Safety success at one manufacturing facility, a city sued after a construction incident and a closer look at the impact of industrial exoskeletons on workers were among the top stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

OSHA updates a program designed to reduce amputations in the manufacturing industry; company execs in France found guilty of “institutional harassment” and alcohol-related fatalities are increasing in the U.S. These were among the occupational safety and health stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

Among the end of 2019-beginning of 2020 workplace incidents in the U.S. were employees killed or seriously injured by collapsed machinery, a pallet grinder and an exploding wheel. In Nebraska, a 39-year-old woman sustained traumatic injuries to her head, arms and upper body when she was partially pulled into the pallet grinder she’d been working with. The woman, an employee of Tradewell Pallet in Gretna, was air lifted to a hospital by a medical condition, where she was reported to be in critical condition, according to news sources.

Late-December workplace incidents in coal mining and construction left three workers dead and their families devastated. In West Virginia, 21-year-old Raymond L. Starkey was fatally injured Dec. 23 while helping to repair a beltline at Murray Energy’s Marshall County Coal Co. Mine near Cameron. The incident is being investigated by the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) safety experts and Murray Energy.

The hard hat celebrates a landmark birthday, drug use among construction workers – and how to test for it – and safety technology comes to the construction industry. These were among the top construction industry safety stories of 2019.

Two teenage employees working the overnight shift at a McDonald’s in Lima, Peru were electrocuted earlier this month – an incident which has led to a national conversation about workplace conditions at various companies in the country. News reports say Alexandra Porras Inga and Gabriel Campos Zap were electrocuted by a loose cable, possibly while mopping the floor of the restaurant.

A ten-year spike in workplace deaths is unacceptable and calls for urgent action, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) said today. “As we prepare to gather with our families this holiday season, everyone who is committed to workplace safety will be thinking about the 5,250 U.S. workers who will never see their loved ones again,” said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, co-executive director of National COSH.

Occupational fatalities in the U.S. increased last year, a lawsuit follows an assembly line death and the NTSB identifies safety issue behind devastating pipeline explosion. These were among the stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

A company owner in Roslindale, Massachusetts was sentenced this week to two years in the House of Corrections after being found guilty of two counts of manslaughter for the deaths of two employees. Kevin Otto, owner of Atlantic Drain Services, will have three years’ probation following his sentence, and he can never again employ anyone in a job that involves excavation.

Inadequate planning and communication were what led to the 2016 gas pipeline explosion and fire in Alabama that killed two workers and injured four others, according to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The October 31 blast near Helena occurred when a contractor who was excavating damaged the Colonial Pipeline Company’s (Colonial) 36-inch diameter refined liquid petroleum transmission pipeline