Machine guarding once again made OSHA’s top ten list of most-frequently violated standards for fiscal year 2019. Coming in at number eight, OSHA’s machine guarding standard 1910.212 was cited for violations 1,743 times in 2019, compared to 1,972 citations in 2018.
Total penalties in 2019 equaled $11,335,996. $11 million may not seem like much when you consider that in 2015 there were 2,644 amputations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Between 1992 and 1999, there was an average of more than 11,000 amputations every year. Many times, the loss of a finger, hand or arm results from machinery operations, and often the lack of proper guarding, or inadequate guarding.