Lockout/tagout accidents are common, and citations are featured on OSHA’s Top 10 Violation list nearly every year. Is your LOTO program designed to prevent accidents and citations?
OSHA has cited a Cleveland company for 27 violations, including a willful for failing to report two amputations. The workers were injured while operating mechanical power presses before a January OSHA inspection. The company now faces fines of $426,100.
Regional Administrator Michael Connors said lack of proper machine guarding and procedures to control hazardous energy to prevent amputations "demonstrates a blatant disregard for the safety of workers."
The company had been inspected 6 years before and been cited for nine violations at that time, including lockout/tagout and machine guarding.
With cases like this and the accidents described in yesterday’s Advisor, it’s not hard to see why LOTO violations usually feature in OSHA’s Top 10 Violations list every year.
Clearly, this is a topic to which employers and safety managers need to pay careful attention. It’s also a topic where detailed understanding of the requirements is essential.
Great news! BLR’s renowned Safety.BLR.com® website now has even more timesaving features. Take our no-cost site tour! Or better yet, try it at no cost or obligation for a full 2 weeks.
LOTO Program Requirements
The lockout/tagout rule applies to the control of hazardous energy during servicing or maintenance of machines and equipment, including any source of mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, thermal, or other energy.
According to OSHA’s lockout/tagout standard (29 CFR 1910.147), you must have a written program that clearly outlines the scope, purpose, authorization, rules, techniques, and employee training to be used for the control of hazardous energy, and the means to enforce compliance.
Your LOTO program must include documentation of all of the following elements:
- A specific statement of the intended use of the procedure
- The specific types of energy to be controlled and, in instances where a common procedure is to be used, the specific equipment covered by the common procedure by type and location (the identification of the energy to be controlled may be by magnitude and type of energy)
- Specific procedural steps for shutting down, isolating, blocking, and securing machines or equipment to control hazardous energy
- Specific procedural steps for the placement, removal, and transfer of lockout devices or tagout devices and the responsibility for them
- Specific requirements for testing a machine or equipment to determine and verify the effectiveness of lockout devices, tagout devices, and other energy control measures
- Certification of periodic inspections
- Certification of training
Your one-stop safety management resource, available 24/7. Go here to take a no-cost site tour or here to try it in your own office!
LOTO and Lots More
A comprehensive regulatory analysis of OSHA’s lockout/tagout requirements, plus LOTO training materials, and a great deal of other information about this critical topic are available to subscribers to Safety.BLR.com, 24/7, 365 days a year.
You’ll find similar information about over 100 other essential safety and health topics, all reported and interpreted for you by the safety experts at Safety.BLR.com.
What’s more, this one-stop safety website is a fantastic resource for safety training materials on just about any topic you can imagine.
Training responsibilities become a snap with the website’s thousands of audio presentations, PowerPoints, prewritten safety meetings, toolbox talks, trainer’s guides, and much, much more. You’ll find training tools on more than 120 safety topics along with plain-English compliance analysis and other resources.
At a time when budget considerations are paramount, what makes more sense than an all-in-one safety training and compliance solution?
And BLR has revamped Safety.BLR.com to meet your needs even better. You’ll be amazed by all the features and functionality of the site. Highlights include:
- Side-by-Side State/Federal Compliance. By placing our state and federal regulatory analysis side by side, you easily see how to fully comply with both governmental entities.
- MSDS Library Expansion. The site now provides an immense library of 3.5 million MSDS forms, with about 10,000 more added or changed every week. Need one? Just call up the chemical by name, manufacturer, product group, or CAS number, then print it out.
- Newsletter Wizard. If you’ve ever wanted to publish a safety newsletter but felt lacking in editorial skills, this new addition is for you.
- Plan Builder. Select from our library of safety plans, customize them to suit your company’s needs, and assemble them into collections you can save in our personal library.
We’re pretty excited about Safety.BLR.com and all of its enhancements, and we’re eager for you to experience it, too. That’s why we’ve created a complimentary site tour, available here. It takes just 5 minutes.
If you like what you see, you’re invited to try the site at no cost and with no obligation. We’ll even give you a complimentary special report for doing so. Go here to take a 5-minute tour of Safety.BLR.com . It may be just what you’re looking for.
PingBack from http://promodirectsou.allergiesaid.com/2011/10/25/programe-loto/