Heart attacks killed 33 of the 82 firefighters who died while on duty in the U.S. last year, according to a report from the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA). “Firefighter Fatalities in the United States” is compiled annually by the USFA to identify and analyze all on-duty firefighter fatalities to increase understanding of their causes and how they can be prevented.

Federal safety regulators, state oil and gas authorities, and the energy industry need to close regulatory gaps that contributed to the worst oil drilling accident in nearly a decade, a federal agency said in an unprecedented report. The 2018 explosion and fire outside Quinton, Okla., killed five people, making it the deadliest accident in the drilling industry since 2010, when a BP oil rig exploded and killed 11 workers in the Gulf of Mexico.

OSHA is investigating two workplace deaths that occurred last Thursday – in Pennsylvania and Illinois. News reports say 38-year-old Luke Marzano was part of a crew cleaning up the site of the former Bethlehem Steel Corp. headquarters – which was demolished four months ago – when he was killed in an incident.

Under pressure from worker safety advocates, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has decided to return to a policy of including the names of deceased workers in its investigative reports. The CSB, an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical incidents, has included names of fatally injured workers in its reports since 2014. The agency changed its policy in June with the release of two reports on fatal incidents.

A spate of recent struck-by accidents in Texas, Indiana and Florida have left three workers dead – and OSHA investigators busy. In Robertson County, Texas, an employee at a used auto parts business died when a vehicle fell on him. OSHA is investigating the incident at Abco Auto Parts, which claimed the life of 43-year-old Carmelo Aguirre-Ortega on August 19th.

Once again, fall-related violations were behind most of the biggest fines OSHA issued to construction companies in the second quarter of 2019. One of the contractors, Shawn D. Purvis, has been charged criminally in relation to a death that occurred on one of his company's jobsites.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) will be reviewing a recent policy change, after testimony at its public meeting on Tuesday from occupational health experts and worker advocates opposed to the agency’s decision to stop naming accident victims in its reports. CSB Interim Executive Kristen acknowledged “a lot of passion around this subject,” and said that she’d asked the agency’s general counsel to review the policy and to report back with recommendations.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s decision to reverse a policy of including the names of workers killed in the incidents it investigates is drawing fire from safety advocates. In a letter to the CSB, more than fifty organizations and individuals demand that the agency reinstate its policy of naming the fatally injured workers in its reports – something it had previously done since 2014. The CSB stopped the practice recently because doing so “may infer culpability on the part of the entity responsible for the operation of the facility where the incident occurred,” according to a spokesperson.

The US Chemical Safety Board’s (CSB) investigation into an Oklahoma blowout that killed five workers blames the incident on a lack of regulations governing onshore drilling safety as well as shortcomings in safety management systems and industry standards utilized by the industry. The CSB’s final investigation report into the Pryor Trust gas well explosion in Pittsburgh County calls on regulators, industry groups, the state of Oklahoma and companies to address such gaps.

Workplace fatalities have fallen by an average of 19.5 percent in the 29 states and District of Columbia that have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Those surprising results from a study in the International Journal of Drug Policy run counter to post-legalization predictions that marijuana’s effects on motor skills and cognitive function would cause an increase in workplace accidents.