Four separate reports of workers suffering life-changing injuries brought OSHA inspectors to a Chicago manufacturing company, where they found multiple safety violations.
Hometown Foods USA – a commercial bakery doing business as Bagelmania Inc. – faces $129,145 in proposed penalties from OSHA after investigators found workers at its Medley facility exposed to amputation, fire, and noise hazards.
California OSHA issued six citations and $142,715 in penalties to Crenshaw Manufacturing Inc. in Huntington Beach, after a worker had three fingers amputated while manually loading products into an operating punch press.
The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued citations to Dunn Paper Inc., in Port Huron for safety and health violations. MIOSHA inspectors determined that the company failed to adequately protect workers from amputation hazards posed by cooling fan blades, spinning flywheels and belts and pulleys.
About 30,000 people, both kids and adults, are rushed to U.S. emergency rooms each year because they've amputated a finger. The two most common causes are from things many of us come into contact with every day: doors and power tools.
Here are some jobs and professions where constant working with your hands can put you at risk of numerous hand hazards – infections, skin diseases, cuts, abrasions, allergic reactions and in the worst case, life-altering amputations:
For the second time in less than two months, federal safety and health inspectors found a worker at a commercial laundry equipment manufacturer had suffered an amputation because a machine lacked adequate safety guarding.
In an effort to reduce the more than 2,600 workplace amputations that take place in the U.S. each year, OSHA is directing its attention toward manufacturing operations in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas workplaces.
"By all indications, Wayne Lumber and Mulch failed to take the violations we found in 2014 seriously,” said Prentice Cline, director of OSHA's Charleston Area Office, after a recent inspection at the company’s Wayne, W. Virginia facility that resulted in three willful, nine repeat, 12 serious and three other-than-serious violations.
A major food manufacturer earned half a dozen serious citations from OSHA after the agency investigated following the amputation injury of a worker on March 7, 2016.
