SAFETY is an electronic mailing list which started in 1989. People can send e-mail to the list and it will be redistributed to the list subscribers. Discussions on SAFETY involve environmental and occupational health and safety issues, although a wide range of subjects and participants is encouraged. Issues discussed in the past include chemical safety issues, indoor air quality, interpretation of safety standards and regulations, proper hazardous waste disposal, safety management, and electronic resources on these topics. There are currently more than 70,000 messages in the SAFETY archives. An keyword index to these archives, daily digests of the discussions and other useful SAFETY-related files can be found at http://list.uvm.edu/archives/safety.html
As of February, 1999, SAFETY consists of about 3000 user id's (the precise number changes hourly). The subscribers are primarily in the United States (88%) and Canada (5%), although there are subscribers in many other countries, including Australia (2%), New Zealand, Israel, Spain, Argentina and the UK. People on the list represent academia, industry, the military and government agencies. 48% are .COM, .NET and .ORG addresses (the commercial e-mail providers and corporate addresses); 27% of the SAFETY id's are academic addresses (.EDU); 7% are government addresses; and 3% are military addresses. Expertise ranges from Ph.D.'s with many years of health and safety experience to undergraduate students.
The LISTSERV program which manages SAFETY is located at the University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, USA on the LIST.UVM.EDU machine. As noted above, people on SAFETY represent all regions of the United States and several other countries.
E-mail makes nearly instantaneous communication possible. However, response from the list to a particular posting is not necessarily immediate. If a posting will elicit a response, the first response will likely come within 48 hours (except around American holidays). Note that the list moderated by human intervention this means that it may be several hours before your note is distributed to the list. If your need for information is more urgent than that, you may want to search the SAFETY archives at http://list.uvm.edu/archives/safety.html for helpful information or names.
Continuing discussion can go on for a week or longer. If your posting does not draw any response, it may be too general a question for an electronic mail reply. See Section 2 for tips on how to improve your chances of an useful answer.
SAFETY is a moderated list. This means that each posting is reviewed before distribution to the list to assure that
If a posting is not deemed suitable for distribution over the list, it is either directed to an appropirate individual or a response to the author is sent describing the problem.
SAFETY operates as a cooperative community of people with overlapping technical interests and expertise in the wide-ranging field of occupational and environmental health and safety. Few of these people have large amounts of time to devote to answering questions via e-mail. However, they have a genuine interest in helping other people solve safety problems and concerns and learning more about other people's situations. This is what makes SAFETY work.
The specifics of using SAFETY and the LISTSERV program are given in Section 3. In general, you should use SAFETY to help determine an appropriate next step in a particular situation. No question should be considered too basic for SAFETY, but remember the limitations of the medium - vague questions requiring long answers are unlikely to bring a response, and long essays are generally not conducive to e-mail discussions. If a long series of questions and answers will be required to explain a situation, it is probably best to ask for help on SAFETY, and then, if any willing volunteers respond, to move the discussion off the list and to correspond privately.
More specifically: The statements on SAFETY are strictly personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organization the writer works for or is associated with. There is no verification of the accuracy of any messages distributed over SAFETY. Therefore, each SAFETY reader is responsible for confirming information presented on SAFETY with independent resources. Any interpretations of federal, state or local government regulations must be confirmed with the appropriate agency before being considered authoritative. Neither the users of SAFETY nor any of the organizations providing access to SAFETY are responsible for the interpretation or application of the information contained within the discussions.
The SAFETY list has been operating for 13 years, and thus is one of the older Internet institutions. Over this time, some "rules of the road" have developed that are useful for using the list. Some of these are true of most e-mail lists, others are spcific to SAFETY. This section describes some of these rules.
The goal of the SAFETY list is to provide an avenue for practical discussions of occupational and environmental health and safety related issues. In order to enhance these discussions, please: - Refrain from offering opinion without identifying it as such - Whenever possible, provide references that allow the receiver of your postings to verify the information presented. - Append a signature to your postings, preferably one indicating your professional credentials. - Announcements of a commerical nature (product availability,upgrades, etc.) are acceptable. Their subject line should be prefixed with COMMERCIAL:, so that the intent of the message is clear.
>WOW, I didn't think I would get flamed for such an honest and
>sincere post?!?! Is this group always so unwelcoming to new
>subscribers?
There is a developing tradition on SAFETY that for a question to be taken seriously, you need to indicate a certain level of professional expertise in formulating the question. Alternatively, you can disclaim any professional background in the issue at hand and explain enough of your situation for those with appropriate professional expertise to make suggestions or point out further information is needed.
SAFETY is not so much a question-answering service, as a point-you-in-the-right-direction service. This makes general, open-ended questions hard to deal with. Unfortunately, people new to the list take an initial brusque reaction to a ill-formed question as meaning that the list is unfriendly. Rather, it means "We'd like to help, but you need to ask the question in a short answer format, rather than as an essay question. BTW, we like multiple choice tests even better." Remember, some response is better than complete silence, which usually means "Huh?".
Message traffic on SAFETY varies. It currently averages around 30-35 messages per day, but is often more. There is a limit of 50 messages per day on the list. Messages after the 50 limit will be held until the next day. Because of this limit, it is important to be sure that notes that you send to the list are appropriate for broadcast to 2700+ people. Particularly during heavy traffic periods, consider whether your note is better sent to a particular individual rather than the list as a whole. Also, you may want to consider holding a new subject for discussion for a "light traffic day".
"Heavy traffic periods" occur on a semi-predictable basis. Fridays tend to be the heaviest traffic days of the week, while Saturday and Sundays are often quiet (but not silent). The list is busiest in August, January, November and March. June, July and December are quieter periods. American holidays tend to be much lighter than other days.
Some people find this traffic level burdensome. Remember that not every message must be read carefully. It is possible to arrange to have all SAFETY messages sent in a single file called digests on a daily basis (see below).
There are a variety of safety related e-mail lists operating on the Internet. Choosing the right list to post a particular question to can be something of a challenge. However, it is better to pick one particular list to send the note to, rather than sending it to several at once. Usually, there is a lot of overlap between list membership and having the same question appear on several lists at the same time can confuse the readers of the various lists make them less likely to respond. For a list of other safety related e-mail lists, see http://www.ccohs.ca/resources/listserv.htm
PLEASE DO NOT SEND ATTACHMENTS TO THE SAFETY LIST!
In order for people to be able to successfully use attachments, they must know what software produced that data. In an audience of 3000 people, it is unlikely that more than a handful will be able to use an attachment successfully. In addition, many people are concerned that unwanted binary files may contain software viruses and many e-mail packages cannot handle some types of attachments successfully.
If you wish to share information with people that can not be carried by the ASCII text format, contact Ralph Stuart to arrange to have the file placed on the Vermont SIRI web site.
This is a description of various commands that enable you to use the many features of LISTSERV, the mailing list management program that runs SAFETY.
For more info on LISTSERV features send GET LISTSERV MEMO to LISTSERV@LIST.UVM.EDU
TO SEND E-MAIL MESSAGES TO THE LIST:
Send your messages to SAFETY@LIST.UVM.EDU. In order to post messages to the list, you must be signed up for the list at the address that appears in the From: line of your message header.
LISTSERV COMMANDS
FOR ALL COMMANDS LISTED BELOW: Send them to LISTSERV@LIST.UVM.EDU.
SUBscribe
To add your name to the list, send a message saying
SUB SAFETY your name
The LISTSERV program will ask you to confirm your subscription, to be sure that the correct e-mail address reched it. In order to confirm, follow the instructions included in the confirmation request message.
UNSUBcribe
To unsubscribe from SAFETY send the command
UNSUB SAFETY
to LISTSERV This command also requires confirmation. Be sure that this confirmation
occurs before you leave your e-mail access for an extended period. If there
is any doubt about whether you're still on the list, contact Ralph Stuart.
REVIEW
To find out who is on the list send the command
REVIEW SAFETY
and you will get a list of all unconcealed subscribers (this is a LARGE FILE).
If you do not want anyone (except the owner) to be able to see that you are
on SAFETY, send the command
SET SAFETY CONCEAL.
If your e-mail software does not allow you to see the name of the person posting
a message to the list, you can
SET SAFETY DUAL to have the header information for a posting included in the
body of the message.
SET SAFETY SHORT turns this feature off.
DIGESTS mail option
To receive a daily collection of SAFETY messages in one file send
SET SAFETY DIGESTS
to
LISTSERV@LIST.UVM.EDU.
A table of contents of the collected messages comes at the beginning of the DIGEST. If your e-mail software can read MIME encoded DIGESTs, there is an option available for these to be sent to you. Send SET SAFETY MIME to LISTSERV to invoke this option.
NOMAIL mail option
To stop the flow of mail temporarily, issue the command SET SAFETY NOMAIL to LISTSERV. No mail will be sent to you until you issue the command SET SAFETY MAIL or SET SAFETY DIGESTS This command does not require the confirmation process described above for SUB and UNSUB.
SEARCHING THE ARCHIVES
People with web access can search the SAFETY archives for keywords quickly by using accessing
http://list.uvm.edu/archives/safety.html