In response to a January 2021 complaint, the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigated a production facility and found machine operators and maintenance employees entered POWDER-COATING OVENS routinely without testing atmospheric conditions or securing natural gas lines and operating machine parts. By doing so, the employer exposed these workers to dangerous asphyxiation hazards and…...
From 2011 to 2018, 1,030 workers died from occupational injuries involving a confined space. The annual figures range from a low of 88 in 2012 to a high of 166 in 2017. These data are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI). Here is the breakdown of the data…… Membership...
We have all done it… used the words “confined space” when we were actually discussing a Permit-Required Confined Space. But in the year 2021, I hope we have come to realize the huge difference between the two types of spaces. Just merely speaking in terms of OSHA compliance, there is a good reason why 1910.146…...
On Feb. 25, 2021, a 26-year old plant operator died after entering a cyclone discharge box. The local fire department recovered the victim lodged in an 18-inch wide discharge pipe that was full of water. February 25, 2021, Fatality Alert.pdf… Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a member?...
We came across this space while performing other safety and health work for a client. The client we were working for is not the owner of the equipment, but a recent near-miss occurred and the host and client wanted to ask us about this space and the near-miss. This piece of equipment is very large…...
I use this graph in my PRCS training and it always seems to get a lot of discussions, so I thought I would share it here. SAFTENG members can download my training materials from the Member’s Area “Document Library. But this particular graph shows us the Number of fatalities from 2011-2017 from a single inhalation…...
This happened in the USA in the Year 2010 and involved two (2) plumbers and two Volunteer (2) firefighters. We had the SINGLE entrant getting overcome by a bad atmosphere and his/her partner decides to enter to help and becomes a victim. To make matters worse, this incident involved a Volunteer FF (32-year veteran) who…...
At 4:41 p.m. on July 24, 2020, Employees #1 and #2 set a 32-foot ladder into an eight-and-a-half-foot manhole that was connected to the main city sewer line station. Employee #1 entered the manhole and was immediately overcome by hydrogen sulfide gas, Employee #2 entered and was also overcome by the gas…. Membership Required You...
At 11:30 a.m. on July 9, 2020, Employees #1 and #2 and their foreman, employed by a waste management company, were installing a closed-circuit television (CCTV) into an 8-inch sewer line to enable inspections in the manhole. They did NOT test the atmosphere before attempting to enter the manhole, which met the definition of permit-required…...
One of the things that drive me INSANE during an audit or hazard assessment is a PRCS rescue team that is equipped only with SCBA’s. To this day, I have ALWAYS been able to find an entry portal that is too small for a rescuer wearing an SCBA to pass through. It then takes me…...
I have been working with a client on developing their PRCS Rescue team and of course, we get to the final phase, training the team, and the questions begin with how long is the training. Now, the topic of training and its time commitment was discussed a long time ago; even before they decided they…...
As we have discussed before, several years ago a governor of the great state of Washington passed a bill that required all the state’s codes and standards to be written in “everyday language” and oh how I love this approach. Even career safety professionals can struggle to try to decipher what Federal OSHA is really…...
