A team of surgeons were flown to the site of a construction accident in North Texas earlier this month, in order to amputate the leg of a worker who’d gotten caught in a trenching machine.

A New York City construction worker who was permanently disabled on the job has settled a lawsuit for $1.5 million against a construction company and three real estate companies that owned the site. News sources report that 44-year-old James Morrow was partially blinded in one eye at a Manhattan construction site on Aug. 29, 2014.

The collapse of an unapproved retaining wall in Poughkeepsie, New York killed one worker and injured another – and resulted in more than a quarter of a million dollars in fines for a construction company. In the wake of the August 2017 incident, OSHA cited Onekey LLC, for exposing employees to crushing hazards, for failing to train employees to keep a safe distance from the wall and soil pile, and for failing to provide proper fall protection.

Caught-in or between injuries killed more construction workers than those in any other industry between 2011 and 2015, according to a new CPWR Quarterly Data Report from the Center for Construction Research & Training. The injury category includes workers killed when trenches, walls, equipment, or materials collapse, as well as people pinched/compressed between objects and equipment or caught in moving machinery.

Last Tuesday was a bad day in New York City’s construction industry. According to news sources, two workers at fell to their deaths at two different construction projects in the city. 33-year-old Ju Cong Wu fell nine stories down an elevator shaft at a hotel development in the Flatiron District.

Mayor Bill de Blasio this week signed legislation into law, authored by Council Member Ben Kallos in collaboration with DEP, aimed at reducing overnight and weekend construction noise and making New York City more livable. Intro. 1653-B allows inspectors to take noise readings from the roadway or sidewalk, rather than requiring that the reading be taken from inside of a complainant’s apartment, empowers inspectors to shut down equipment that is too loud, and calls for new rules for responding when the noise is most likely to happen again.

OSHA has commented on safety and the use of personal headphones on construction sites. OSHA discourages their use in the workplace because they prevent the wearer from receiving auditory cues about the surrounding environment and because they are ineffective at preventing noise-related damage to the ears, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle. In the OSHA pocket booklet "Protecting Yourself from Noise in Construction," the agency comments directly on the use of the headphones.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (NIOSH FACE) program investigates selected work-related fatalities, collecting information not captured in other data sources - including safety management and training programs, use of engineering controls and personal protective equipment on the jobsite, and recommendations for preventing similar incidents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has dismissed industry challenges to OSHA’s new silica dust exposure standard, ruling that the agency’s decision to lower permissible worker exposure from 250 micrograms to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air over an average of eight hours was reasonable.