Friday, July 3, 2020

June 2020 OSHA NEws


OSHA News for June 2020
Hello,
We are seeing some hot days. I put some of the Cal-OSHA heat laws in OSHA section. I hope you are drinking water and replacing lost electrolytes.

June was the busiest month for training in 2020. I did several live streaming classes and a few onsite classes. I can teach all day in a face mask with students social distancing.  I have some days open in July so can do training and audits.

NIU and the Construction Safety Council offer  free Harwood classes for four hours. I teach machine guarding for NIU. I and Paul Satti can teach trenching for CSC. It can be live streamed and these have been popular.  

This month PowerPoint is the caught in hazard for construction. I added recent injury information in the presentation.
Stay cool and wear a mask inside. I will see you in August.
John

OSHA News.
1) Heat Indexes are over 100F in many parts of the country. New workers must given time to adapt to the heat.
Cal-OSHA has laws for heat that many should adopt.
High-heat procedures. The employer shall implement high-heat procedures when the temperature equals or exceeds 95 degrees Fahrenheit. These procedures shall include the following to the extent practicable:
(1) Ensuring that effective communication by voice, observation, or electronic means is maintained so that emplo
yees at the work site can contact a supervisor when necessary. An electronic device, such as a cell phone or text messaging device, may be used for this purpose only if reception in the area is reliable.
(2) Observing employees for alertness and signs or symptoms of heat illness. The employer shall ensure effective employee observation/monitoring by implementing one or more of the following:
(A) Supervisor or designee observation of 20 or fewer employees, or
(B) Mandatory buddy system, or
(C) Regular communication with sole employee such as by radio or cellular phone, or
(D) Other effective means of observation.
(3) Designating one or more employees on each worksite as authorized to call for emergency medical services, and allowing other employees to call for emergency services when no designated employee is available.
(4) Reminding employees throughout the work shift to drink plenty of water.
(5) Pre-shift meetings before the commencement of work to review the high heat procedures, encourage employees to drink plenty of water, and remind employees of their right to take a cool-down rest when necessary.
2) Congrats to Jim Martineck for becoming the Chicago South Area Director. Jim has worked for OSHA over 25 years and will do a good job.
3) Congrats to Larken Akins  for her promotion to National Safety and Health Director for OSHA.
 4) Good to great: I went back for the audit at a large manufacturer. They improved quite a bit from the bad years. They had most OSHA programs in place in 2018. The focus on ergo was not there. They identified many tasks requiring forklift or crane to lift products. Some equipment is team lift. Monthly audits were not done. Now managers find 30 hazards a month. The training was increased and focused on hazards and prevention. Near miss tracking is good and most are now minor forklift close calls. So retraining will be done.
5)  Eula Bingham, a toxicologist who energized the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as its director and set stringent standards to protect workers from hazardous materials, died on June 13 in Cincinnati. She was 90
6) One Press Release on OSHA Violations Yields Compliance Equal to 210 Inspections
7) Lockout and a Master key.
What I have found is that the regulation clearly states that the employer of the authorized employee may remove a lockout device as long as a documented procedure is followed. This procedure, at a minimum, must include: (1) verification by the employer that the [authorized] employee [who applied the device] is not on site; (2) [all] reasonable efforts to contact the authorized employee to inform him or her that the lock has been removed; and (3) the employee is definitely informed of the removal of the lock upon his or her return to work.
8) Grain firm Farmers Elevator Co. of Manteno received citations for two willful and three serious violations and a fine of $205,106 from the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) after a worker died at its Grant Park, IL elevator.
The worker was fatally injured at the site after falling into a grain bin. OSHA inspectors determined that the company permitted employees to enter a grain bin using a ladder with rungs spaced greater than 14” apart and without a body harness and lifeline. Farmers Elevator also neglected to provide rescue equipment and exposed workers to engulfment hazards while walking down grain

9) OSHA must release OSHA 300A data.
Employers’ injury and illness records filed with OSHA can be released to the public, a federal district court ruled.
The records, called Form 300A, are annual summaries of job-related injuries and illnesses at workplaces. If a higher court doesn’t overturn the Thursday decision, anyone could request from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration forms submitted yearly by about 300,000 employers.

10)  I have been involved with a few OSHA virtual inspections.  The compliance officer will ask for several documents and interview employees over the phone without coming in to a site or factory.

Other Major News Stories.

1)  COVID-19 deaths ( Idid not count the presumptive cases.
Friday July 3, 2020 – 117784 deaths,  2,724,640 infected
Friday June 26, 2020 - 113029 deaths, 2,422,312 infected
Friday June 19, 2020 - 110074 deaths, 2,191,200 infected
Friday June 12, 2020 - 105840 deaths, 2,023,690 infected
Friday June 5, 2020 – 100885 deaths, 1,872,660 infected
2)  371 Positive COVID-19 cases at Tyson Missouri plant.
3) 2 dead in IL at workplace shooting.
4) 16-year-old dies after falling from scaffolding at Nashville work site
5) Worker dies in fall at $4 billion stadium.

6) VT Health asks people to monitor for low blood oxygen.

OSHA Citations
FL $126,169 Hotel fall fatal. Roofer
FL $199,711 Willful residential fall. Roofer.
NJ $1,997,125 Willful roof falls at five locations.
AL $138,118 Resident roof fall fatal.
NJ $259,760  Fail to Abate machine guarding and lockout. Packaging company.
FL $53,976  Trenching. Electrical distributor.
FL $51,952 Resident roof fall. Roofer.
MO $224,459.  Trench injury . General Contractor.


Safety Training at Non-Profits (Check Sites for Starting Dates)
Machine Guarding Free Live Streaming                  June 16, 21,  30
OSHA 511 Livestream                     NIU                        July 20, 22, 24, 27, 29 and 31, 2020

NIU is Northern Illinois University OSHA Education Center http://www.nsec.niu.edu
FREE machine Guarding https://www.nsec.niu.edu/nsec/course-schedules/free-courses/free-machinery-courses/index.shtml
CSC is the Construction Safety Council in Hillside. Www.Buildsafe.org
TRMA is Three Rivers Manufacturers Association   www.trma.org
NSC is National Safety Council http://www.nsec.niu.edu/nsec/
I usually teach only part of the 30 hour and the 500 series. I have been teaching many 10/30 hour class for private companies.  I have taught 1792 people this year. I teach evenings, weekends, early mornings too. I teach in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Indiana.   
All presentations are put on slideshare.net for free downloading. I put this presentation at this link. https://www.slideshare.net/JohnNewquist/caught-in-or-between-hazards-2020
I use your feedback to make changes to make corrections.


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