I said "people die going out of the trench box". I have no sympathy for going out the box and getting caught by OSHA. I investigated a fatality in in South Beloit in 1985 where the foremen went out of the box for 30 seconds and it caved in on him and he died. 100% preventable.
Case after case, OSHA has shown the trench collapses are unpredictable. In fact OSHA inspectors got out the workers in several instances before it collapse and killed the workers. See https://www.osha.gov/doc/quickaction.html
Even though he had been in the trenching business for 20 years, he had zero training on the OSHA rules in trenching. He had to take a trenching safety class as part on informal settlement agreement from a recent inspection. He had been cited repeats for $12,000. I said he got off cheap. I showed him an example of a contractor called Witt Plumbing. .
Witt Plumbing in NE got cited $70,000 each for no ladder access and no cave-in protection. They paid half the penalty. See
https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=NEWS_RELEASES&p_id=24279
One of the students said "do you want a $70,000 ladder citation" and laughed. You could have bought a cadillac for that price.
We went over the recent criminal indictments and said this could be you. People deserve a safe place to work and people send photos in to OSHA. You need to dig the trench safely, not only because it is the OSHA rule, but it is the right thing to do.
One of the students went on to tell us that he lost his dad in a 1982 bridge collapse in a preventable incident. Now he is a safety professional for a large nationwide underground contractor.
There are hundreds of contractors doing the right and safe methods every year when digging a trench. In IL, we went from a death a week on a trench collapse when I started in 1983 to the point maybe, one person dies in a cave-in a year. That is progress. If OSHA was not out inspecting these trenches, we would have lost over 1000 workers form trench collapses in the last 30 years. There is no excuse and no sympathy for those that want to cheat these minimum safety rules.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Thursday, December 12, 2013
November 2013 OSHA News
This month’s powerpoint is dock safety. 11 fatalities at larger companies show that this problem has not gone away. This draft ppt is a good start to some issues. If you improve on it, please send me a copy.
Several good articles in safety are at the end. December is the worst month for CO issues. Take preventive action and get some CO detectors. Relax and enjoy the holidays.
Here is the news for November
1) Good interpretation on responsibilities of Temp agencies and host employers. https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=INTERPRETATIONS&p_id=28598
2) OSHA changed the rules on signs. https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=FEDERAL_REGISTER&p_id=23990
Sec. 1926.200 Accident prevention signs and tags.
* * * * *
(b) Danger signs. (1) Danger signs shall be used only where an
immediate hazard exists, and shall follow the specifications
illustrated in Figure 1 of ANSI Z35.1-1968 or in Figures 1 to 13 of
ANSI Z535.2-2011, incorporated by reference in Sec. 1926.6.
* * * * *
(c) Caution signs. (1) Caution signs shall be used only to warn
against potential hazards or to caution against unsafe practices, and
shall follow the specifications illustrated in Figure 4 of ANSI Z35.1-
1968 or in Figures 1 to 13 of ANSI Z535.2-2011, incorporated by
reference in Sec. 1926.6.
3) OSHA has eliminated the weekly inspections on punch presses if no one objects. OSHA will align the existing standard's maintenance and repair
provisions to the American National Standards Institute standard for safety requirements for mechanical power presses. This standard would explicitly state that maintenance and repair must be completed before the mechanical power press is operated and, in keeping with the ANSI standard, employers would certify maintenance and repair for the entire machine rather than for certain parts of the power press.
See Federal Register notice at
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/11/20/2013-27695/record-requirements-in-the-mechanical-power-presses-standard for more details.
4) 54 people died in the roof collapse this month in Latvia. Roof collapses are preventable.
Many roofs have a design loading so snow, AC units, gardens can all push the roof beyond the rated load.
Substandard construction has caused several collapses. Annual inspections of the supports can reveal cracks, broken truss welds, exterior corrosion, and bowing due to weight.
Workers on the roof need fall protection. Skylights are the worse fall hazard and should be covered. If at the edge, fall arrest should be worn if there are no guardrails. Never get on the roof without 100% fall arrest if the roof is rusty and leaking. Too many people are going through rotten decking.
5) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has scheduled a public meeting to allow interested parties to comment on the proposed rule to improve tracking of workplace injuries and illnesses. OSHA's proposed rule amends its current recordkeeping regulations to add requirements for the electronic submission of injury and illness information employers are already required to keep under existing standards, Part 1904.
The meeting will be held from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014, at the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. Requests to attend or speak at the meeting may be submitted electronically at http://www.regulations.gov, the Federal eRulemaking Portal or by mail or facsimile. The deadline to request to attend the meeting as a speaker or observer is Friday, Dec. 13, 2013.
6) About 80% of the medium size companies did the GHS training on time. Many used a quiz to test the knowledge which will help when some forget.
7) OSHA has been citing blocked exits. Often storage is tight and it gets tempting to put a pallet of material by the exit. Regular checks need to be perform to catch this issue.
8) A construction employee fell 35 feet at O’Hare airport on November 21. I have not seen much on the details of the accident.
9) A $40 Carbon Monoxide detector with digital readout can alert you to unsafe levels. Any industry with CO should have them.
10) Thanks to all the people who helped out for the people affected by the tornadoes in IL. The devastation was extensive. Early warning helped save many lives.
OSHA Citations in November
Penalty State Major Issues
1) $66,220 CT Repeat GHS, Grinders, eyewash, Metal finisher
2) $70,000 NE Fatal roof fall, roofer
3) $82,000 WI Repeat Respirators, Recycler
4) $97,200 TX Fatal forklift, Plastic mfr
5) $55,400 GA Fail-to-Abate GHS, Logistic company
6) $156,240 WI Willful lockout death, shingle mfr
7) $147,000 NY Willful powerline death, Telecom Utility
8) $60,900 RN Willful crane inspection death, Highway contractor
9) $77,000 FL Willful fall death, Masonry
10) $177,100 MS Repeat fall protection, electrical, machine guarding, Boat mfr
11) $58,100 TX Guarding, Electrical, Methylene Chloride, Foam mfr
12) $313,000 PA Demolition death
13) $84,000 PA Demolition Death
14) $89,760 PA Willful Fall Protection, stucco contractor
15) $169,000 NY Willful, Blocked exits, retailer,
16) $77,000 AR Willful, Not using listed label equipment, Pipe Manufacturer
17) $70,070 WI Repeat ladder access, competent person, cave-in protection trenching citations,
18) $121,720 NY arc flash, machine guarding, fall protection, Food mfr
19) $158,015 IL Will fall protection, Roofer,.
20) $51,100 MT Flash fire bonding and grounding fatality, Auto Repair
21) $51,800 NJ SST, fire exits, respirator, noise, Pipe mfr
22) $108,080 NY Fail to Abate GHS, Falls, Exits, Refrigeration mfr
23) $165,200 CT Crane collapse, Marina Construction contractor
24) $108,000 American Samoa Willful fall protection fatality, General construction
25) $55,800 OH Flyash engulfment fatality, Concrete company
26) $77,000 OH Willful guarding rotary digester, Pul and Paper mfr
27) $42,300 NJ Heat, GHS, BBP, ep B vaccinations, Nursing Home
28) $82,080 MA Repeat exits, table saw guarding, fencing mfr
29) $49,700 TX PPE, Chromium, cranes, Plating company
Large Work Payouts
None
Summary of the Major News Stories
1) Thanks Craig. US Supreme court to rule on compensation for wearing PPE. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/court-asked-to-define-clothes/2013/11/04/42cbcc90-4588-11e3-a196-3544a03c2351_story.html?hpid=z3
2) Shoddy work by two electricians led to the death of a man at a west Houston hotel swimming pool, police said. Jason Joseph Gorczyca, 35, and James Ray Pyle, 34, were charged on Friday with criminally negligent homicide. Officials said the electricians' work on a pool at the Hilton Houston Westchase was done in a "substandard fashion" and led to the death of Raul Hernandez. http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Electricians-charged-in-electrocution-of-man-at-4968736.php?cmpid=houtexhcat
3) David Michaels, an US assistant secretary of labor, says Campbell and Benschop “sacrificed worker and public safety through the deliberate neglect of demolition safety fundamentals. This tragic incident,” he adds, “could and should have been prevented.” Murder Charges detailed. http://articles.philly.com/2013-11-27/news/44490135_1_building-collapse-stb-investments-corp-murder-charges
4) The U.S. Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board last week released its report ona 2009 explosion at a quartz crystal manufacturing plant in Illinois operated by NDK America. CSB determined that a corrosive environment led to cracks in a pressure vessel’s steel walls, resulting in its failure. The blast blew a piece of steel 650 feet to a nearby gas station, where it fatally injured one truck driver.
When they were in operation, the six 50-foot tall crystallization vessels at the plant were loaded with raw mined quartz, 800 gallons of 4% sodium hydroxide in water, a “small amount” of lithium nitrate, and seed crystals of pure quartz, the CSB report says. Once sealed, they were heated to 370 °C and pressurized to 29,000 psig for 100 to 150 days.
The vessels’ steel walls were eight inches thick. Sodium hydroxide and silica will react with iron in steel to produce a layer of sodium iron silicate, or acmite. ADK believed that the acmite layer would prevent corrosion of the steel, but neither the company nor the state ever inspected the vessels’ interiors. In 2007, one of the vessels leaked through a connection in its lid. A consultant hired by NDK determined that the leak was caused by stress corrosion cracking and found cracks in three other lids. The company continued to operate the remaining vessels without inspections, the CSB report says.
For more detail and for CSB’s recommendations to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the National Board of Boiler & Pressure Vessel Inspectors, the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal, and NDK, see CSB’s report. The agency also produced its usual excellent summary video:
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