...Earlier this year in Houston, Texas, a worker was hospitalized with broken arms and severe contusions after falling 12 feet off of a roof. The saddest part of this case wasn't that the employer did not provide fall protection for this worker; it was that the worker had actually requested fall protection and the employer had denied it.

At OSHA, we gather a lot of numbers. They tell us about the health and safety of U.S. workplaces and help us measure our progress in reducing injuries and illness. But numbers don’t always tell the whole story, and that’s definitely true in the case of inspections.

OSHA chief Dr. David Michaels answers the questions that were asked most frequently during the agency's recent Twitter chat about the new severe incident reporting requirements that go into effect Jan. 1.

I have been promoting that message since I became head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration almost three years ago. It is supported by empirical evidence—and now—it’s been confirmed by a peer-reviewed study published in Science, one of the world’s top scientific journals.