OSHA inspectors who arrived at a Florida construction site to investigate an employee’s near-fatal fall didn’t have to look far to find fall and other safety hazards at the project. Three of the four Florida-based residential contractors involved with the project earned citations for fall hazard-related violations. The four companies were cited for a total of 12 violations, with $220,114 in proposed penalties.
Cooperating with OSHA gets two employees fired – and their employer found guilty of retaliation; health experts want asbestos banned and the Association Health Plans program gets a defeat in court. These were among the top occupational safety and health stories featured on ISHN.com this week.
Having a detailed fall protection plan is essential to providing a safe work environment for employees working at heights. While OSHA only requires a written fall protection plan for employees engaged in specific types of work who can demonstrate that it is infeasible or hazardous to use conventional fall protection equipment (See 1926.501(b)(2), (b)(12), and (b)(13)), CPWR feels that the use of a plan is beneficial to the safety of all workers at risk for a fall.
OSHA and its partners are hosting events throughout the country this week for the sixth annual National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction. Employers and workers will pause to talk about fall hazards, OSHA compliance, and industry best practices to prevent falls. The 2019 poster is available on OSHA's publications page.
OSHA's National Safety Stand-Down Week to Prevent Falls in Construction runs May 6-10, 2019, in conjunction with the North American Occupational Safety and Health (NAOSH) Safety Week.
Anyone interested in educating employees in fall hazards, or other job hazards, can participate.
Pure Safety Group (PSG), the largest company dedicated solely to fall protection, has unveiled a new lineup of three self-retracting lifelines (SRLs). The SRLs are part of the company’s robust schedule of new product launches in 2019, during which it will release more than 20 new products for keeping workers at height safe in construction, oil and gas, energy, utilities, telecom, mining and transportation situations.
"Knowingly and repeatedly" ignored fall protection requirements
April 22, 2019
OSHA has cited framing contractor Navy Contractors, Inc. for willfully exposing employees to fall hazards at residential construction sites in Royersford, Collegeville, and Center Valley, Pennsylvania. The company faces $603,850 in penalties.
The agency initiated inspections at the three jobsites after inspectors saw employees performing framing work without fall protection.
NIOSH uses robotic arms to test healthcare PPE, teen workers get safety info from OSHA and FairWarning sheds a light on the hazards faced by small farmers in the U.S. These were among the occupational safety and health stories featured on ISHN.com this week.
Based on 2014 published data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 261,930 private industry and state and local government workers missed one or more days of work due to injuries from falls on the same level or to lower levels1, and 798 workers died from such falls2.
The construction industry experienced the highest frequency of fall-related deaths, while the highest counts of nonfatal fall injuries continue to be associated with the health services and the wholesale and retail industries.
On January 14, 2016, a 22-year-old male laborer/carpenter (victim) employed by a residential contractor was fatally injured after falling from a single family house under construction.
While on the top plate of a studded exterior second story wall, the victim lost his balance and fell approximately 24 feet to the frozen ground below. The fall was not witnessed by any of the co-workers onsite, but the site foreman heard a noise and while trying to determine what the noise was he found the victim on the ground.
