Essential Internet Resources for Safety and Health Professionals 

The information presented here is extracted from the book Internet User’s Guide for Safety and Health Professionals by Michael Blotzer, CIH, CSP, Copyright 1995 by Genium Publishing Corporation. All Rights reserved. The complete 152 page Guide contains all the information needed to effectively use the internet in your professional practice and includes step-by-step exercises on using the internet to access important safety and health information. Click here for more information on the Guide. 

Click here for information on URL addresses and subscribing to mailing lists. 

Please Note: The name of an entry displayed in Bold Italic type indicates a change or addition to the Guide. 

Biosafety

Directories

Occupational Safety and Health Information 
WWW: http://turva.me.tut.fi/~oshweb/ (Finland) 
Revamped and renamed OSHWEB in June 1996, this directory devoted to occupational safety and health internet resources deserves to be on the hotlist of every safety and health professional. 

Yahoo 
WWW: http://www.yahoo.com 
Yahoo is an excellent directory of internet resources which I use frequently to find useful information. Searches are easy to perform with easy-to-set options for limiting the search. 

Emergency & Disaster Services

Environment

EnviroLink 
WWW: http://www.envirolink.org/ 
EnviroLink combines a comprehensive database of environmental resources with an excellent search tool. 

Environmental Science Newsgroup 
News: sci.environment 
General environmental sciences discussion group with active discussions of a wide range of environmental topics. 

Environmental Studies Discussion List 
List: ENVST-L@BROWNVM.brown.edu 
Listserver: LISTSERV@BROWNVM.brown.edu 
Active mailing list devoted to environmental discussions. 

Ergonomics

St. John's University Repetitive Strain Injury List 
List: RSI-EAST@sjuvm.stjohns.edu 
Listserver: listserve@sjuvm.stjohns.edu 
St. John's University Repetitive Strain Injury List 

Fire

Firenet 
WWW: http://online.anu.edu.au/Forestry/fire/firenet.html 
Gopher: gopher://life.anu.edu.au:70/11/landscape_ecology/firenet 
FTP: ftp://life.anu.edu.au/pub/firenet 
Very nice resource on fire information from the Australian National University. Links to international fire information resources and fire computer simulation model development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 

Government

Bureau of Labor Statistics 
WWW: http://stats.bls.gov 
FTP: ftp://hopi.bls.gov 
Do a keyword search of the BLS Web pages on safety and health to obtain an extensive directory of sources on occupational safety and health statistics and OSHA record keeping. 

Environmental Protection Agency 
WWW: http://www.epa.gov/ 
Gopher: gopher://gopher.epa.gov 
FTP: ftp://ftp.epa.gov/ 
List: see individual listings in the Internet Resources Directory. 
The EPA has an extremely well developed mailing list server with lists devoted to discussing environmental topics, distributing environmental news, press releases, and distributing documents published in Federal Register on the day of publication. See the individual mailing list in the Government section of the Internet Resources Directory entries for additional information. 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 
WWW: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/homepage.html 
EMail: pubstaft@niosdt1.em.cdc.gov 
Read the latest NIOSH Alerts, course offerings by the NIOSH training centers, and obtain information on NIOSH publications. Use the email address to request NIOSH publications by providing the publications title and NIOSH PUB number. 

OSHA 
WWW: http://www.osha.gov/ 
Gopher: gopher://gabby.osha-slc.gov/ 
FTP: ftp://gabby.osha-slc.gov/pub 
A great source of OSHA news and standards with links to other safety and health information and organizations. 

OSHA Salt Lake City Analytical Laboratory 
WWW: http://www.osha-slc.gov 
Gopher: gopher://gabby.osha-slc.gov 
FTP: ftp://gabby.osha-slc.gov/pub/ 
The best internet source of OSHA information, including standards, proposed standards, policy documents, OSHA Technical Manual, and other excellent information. 

Health & Medicine

Lasers

MSDS

Radiation

Radsafe Radiation Safety Listserver 
FTP: ftp://romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu 
List: radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu 
Listserver: listserv@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu 
This listserver maintained by the environmental health and safety group at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign is the most active list devoted to radiation safety issues with excellent support by members of the Health Physics Society. The FTP site includes files on safety and hazardous waste. 

Regulations

Safety & Health

Occupational Safety and Health Information 
WWW: http://turva.me.tut.fi/~tuusital/oshlinks.html 
This directory devoted to occupational safety and health internet resources deserves to be on the hotlist of every safety and health professional. 

Safety Information Resources on the Internet 
WWW: http://hazard.com/ 
Gopher: gopher://hazard.com/ 
FTP: ftp://hazard.com/ 
List: safety@uvmvm.uvm.edu 
Listserver: listserv@uvmvm.uvm.edu 
SIRI is home to the Safety listserver, the most active mailing list devoted to occupational safety and health. Unfortunately, Safety, with over 2000 subscribers, has grown so large that some members lose patience and will jump on new subscribers for even minor infractions of netiquette. Still, Safety is the best list going for general safety and health information. Just tread softly and be sure to read and follow the list’s rules of etiquette. 

Safety of Engineered Systems Newsgroup 
News: news:sci.engr.safety 
Newsgroup devoted to occupational safety discussions. 

System Safety Mailing List 
List: SYSTEM-SAFETY@listserv.gsfc.nasa.gov 
Listserver: listserv@listserv.gsfc.nasa.gov 
This is the place to go to have your system safety questions answered. 

Toxicology

A note on addresses: World Wide Web, Gopher, FTP, and Telnet addresses are listed in URL format. If you are accessing a Gopher, FTP, or Telnet address outside your web browser you must remove the leading gopher://, ftp://, or telnet:// from the URL address. 

A note about mailing lists: Mailing list server addresses are entered as hypertext links. To subscribe to a list click on the link. Your Web browser will display an email window already addressed to the list server. Simply enter 

as the text of your message where list_name is the name of the list and your_name is your actual name. For example, to subscribe to the noise_and_hearing list I would enter 

as the text of my message to the list server. The only exception here is if the list server is a majordomo server, in which case you do not need to enter your_name. 

Once your subscription is accepted you will receive a message detailing the policies of the particular list. Please read this message very carefully, as it includes procedures for signing off (unsubscribing) from the list. There are few things more annoying than wading through unsubscribe messages sent to the list instead of the list server. 

I’m sorry, but... The internet is a wild and woolly place, with many people hard at work to present information the way they see fit. I cannot and will not take responsibility for the content of these resources or the political and social views of the information providers. I’ve worked to identify useful internet sites, but I don’t control content. It is up to each reader to view the information supplied by each site with a critical eye and mind. 

The internet is also constant change. Sites change locations, computers crash, and power goes out in storms. If a site listed doesn’t respond when you try to access it, try again at a later time.