As the dim early light washed over the Appalachian countryside, Jason Kingsley began his climb up the side of an 80-foot silo. Kingsley was not a morning person. But he was also broke and unemployed. So when a dairy farmer named Ronald Wood called to ask him to help to rescue a piece of machinery that had accidentally been buried under tons of hay and legumes, Kingsley said yes.
Three employees of Sabina Farmers Exchange Inc. in Wilmington, Ohio were found working inside a grain storage bin while a mechanical sweep auger, a machine used to push grain remaining at the bottom of a storage bin toward the bin's opening, was operating.
News item: Sen. Chuck Grassley has joined 42 other senators in requesting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to stop unlawful regulations on small family farms. “OSHA is overstepping its bounds here,” Grassley said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley has joined 42 other senators in requesting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to stop unlawful regulations on small family farms.
Dear Honorable Secretary Thomas E. Perez: I am writing in strong support of OSHA inspecting our nation’s Grain Storage Facilities. Our family has suffered a terrible loss of our son in a grain facility nearly 21 years ago and I have been fighting ever since to make all grain storage facilities a safer place to work.
United Ethanol LLC has been cited for 15 health and safety violations by OSHA after a worker was fatally engulfed in corn inside a grain storage bin on April 19 at the company’s Milton, Wisc. ethanol manufacturing facility.
Firefighters and an acrobat among the week's tragic deaths
July 6, 2013
Tragedies in Arizona and Las Vegas, midair near-misses at U.S. airports and the persistent increase in grain bin fatalities are among this week's top EHS-related stories from ISHN.com:
The increase in grain bin deaths – despite a corresponding increase in official efforts to stop them – shows an “unconscionable” failure on the part of employers, according to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH), a coalition dedicated to safe work conditions.
It takes only five seconds for a worker who is walking on moving grain to become engulfed in it to the extent that he is unable to extricate himself. It only takes 60 seconds for him to become completely submerged.
