Occupational Safety

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OSHA this week issued a final rule that applies the requirements of the August 2010 cranes and derricks in construction standard to demolition work and underground construction. Application of this rule will protect workers from hazards associated with hoisting equipment used during construction activities.

Three oil company workers are hospitalized in critical condition this morning after explosions and fires aboard two fuel barges in Mobile, Ala. Sources say the barges, which contained liquid gasoline, were in the process of being cleaned when the incident began in a ship channel near the George C. Wallace Tunnel.

OSHA is developing two additional health National Emphasis Programs (NEPs) that will take affect this year: Nursing and Residential Care Facilities and Isocyanates. NEPs, along with Local Emphasis Programs (LEPs), target high-hazard industries whose workers face increased risks of severe illnesses or severe injuries.

The reintroduction of a bill that would strengthen the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) is being hailed as a necessary step for protecting U.S. workers by the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH).

OSHA has cited Keystone Pain Institute with eight serious health violations involving bloodborne pathogen hazards at the company's Altoona facility. The February inspection by OSHA's Pittsburgh Area Office was prompted by a complaint and resulted in $46,800 in proposed penalties.

At a construction site in New Jersey, a train depot in Illinois, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and other locations in the U.S., Canada and hundreds of other countries, ceremonies will be held in late April and early May to commemorate Worker’s Memorial Day 2013 (in Canada it’s known as Workers’ Day of Mourning).

Approximately eight million U.S. health care workers are year are potentially exposed to hazardous drugs used to treat patients. “It seems counter-intuitive that the health care industry, whose mission is the care of the sick, is itself a "high-hazard" industry for the workers it employs,” notes a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) webpage on the subject.

OSHA has cited an Illinois contractor for seven safety violations, including three willful, for failing to protect workers from cave-ins and moving soil and chunks of asphalt during trenching operations. The inspection was initiated under OSHA's national emphasis program for trenching and excavation after an OSHA inspector witnessed apparent cave-in hazards while traveling past a construction site in Des Plaines on Oct. 3, 2012.

A former safety manager of the Shaw Group has been sentenced to 78 months in prison for deliberately falsifying records of workplace injuries. Shaw, formerly Stone and Webster Construction, held a contract for construction services at several TVA facilities, and used the false injury reports to claim bonuses of more than $2.5 million under the contract.

Several rides at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim remain closed in the wake of seven safety citations issued against the resort by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA).