OSHA
cmonforton | March 24, 2015James “Rusty Shake-Down” Harrison, 35, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, March 11, 2015 while working at a drilling operation in southeastern, New Mexico. KCBD reports:
The incident happened around 3:30 p.m.
According to the Lea County Sheriff's Office “workers were loading oil field related materials into perforated pipe, which was being installed into the drilling pipe when an explosion occurred.”
“The oil field site belonged to Mesquite SWD.”
Mr. Harrison, and another worker who was seriously injured in the incident, were employed by Warrior Wireline.
Sarah Matott of the…
cmonforton | March 20, 2015Jose Alfredo Isagirrez-Mejia work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of Federal OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer, Structural Prestressed Industries.
The 29-year-old was working in July 2014 at one of the company’s construction sites in Fort Lauderdale, FL. The initial press reports indicated that workers were lowering a steel beam into place when it “came crashing down.” I wrote about the incident shortly after it was reported by local press.
Inspectors with federal OSHA conducted an inspection at the construction site following the…
cmonforton | March 19, 2015Employees of the fast-food giant McDonald’s recently filed 28 complaints with federal OSHA about health and safety problems at their workplaces. The complaints involved McDonald’s locations in 19 cities, including Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Kansas City. The complaints were announced on Monday in a press event organized by the Fight for $15 and the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.
I wondered, how often does OSHA get safety complaints for or on behalf of fast food workers? Looking at data for 2014, here’s some of what I found:
Federal OSHA and the States that run their…
cmonforton | March 11, 2015Alejandro Anguiana, 41, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, March 6, 2015 while working at Markman Peat Corp. in Kingsbury, Indiana. ABC57 reports:
Mr. Anguiana was a payload/forklift operator. A co-worker found Mr. Anguiana trapped in a running piece of machinery. EMS was called to the scene at 6:20 am.
WISHTV says the machinery was a “peat-loading conveyor belt.”
WSBT.com reports:
“Sheriff John Boyd said the man was pulled in when his sweatshirt got wrapped around the power takeoff shaft that turns to operate the machine. “
“Several employees were involved in turning off the…
kkrisberg | March 10, 2015The same day that NPR and ProPublica published their investigation into the dismantling of the workers’ compensation system, OSHA released its own report, “Adding Inequality to Injury: The Cost of Failing to Protect Workers on the Job.” The agency writes that the failure of employers to prevent millions of work-related injuries and illnesses each year coupled with changes to workers’ compensation systems is exacerbating income inequality and pushing many workers into poverty. The report states:
For many injured workers and their families, a workplace injury creates a trap which leaves them…
cmonforton | February 27, 2015John P. Stoll, 58, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, February 20, 2015 while working at a construction site in the 1100 block of John Nolen Dr. in Madison, Wisconsin. Channel3000.com reports:
EMS was called to the scene at 7:38 am to respond to “an entrapment”
Firefighters said a crew was “working on a stairwell when it collapsed”
When completed, the construction project will be the site of the Watermark Lofts, an apartment and retail space scheduled to open this summer.
The Daily Reporter says Mr. Stoll was an employee of Badgerland Metal Building Erectors, but their story does…
cmonforton | February 26, 2015This week the differences between OSHA’s and MSHA’s websites were oh so obvious. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released a new on-line tool to allow users to compare a mining operation’s violations of selected safety standards to the national average. For years, mine-specific violations, penalties, injury reports, exposure sampling results, and other data have been available on MSHA’s website, but this new tool offers something different. It focuses on a subset of safety violations which most frequently cause or contribute to fatalities and serious injuries.
While MSHA…
kkrisberg | February 24, 2015It’s a toxic chemical that made headlines when it was linked to deaths and injuries among popcorn factory workers, and federal regulators are well aware of its dangers. But, unfortunately, diacetyl is still hurting workers. In “Gasping for Action,” reporter Raquel Rutledge at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes about diacetyl, a chemical that tastes like butter and is used in food products and e-cigarettes, and the dangers it continues to pose to workers who breath it in, particularly coffee workers. She writes:
Coffee roasters sometimes add it to flavor coffee. High concentrations of…
kkrisberg | February 20, 2015While silicosis-related deaths have declined, it remains a serious occupational health risk and one that requires continued public health attention, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the Feb. 13 issue of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), researchers noted that while annual silicosis deaths have dropped from 164 in 2001 to 101 in 2010, dangerous silica exposure has been newly documented in occupations related to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and the installation of engineered stone countertops. Overall during the 2001-2010 time…
cmonforton | February 19, 2015Norberto Romero, 49, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Monday, February 16, 2015 while working at Thomas Concrete on Canton Road in Marrietta, GA. The Examiner reports
The incident occurred at about 3:05 pm “when someone called 911 to report that someone was trapped inside a concrete silo”
Firefighters worked "throughout the evening to free the man's trapped body….[it] was recovered around 9 pm"
WXIA explains that Romero, 49, was one of
“two subcontractors from Texas [who] were cleaning the inside of the cement silo. …Romero attempted to unclog a ‘hopper’ in the silo, he fell into and…
kkrisberg | February 10, 2015NPR reporter Daniel Zwerdling reports on the failure of hospitals to protect nursing staff from preventable and often debilitating injuries, writing that nursing assistants and orderlies suffer three times the rate of back and musculoskeletal injuries as construction workers. In fact, federal data show that nursing assistants experience more injuries than any other occupation. Zwerdling starts his piece with the story of Pennsylvania nurse Tove Schuster:
While working the overnight shift, (Schuster) heard an all-too-common cry: "Please, I need help. My patient has fallen on the floor."
The…
cmonforton | February 9, 2015Marvis L. Myers, 31, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, February 6, 2015 while working for the City of Columbia, SC. WISTV reports:
The incident occurred at a construction site on Pulaski Street near College Street.
The victim was underground “working on pipe repairs when a cave-in occurred.”
TheState.com says
He was “6 to 8 feet below ground level”
The incident happened about 11:40 am local time.
The incident is being investigated by South Carolina OSHA (SC-OSHA). The agency is in one of the 25 states that operates its own federally-approved occupational health and safety program.…
kkrisberg | January 28, 2015Will Uber change how we work? It’s a question Farhad Manjoo explores in a New York Times article about the company, which runs an on-demand car service using private drivers and a mobile app. Manjoo writes:
Just as Uber is doing for taxis, new technologies have the potential to chop up a broad array of traditional jobs into discrete tasks that can be assigned to people just when they’re needed, with wages set by a dynamic measurement of supply and demand, and every worker’s performance constantly tracked, reviewed and subject to the sometimes harsh light of customer satisfaction. Uber and its…
cmonforton | January 27, 2015Jason Strycharz, 40 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Monday, January 23, 2015 while working at Primary Steel, LLC in Middletown, CT. AP reports:
The incident occurred around 9 am.
The fire marshal Albert Santostefano says the worker was struck by a piece of steel as it was swinging on a crane inside the warehouse.
NBC Connecticut quotes the fire marshal:
"They were in the process of moving some steel around inside the warehouse part of the building, and somehow the steel got swinging. It was on a crane inside the warehouse and it struck one of the employees."
Some news accounts report the…
egrossman | January 19, 2015If you’re in the market for a paint remover and head to your local hardware store, most of the products you’re likely to find will contain methylene chloride. These products’ containers promise “professional results” – that they remove paint “in 10 minutes” – and that they are “specially formulated for antiques and fine furniture.” One called “Dad’s Easy Spray,” suggests it can be used to remove paint from fabrics and rugs. Also available are adhesive removers and “prepaint” products that contain methylene chloride. Some of these come in aerosol dispensers.
These products all carry hazard…
cmonforton | January 16, 2015Richard Johnson, 31 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Monday, January 12, 2015 while working at Southwest Fabrication’s facility in Phoenix, AZ
ABC15 reports:
It was the worker’s last shift at the company (he was moving on to a new job.)[His aunt alerted me that this report is incorrect.]
“His clothes got entangled in a metal fabrication machine.”
A former employee indicated he was involved in a serious incident at the plant in September 2014. ‘No one ever talked to me about safety or how to use the equipment. … ‘My shirt got caught around the spinning bar. I was pulled into the machine.…
cmonforton | January 15, 2015One of the country’s biggest poultry processing companies provides an in-house nursing station to treat work-related injuries, but the clinic may be in violation of state licensing standards. In a letter to Wayne Farms’ plant in Jack, Alabama, OSHA indicates that practices and policies of the company’s medical management program are “out-of-date and contrary to good medical practice.” The nurses’ station is staffed by licensed practical nurses (LPNs) who are supervised by a compliance manager who is trained as an emergency medical technician (EMT). When I checked, the Alabama Board of Nursing…
kkrisberg | January 14, 2015With agriculture ranked one of the most dangerous industries in the country, many Americans might be surprised to know that it’s still perfectly legal for farms to officially employ children. For years, advocates have been working to address this gaping loophole in the nation’s child labor laws, often citing children’s increased vulnerability to workplace-related injury, illness and exploitation. A new study confirms those concerns, underscoring the need to better protect the children and youth working in American fields.
Published in the February issue of the American Journal of Public…
kkrisberg | January 13, 2015BuzzFeed reporter David Noriega investigated work-related fatalities among Latino construction workers, finding that the risk of dying on the job is on the rise for such workers, who are losing their lives in greater numbers and at disproportionate rates than others in the industry. He writes:
After the housing bust bottomed out in 2010, the fatality rate among Latino construction workers rose by nearly 20%. For non-Latinos, the fatality rate has dropped by more than 5%.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), between 2010 and 2013, the number of deaths among Latinos in…
cmonforton | January 8, 2015Timothy Todd Winding, 50, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, December 30 while working at Ford Motor Company’s Kansas City assembly plant located in Claycomo, MO. Fox4KC reports:
He was part of a crew of contractors who were working to retool the plant for a new line of Ford trucks.
While working on a body marriage machine, "a safety rod broke on the decker and crushed the worker.”
“Several of the workers FOX 4 spoke to Tuesday say that this is not the first time that machine has broken, and say they were worried something like this was going to happen."
KCTV5 says Winding's…