A pair of trending topics will be on the agenda at tomorrow’s meeting of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH) Workgroups. The Emerging and Current Issues workgroup will meet from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. EST to discuss opioids and suicides in construction.

OSHA has cited Jaime Martinez Hernandez – a residential framing contractor based in Phenix City, Alabama – for exposing employees to fall and struck-by hazards at two Alabama worksites. The contractor faces $240,880 in penalties. The agency conducted the inspections in conjunction with the agency’s Regional Emphasis Program for Falls in Construction after investigators observed employees working from heights without fall protection at worksites in Auburn and Opelika.

OSHA has cited DB Custom Carpentry LLC – based in Aurora, Illinois – for exposing employees to falls. The homebuilder faces penalties of $333,968 for three willful and one repeat safety violations. In August 2019, OSHA inspectors observed two employees sheeting a residential roof without adequate fall protection in Naperville, Illinois. The agency also cited the company for failing to train employees on fall protection, and to provide and ensure that employees wore safety glasses and hard hats.

Fatalities caused by falls from elevation continue to be a leading cause of death for construction employees, accounting for 320 of the 1,008 construction fatalities recorded in 2018 (BLS data). Those deaths were preventable. The National Safety Stand-Down is an effort to raise fall hazard awareness across the country and prevent fall fatalities and injuries.

A Pennsylvania roofing contractor faces $605,371 in penalties after being cited by OSHA for exposing employees to fall hazards at three separate worksites in the Lehigh Valley area. OSHA initiated an inspection of the Webb Contractor Corp. worksites on September 6, 2019, after a compliance officer observed employees performing residential roofing work without fall protection at a worksite in Macungie, Pennsylvania.

The former owner of a framing company in Florida has been sentenced to 30 days in prison, after pleading guilty to one count of willfully violating federal fall protection standards. Stalin Rene Barahona – former owner of the now-dissolved SB Framing Services Inc. in Naples will begin serving his sentence on Feb. 26, 2020.

Whether they’re scissor lifts, boom lifts or some other kind of powered, mobile platform used to elevate workers to various heights, aerial lifts are very useful – and potentially dangerous. Aerial lifts can be found at construction and telecommunications job sites and in warehouses. They’re used for everything from painting, drywall installation, maintenance, moving materials – even changing lightbulbs.

"OSHA will continue to use BLS data for enforcement targeting within its jurisdiction to help prevent tragedies," said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Occupational Safety and Health Loren Sweatt. "Inspections for OSHA were up, and we will work with state plans so employers and workers can find compliance assistance tools in many forms or call the agency to report unsafe working conditions. Any fatality is one too many."

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Loren Sweatt spoke at the Pennsylvania Governor's Safety and Health Conference on October 28, 2019.

An Ohio county court has sentenced Jim Coon – a roofing contractor based in Akron, Ohio – to prison after he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of a 39-year-old employee who fell from a three-story roof while working without required fall protection in November 2017.