Construction Industry Safety and Health

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BCSP, together with the BCSP Foundation, are proud to announce the first ever Bi-Annual Research and Innovation Summit, to be held in Indianapolis, Indiana, August 6 and 7, 2019.

The construction industry, by its nature, can be dangerous. SangHyun Lee, an associate professor in the University of Michigan’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, says wearable sensors can improve construction worker safety and also reduce costs through better data on worker health. He answers questions about his research.

Avoiding risk, preventing asthma and fast-tracking self-driving autos were among the top occupational safety and health, environment, transportation, and regulation stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

The American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have renewed a partnership agreement that outlines how the organizations will collaborate on advancing workplace safety and health over the next five years.

OSHA’s recent enforcement actions against DDG Construction Services Inc. must have been like déjà vu all over again for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company. The agency cited DDG for failing to provide workers with fall protection at a commercial building site in Springfield, Missouri – bringing the number of fall violations the company has been cited for since 2014 to 15. Proposed penalties for the latest round of citations: $98,693.

OSHA is eliminating a construction industry requirement that it says will “lessen the compliance burden of employers without jeopardizing the safety of employees.” In a final rule published in the Federal Register on May 14, the agency says employers will no longer have to post maximum safe-load limits of floors in storage areas when constructing single-family dwellings or wood-framed multi-family structures.

For motorists and the workers who build, repair, and maintain streets, bridges, and highways, roadway work zones can be dangerous. In these areas, a variety of complicated road signs, barrels and lane changes could increase the risk of motor vehicle crashes.

New York City continued its string of construction industry fatalities on Saturday, when a 49-year-old worker fell 30 feet to his death at a Madison Avenue worksite. The city’s Department of Buildings issued a full stop-work order for the site after the incident, which occurred shortly before noon.

They tend to happen more on Mondays. They can occur in an instant. And trench deaths kill about 25 workers a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). About 75 percent of those deaths are due to cave-ins, which are largely preventable through cave-in protection and soil analysis. The remainder are mainly caused by struck-bys or electrocutions – also largely preventable.

OSHA’s chance for a chief steps aside, pesticide hazards grab headlines and OSHA issues a rule that revises some standards. These were among the top stories featured on ISHN.com this week.