks are free to print, copy and use, unmodified and with the attribution left on. They are general awareness material, not written for your site, and they are supplied as is with no warranty of any kind — the person delivering one is responsible for deciding it is suitable and sufficient for the work. Regulations change, so check anything you rely on against the current standard. Using them creates no consulting or professional relationship with Migna Safety Solutions. Full terms are in §5 of our Terms.

Free Toolbox Talks in English and Spanish | Migna Safety Training