Over 12,500 exclusive unsafe acts/conditions and accident/injuries photos and over 1,100 ppt’s & doc’s from more than 2,797 contributors! Many THANKS to my NEW and RENEWING “Partners in Safety“ 2015 Fatality Tracker Electrical 28 (2014 =55) (2013 = 32) (2012 = 68) Forklift/Aerial 28 (2014 = 60) (2013=62) (2012 = 52) Mining* 18 (2014 = 401) (2013=87*) (2012...

Summer’s here and temperatures are rising in the Southwest. Extreme heat kills dozens of workers every year, and sickens thousands more. Tips and tools from OSHA can help keep workers – and others – safe. Among the most at-risk industries are construction, transportation, agriculture and landscaping. New and temporary workers are especially susceptible to heat-illness and death due...

Anyone who has done any audits knows this question carries a lot of weight, since cylinders “in use” have different safety requirements versus cylinders that are “in storage”.  The great safety folks at OR-OSHA have provided a really nice flow chart we can use to establish the state the cylinder is in so that the proper safety rules can be applied to it.  And yes,...

On Jan. 20, a pressure-relief device released flammable gas and liquid into the atmosphere; it burned for more than two hours. OSHA investigated the facility and cited the employer for one willful and six serious safety violations. The violations included failing to train operators, update operating procedures, conduct a management of change analysis when changing software and hardware, conduct periodic...

Respondent owns and operates a Power Plant (“Facility”) which produces processes, handles, or stores, among other things, hydrogen peroxide, which is an extremely hazardous substance when stored in a carbon steel tank and produces hydrogen, a regulated substance, when reacting with carbon steel.  On July 25, 2014, there was an incident in which a tank had an uncontrolled release of...

OSHA today issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that clarifies an employer’s continuing obligation to make and maintain an accurate record of each recordable injury and illness throughout the five-year period during which the employer is required to keep the records.   OSHA is issuing this proposed rule in light of the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in...

On July 22, OSHA issued eight serious safety citations from an inspection that was NOT initiated as a PSM inspection, but after determining that the company was using flammable liquids above the threshold quantities that could present a potential for a catastrophic event. Business was cited for not implementing five elements of the PSM standard, including process hazard analysis, operating procedures...

This is about as good of an example of how a flammable gas(s), such as propane, are MORE dangerous away from the leak point.  As you can see in this video, the leak is occurring in the top right corner of the frame and the ignition occurs off-screen to the top left and flashes back to the source.  Also take note of how the vapor in the bottom half of the frame slowly burns off after ignition. ...

 

This paper company had 39 VPP Sites in 2013 and today they were placed in OSHA’s SVEP for this incident.  Here is a breakdown of the citations that took them from VPP to SVEP.  A 57-year-old general mechanic was removing burned filter bags of combustible fly ash dust from a dust collector in the facility’s power plant and replacing them with new bags when the fly ash ignited....