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An Illinois pizza manufacturer is facing $2,812,658 in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) penalties and has been placed in the agency’s severe violator enforcement program (SVEP) after a 29-year-old sanitation worker died while cleaning a conveyor. A temporary worker employed by XCEL Staffing Solutions LLC in Waukegan was using compressed air to clean a […]
On April 19, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) announced that Meeder Equipment Company, a Rancho Cucamonga, California, equipment company, faces $272,250 in fines for serious safety violations following a confined space death of a worker who suffocated in a 10,000-gallon propane gas tank. On August 18, 2022, a mechanic employed by […]
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced April 19 that Bare Bones Farms of Greenwood, Mississippi, is facing fines totaling $90,182 for willful and serious safety violations following the death of a teenage South African worker, who suffocated in a grain bin. The 19-year-old, 2 coworkers, and their supervisor climbed into a storage bin […]
On April 10, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Region 5 office announced an outreach effort in the Midwest to stem the continuing trend of trench and excavation worker deaths. The 39 U.S. workers who died doing trench or excavation work in 2022 included 4 in Illinois and 2 others in Ohio, according to […]
Two Connecticut men have been arrested following a fatal trench collapse last summer and face charges of first-degree manslaughter and first-degree reckless endangerment, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced March 17. OSHA inspectors investigated the July 22, 2022, collapse of an 8-foot-deep trench in Vernon, Connecticut, that killed an employee of Botticello Inc., […]
An Alabama plastics manufacturing company has pleaded guilty in federal court to violations of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) safety requirements that led to a worker’s death, the agency announced January 24. ABC Polymer Industries LLC agreed to pay $242,928 in restitution, plus funeral expenses, to the worker’s estate. The company also must pay […]
Underground Utilities, an Ohio excavation contractor, is facing Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fines totaling $251,517 for violations at three trenching worksites following the death of a 33-year-old worker in Columbus, the agency announced January 17. The worker was pinned between the “spreader” bars of a trench box and the wall of a 7-foot-deep […]
The rate of fatal workplace injuries increased in 2021 from the rate in 2020 and the pre-pandemic rate in 2019, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported December 16. There were 5,190 fatal work injuries in the United States in 2021, according to the bureau’s Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI)—an 8.9% increase from 4,764 […]
Have you followed the details of this year’s workplace shootings? A supervisor buys a handgun before his shift, shoots and kills a handful of coworkers, and then shoots himself. A gunman armed with a semiautomatic rifle enters a Buffalo, New York, grocery store, killing 10 patrons. Another enters a Colorado Springs, Colorado, LGBTQ nightclub and […]
This week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced citations for a Davie, Florida, erosion prevention contractor and a Savannah, Georgia, crawl space remediation company in separate worker fatalities. On October 13, the agency announced it cited Erosion Barrier Installations Corp. of Davie for 2 willful and 10 serious violations, with proposed penalties totaling […]