Articles Tagged with ''fall hazards''

The risks of working at heights can be deceiving. In workplaces, no matter the height, the risks are too often discounted – until someone falls.

On Tuesday, May 3rd, work in Washington D.C. will come to a halt. No, it won’t be the usual partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill. The work stoppage in question will take place at the construction site of the MGM National Harbor Resort and will be part of OSHA’s third annual National Safety Stand-Down.

Workers at a Purina feed mill were exposed to 6 – 10 foot falls from ladderway floor openings and platforms lacking guardrails, OSHA investigators found during an October 2015 inspection of the Wichita, Kansas facility.

One worker was crushed to death and another seriously injured in what OSHA describes as a preventable accident at a Florida car dealership.

A popular Washington, D.C. hotel has come under fire for exposing its employees to hazards ranging from falls to potentially harmful chemicals. In response to a complaint, OSHA inspectors conducted an investigation at the Wardman Hotel LLC, doing business as Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, and found:

A 24-year-old daredevil photographer fell to his death as he tried to take a snapshot atop Midtown’s swanky Four Seasons Hotel on December 30, 2015.

OSHA and other federal safety agencies announced that they have designated May 2-6, 2016, for the third annual National Safety Stand-Down. The event is a nationwide effort to remind and educate employers and workers in the construction industry of the serious dangers of falls - the cause of the highest number of industry deaths in the construction industry.

After spending days fighting fires, clearing brush and performing arduous physical tasks, U.S. Forest Service employees should return to a safe home base after work. Yet repeated inspections of national forests throughout Oregon during the last 10 years have found the opposite, with the Forest Service cited by federal inspectors for widespread safety violations nine out of every 10 visits.

A complaint brought OSHA investigators to Transporter Maintenance and Inspection LLC, a subsidiary of L & B Holdings LLC in Port Allen, Louisiana. That inspection resulted in one willful, 27 serious and five other violations for exposing workers to various safety and health hazards, with proposed penalties of $156,800.

OSHA inspectors found that employees of at a Shenandoah, Texas construction site were exposed to a variety of dangers, earning citations for both the company conducting the work and the one that supplied it with temporary workers.