Glossary
Occupational Safety Specialist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential occupational safety specialist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key occupational safety specialist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in occupational safety specialist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- 29 CFR 1910 / 1926
- OSHA’s general industry and construction standards.
- Competent person
- A person able to identify hazards and authorized to correct them.
- Confined space
- A space with limited entry and exit not designed for continuous occupancy.
- DART rate
- Days away, restricted or transferred rate: a measure of more serious cases.
- EMR
- Experience modification rate: an insurance factor reflecting a company’s injury history.
- Hazard communication (HazCom)
- OSHA’s standard for chemical labeling, safety data sheets and training.
- Hierarchy of controls
- Elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls and PPE, from most to least effective.
- Job hazard analysis (JHA)
- Breaking a task into steps and identifying hazards and controls for each.
- Near-miss
- An event that could have caused injury but didn’t.
- OSHA
- The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which sets and enforces workplace safety standards.
- OSHA 300 log
- The record of work-related injuries and illnesses many employers must keep.
- Recordable incident
- A work-related injury or illness that meets OSHA recording criteria.
- Root cause analysis
- Finding the underlying system causes of an incident.
- SDS
- Safety data sheet: information on a chemical’s hazards and protective measures.
- TRIR
- Total recordable incident rate: recordables × 200,000 ÷ hours worked.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Occupational Safety Specialist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Occupational Safety Specialist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.