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A University of Vermont–hosted safety site has published what it calls the “Fatal 5″—the primary causes of LO/TO-preventable injuries. Make sure these hazards aren’t present in your workplace. OSHA requires you to train employees to prevent lockout/tagout (LO/TO) accidents in the workplace. Have you explained how to avoid the "Fatal 5" to your employees? 1 […]
OSHA requires you to have an effective lockout/tagout program and train employees involved in or affected by LOTO. All employees who work with or around machinery and equipment should be trained to understand the importance of lockout/tagout and how it affects workplace safety. All employees who work with and around equipment that can be locked […]
According to OSHA, some 3 million workers face the risk of injury or death from hazardous energy–related accidents. Compliance with lockout/tagout rules keeps about 120 of them alive each year and prevents some 50,000 accidents. Three men were performing maintenance inside an asphalt mixer. One of them was still inside the mixer when the power […]
OSHA requires authorized and affected employees to be properly trained in lockout/tagout requirements and procedures. Do your employees have the knowledge they need to prevent deadly accidents? Here’s a true story excerpted from BLR’s Interactive CD: Lockout/Tagout that dramatically illustrates to employees why lockout/tagout is so important. Laundry Worker Fatally Injured A laundry worker propped […]
Whenever machine maintenance or repairs are performed by a group of employees, you must develop and implement a group energy control procedure that provides the same level of protection as a personal lockout or tagout device. Machine maintenance and repair operations performed by a group of employees are often more complex than similar operations performed […]
Every year you hear about grisly accidents caused by failure to lockout and/or tagout equipment that is being serviced or repaired—or failure to follow required lockout procedures completely and correctly. Make sure one of this year’s stories isn’t about someone in your workplace. OSHA developed the lockout/tagout (LO/TO) standard (29 CFR 1910.147) precisely to prevent […]
Compliance with OSHA’s Control of Hazardous Energy standard involves a variety of issues other than the basic lockout/tagout procedures. It’s a comprehensive standard, and you need to comprehend all its requirements. Because you’re probably already familiar with the basic lockout/tagout procedures, let’s skip ahead to some lesser-known facts about lockout/tagout compliance. (NOTE: If you’re looking […]
Yesterday we looked at the 10 steps OSHA requires authorized lockout/tagout (LOTO) employees to follow. Today we turn to the LOTO standard’s training requirements and look at a tool that takes the pain out of providing LOTO training. As we discussed yesterday, OSHA’s LOTO standard (29 CFR 1910.147) requires you to train three groups of […]
Every year workers are injured, maimed, or killed in grisly accidents because they fail to disconnect the power source of machinery they’re repairing or servicing—or because a co-worker restarts the equipment prematurely. The truly sad part is that these accidents can be prevented simply by understanding and following OSHA’s lockout/tagout (LOTO) standard. The LOTO standard […]
It’s easy to assume that machines are safe once they have been shut down. But that assumption often leads to tragedy. Here are some key aspects of OSHA’s lockout/tagout standard that can help safeguard your workforce Veteran safety professionals know that simply turning off or unplugging a machine before maintenance, repairs, or retooling is not […]