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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigated 826 worker deaths in fiscal year (FY) 2024—an 11% reduction from 928 in the previous year, the agency announced November 4. FY 2024 ended September 30. The agency noted significant decreases in the number of fatal injuries from trench collapses and falls, two of the leading causes […]
MFA Inc., a Missouri farm cooperative, faces a $241,887 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fine following an employee’s fatal engulfment in a storage bin, the agency announced October 29. The agency initiated an inspection following the employer’s fatality report and found that three employees of MFA Inc., operating as MFA Rail Car, were removing […]
Meridian, Idaho, building contractor Big D Builders Inc. faces $198,586 in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fines after an airport hangar collapsed near the Boise Airport, killing three workers and injuring at least eight others, the agency announced July 29. OSHA investigators responded to the scene and discovered that Big D Builders had begun […]
After a shipping container weighing more than 4 tons fell and struck an employee at a jobsite near Tuscaloosa, Ballard Contractors Inc., a Moundville, Alabama, concrete contractor, entered into an informal settlement agreement with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to resolve citations and penalties, the agency announced July 9. OSHA investigators learned […]
Back to Basics is a weekly feature that highlights important but possibly overlooked information that any EHS professional should know. This week, we examine how to maintain safety in a highway construction work zone. Highway and street construction workers face the risk of fatal and serious injury while on jobsites from passing motor vehicles, the movement of […]
Chicago-area subcontractor K.L.F. Enterprises faces $392,002 in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fines for exposing its employees and others to asbestos during the structural demolition of a Waukegan, Illinois, hospital, the agency announced May 15. Agency investigators observed K.L.F. employees not wearing protective equipment amid piles of debris and steel I-beams during the structural […]
A pair of employers—one in East Boston, Massachusetts, and another in Hahira, Georgia—face Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) citations and fines following employees’ fatal falls. Sky Safety Inc. of East Boston faces $447,087 in OSHA penalties after a window cleaner’s fatal 29-story fall from a building in downtown Boston’s financial district, the agency announced […]
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Belle Glade, Florida, farm labor contractor McNeill Labor Management Inc. in the heatstroke death of a migrant sugar cane farmworker, the agency announced April 15. Because there’s no federal standard for heat exposures or heat illness prevention and the agency cites employers under the General Duty Clause […]
In a final investigation report into a fatal well blowout, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) called on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to include onshore well drilling and well servicing operations in the agency’s process safety management (PSM) standard or develop a separate federal standard to address such operations. […]
Fatal work-related injuries increased by 5.7% in 2022, according to the latest figures released December 19 by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Fatal work injuries increased from 5,190 in 2021 to 5,486 in 2022. The national fatal work injury rate was 3.7 fatalities per 100,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers—up from 3.6 per […]