Back to Basics is a weekly feature that highlights important but possibly overlooked information that any EHS professional should know. This week, we examine the most dangerous construction safety hazards.
Are you familiar with the construction industry’s deadliest safety hazards?
The “fatal four” or “focus four” safety hazards are caught-in/-between hazards, electrocution, falls, and struck-by hazards.
While the focus four hazards can be deadly, they can also be costly. Some focus four hazards result in significant workers’ compensation claims. In its 2024 Workplace Safety Index, insurer Liberty Mutual listed the top 10 causes of the most serious workplace injuries, which included the following:
#3: Falls to a lower level, costing employers $5.68 billion a year in lost wage costs and medical expenses
#4: Struck by an object or equipment, costing employers $5.55 billion a year
#8: Caught in or compressed by equipment or objects, costing employers $2.05 billion a year
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) often vigorously enforces its electrical safety, fall protection, and trenching and excavation standards.
Caught-in/-between hazards
Caught-in or -between hazards differ from struck-by hazards. A struck-by injury is caused by the impact of an object or equipment. Caught-in or -between hazards most often result in crushing injuries and can include being buried in a trench collapse, pinned between a vehicle and a structure, or caught in moving machine parts.
Workplace hazards include:
- Cave-ins of trenches and excavations or scaffold collapse;
- Becoming pinned between equipment and a solid object, such as a wall or another piece of equipment; and
- Unguarded machine parts of equipment or power tools.
In 2022, OSHA revealed plans for 1,000 trenching and excavation inspections in response to a spike in trenching fatalities. The agency has had a trenching and excavation National Emphasis Program (NEP) since 2018. Earlier this month, the agency noted that deaths in trench collapses have declined nearly 70% since 2022. Fatalities decreased from 39 in 2022 to 15 in 2023 and 12 this calendar year.
OSHA cited employers this summer in separate fatal trench collapses:
- An El Paso, Texas, contractor faced $260,848 in OSHA fines following the agency’s investigation of a fatal trench collapse. Investigators determined that the company allowed a pipe layer to work in an excavation without a proper protective system. The trench collapsed, causing a piece of asphalt to fall and severely injure the worker, who later died in an area hospital.
- After a 61-year-old pipe layer suffered fatal injuries when a 9-foot-deep trench collapsed at a residential worksite near Shawnee, Oklahoma, OSHA cited an Edmond, Oklahoma, contractor, proposing $85,173 in fines.
- Steps employers must take to protect workers from caught-in/-between hazards include:
- Providing guards on power tools and other equipment with moving parts,
- Taking steps to protect workers from heavy equipment that may tip over,
- Protecting employees and contractors working in trenches or excavations,
- Protecting workers from scaffolding collapses,
- Protecting workers from collapsing walls and structures during demolition, and
- Designating a competent person to oversee site safety and providing worker safety training.
Electrocution
Workplace injuries from electricity include arc blasts or flashes, burns, electrocution, explosions, fires, and electrical shock as a live current passes through the body. Hazards include contact with overhead power lines, damaged or live wires, and faulty extension cords.
Employers must protect their workers by:
- Protecting workers from overhead power lines,
- Isolating electrical parts,
- Ensuring proper grounding and using ground-fault circuit interrupters (GFCI),
- Implementing lockout/tagout (LOTO) procedures and ensuring safe LOTO practices, and
- Ensuring the proper use of extension cords.
Falls
In September, OSHA revealed that its construction industry fall protection standard has remained its most frequently cited regulation for 14 straight years. In fiscal year (FY) 2024, the agency cited 6,307 violations of its fall protection—general requirements standard (29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) §1926.501).
Last year, OSHA launched a new NEP of outreach and enforcement to address falls from height in all industries. The scope of the NEP includes all construction work, as well as non-construction activities like chimney, gutter, and window cleaning; rooftop mechanical and maintenance work; and tree trimming.
The NEP authorizes agency compliance safety and health officers (CSHO) to open inspections whenever they observe anyone working at height during their normal workday travel or other OSHA inspections.
While some falls from height result in debilitating injuries, others are fatal. Of course, OSHA fall compliance inspections are sometimes fatality investigations:
- In 2020, OSHA cited an interstate homebuilder after a worker’s fatal fall at a homebuilding site in Media, Pennsylvania. The agency issued a $74,217 penalty for the builder and a $170,560 fine for a subcontractor.
- Three years ago, OSHA cited a Jamaica, New York, contractor after a worker died in a 60-foot fall from a roof during the demolition of a Brooklyn building. The agency proposed fines totaling $374,603.
- Last year, a 34-year-old steel worker suffered a fatal 60-foot fall at the construction site of a Hyundai electric car plant in Ellabell, Georgia. Citing the employer’s willful violation and “plain indifference,” OSHA placed the Geismar, Louisiana, builder in its Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP). The agency also proposed a $160,724 penalty.
- Earlier this year, a 54-year-old laborer on a five-man crew removing tar and stone from metal roof panels of a Macon, Georgia, warehouse stepped on a skylight and fell about 19 feet. An ambulance rushed the worker, who had suffered severe injuries, to a nearby hospital, where the worker succumbed to injuries hours later. OSHA proposed a $61,065 fine.
- Also this year, OSHA found that a McMinnville, Tennessee, contractor failed to provide a worker who was fatally injured and three others with effective fall protection, exposing them to falls of 23 feet. The agency proposed fines totaling $83,885.
- After a hangar collapsed near the Boise, Idaho, airport, killing three workers and injuring at least eight others earlier this year, the agency proposed a $198,586 penalty. According to OSHA, the Meridian, Idaho, contractor began erecting the hangar without using sufficient bracing or tensioned guy wires.
Last year, OSHA established an “instance-by-instance” citation policy for “high-gravity” serious violations of several agency standards, including its fall protection and trenching standards.
Struck-by hazards
A “struck-by” injury involves forcible contact with or impact by an object or equipment. Struck-by injuries are caused by the impact alone, while caught-in or -between injuries usually are crushing injuries.
Categories of struck-by hazards include the following:
- Struck by a flying object
- Struck by a falling object
- Struck by a swinging object
- Stuck by a rolling object
Employers must provide workers with training and personal protective equipment (PPE) and ensure workers’ safety from worksite motor vehicles and heavy equipment like cranes and excavators.
In 2019, the CPWR Center for Construction Research and Training produced a study that found that wearable technology could alert construction workers to nearby vehicles or equipment, preventing caught-between and struck-by injuries. A prototype belt with vibrating motors alerted study participants to the presence of vehicles and equipment.
Motors in the belt received signals from a hazard alert system on a laptop or mobile device that monitored equipment and vehicles at a worksite.
OSHA also actively enforces its standards related to struck-by hazards. This summer, a Moundville, Alabama, concrete contractor reached a settlement agreement with the agency after a shipping container weighing more than 4 tons fell and struck an employee at a jobsite.
Agency investigators learned the employee was guiding an 8,575-pound shipping container into place when one of the chains used to lift the box snapped. They found the employer failed to ensure rigging equipment was rated properly to handle the container’s weight and allowed an employee to work near or beneath a moving load. The company also allowed workers to use steel chain slings and a four-way chain lift without attached identification plates or indicated load ratings, and it failed to perform periodic inspections of the slings.
OSHA cited the company with eight violations for its failures to protect workers from fall, struck-by, and crushed-by hazards. The employer agreed to pay $68,077 in OSHA penalties.
‘Focus four’ health hazards
Several years ago, the American Industrial Hygiene Association’s (AIHA) construction committee developed resources to address the industry’s most serious workplace health hazards. The committee’s “Focus Four for Health: An Initiative to Address Four Major Construction Health Hazards” called employers’ attention to four occupational health hazards:
- Manual material handling, which accounts for about half of the industry’s workers’ compensation costs to cover work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) due to overexertion during carrying, lifting, pulling, and pushing.
- High noise levels that can cause hearing loss and tinnitus (ringing in the ears). Almost three-quarters of construction workers may be exposed to noise levels above the exposure limit recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
- Air contaminants, such as dusts, fumes, vapors, and gases, that can cause a variety of short- and long-term health effects. The health effects of air contaminants can range from asthma and irritation to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), nervous system problems, kidney damage, or even cancer.
- High temperatures that can lead to a number of occupational illnesses, including heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heat rash, and heat syncope or, most seriously, heatstroke, which can cause death or permanent disability if not treated quickly.
The AIHA has a “W-H-A-T PACE” acronym to remind employers of the factors in material-handling hazards:
- Weight: The heavier the object, the higher the risk of overexertion.
- Handling ease: Loads with contents likely to move, loads that can’t be carried close to the body, or loads without handles increase MSD risks.
- Awkward postures, such as bending, kneeling, reaching, stooping, and twisting, increase risk.
- Time/distance: Loads that must be carried a greater distance or for a longer time are higher-risk.
- PACE: The number of loads that must be moved per shift.
While the most common noise control measure is PPE like earmuffs or earplugs, the AIHA suggests substituting less noisy tools or using sound-absorbing materials to limit noise at the source.
To address the hazards posed by construction site air contaminants, the AIHA suggests using less toxic products and using local exhaust ventilation and wet methods. When substitution or engineering controls are impractical or insufficient, employers should provide respiratory protection.
The AIHA suggests measures to control heat exposure hazards that include providing power-assist tools to lower exertion levels, rest breaks in shaded areas, and water for hydration.