Police say 68-year-old James Hagerty, a seasonal employee for the county, was preparing to cut the grass on a hill near a pond in a county park. The lawn tractor he was riding slid down a hill, went over an embankment and overturned. Hagerty was trapped in a creek bed underneath the mower.

Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says loss of stability is a hazard most often associated with riding mowers. There are 37,000 injuries related to riding mower incidents each year.

The CPSC says fatalities involving riding mowers have several common patterns: The machine tips over and the victim falls under or is run over by the machine.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has a voluntary safety standard for mowers, ANSI/OPEI B71.1-2003.

The CPSC says when using a riding mower, mow up and down slopes, not across them. CPSC tips on riding mower safety can be found here.

Metrolink in California and Connex Railroad are offering a $200 million settlement to victims and families in connection with the Sept. 12, 2008, crash between a commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train. The crash killed 25 and injured more than 100. There are 76 lawsuits filed against the railroad companies.

Paul Kiesel, the coordinating attorney for all the lawsuits in the case says the $200 million offer isn’t enough.

Kiesel says some victims already have medical bills that total six or seven figures.

Example: Construction worker Curtis Whitney suffered spinal injuries in the crash. He had no insurance and has undergone multiple surgeries. His medical bills already total $600,000.

The $200 million offered is the liability cap allowed under federal law in passenger rail incidents.

The cap was set in law by Congress.

U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA), in whose district many of the victims live, said he probably will introduce legislation that could adjust the liability cap.

Kiesel points to what BP has done regarding the Gulf oil disaster and claims the payouts can and should exceed the liability caps. BP could have stayed within a $75 million cap, but it put up $20 billion to pay for damages caused by the gusher.

The train crash was caused by a contract Metrolink engineer, employed by Connex, who ran a red light while text-messaging, according to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. Metrolink now employs Amtrak as its operating contractor.

Should the cap be raised in the Metrolink case? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has completed its investigation into the Oct. 2, 2007, explosion at Xcel Energy’s Cabin Creek plant in Georgetown, CO, that killed five workers and injured three others.

The CSB identified 3 major causes of the incident:

1. a lack of planning and training for hazardous work by Xcel and its contractor, RPI Coating
2. Xcel’s selection of RPI despite its having the lowest possible safety rating (zero) among competing contractors, and
3. allowing volatile flammable liquids to be introduced into a permit-required confined space without necessary special precautions.

Painting contractors from RPI were recoating a 1,530-foot portion of a water tunnel when a flash fire suddenly erupted. Vapor from a flammable solvent ignited, most likely from a spark near the spraying machine. The solvent was used to clean spray-painting equipment.

The fire quickly spread as more solvent ignited. There were 10 workers in the tunnel at the time. Five were unable to get to the only available exit. Five workers made it out safely, although three were injured.

The closest confined space rescue unit was about 75 minutes away. The trapped workers died about an hour before the response unit arrived.

The CSB claims Xcel and RPI impeded the investigation. The agency had to seek assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver. Xcel went to federal court seeking to block release of the CSB report. The court sided with CSB in favor of the report’s release.

OSHA’s confined space regulation doesn’t prohibit entry or work in confined spaces where the concentration of flammable vapor exceeds 10% of the chemical’s lower explosive limit (LEL).

The CSB recommends OSHA establish a fixed maximum percentage of the LEL for entry so that work in potentially flammable atmospheres would be prohibited.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has agreed to look into the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

However, it has told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that it will have to end some investigations early and delay others as a result.

Among the investigations that will close early:

• the explosion at the Kleen Energy power plant that killed six people in Middletown, CT, in February, and
• the explosion at the ConAgra Slim Jim facility that killed four people in Garner, NC, in June 2009.

The CSB will delay its investigation of the failure of a 10-inch pipe in a reactor at Silver Eagle Refining in Woods Cross, Utah. The explosion and its blast wave damaged more than 100 homes.

There are about 200 serious workplace chemical incidents each year in the U.S. The CSB usually investigates 12 to 15 of them with a staff of 40 and a $10.6 million budget.

By comparison, the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates plane, train and subway incidents, has 400 employees and an $80 million budget.

The CSB has asked for $2 million to hire more investigators and open a new Houston office.

It has no authority to issue citations or create new regulations, but chemical industry officials say the CSB has been instrumental in uncovering hazards that put workers and communities at risk.

Preliminary numbers show 4,340 fatal work injuries in 2009 (12 per day), down from 5,214 in 2008.

That’s an almost 17% decline, however, final numbers are always somewhat higher than the first preliminary report.

The rate of fatal work injury in 2009 was 3.3 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, down from 3.7 in 2008.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics explains that much of the decline is because total hours worked fell by 6% in 2009. Also, some industries that have historically accounted for a large share of fatal work injuries, such as construction, had even larger declines in employment.

Some other statistics from the report:

• The number of fatalities in building and ground maintenance rose 6%, one of the few major occupation groups to have an increase.
• The most frequent cause of fatalities was transportation incidents, accounting for 39%, followed by assaults and violent acts (18%), contact with objects and equipment (17%), falls (14%), exposure to harmful substances or environments (9%), and fires and explosions (3%).
• The service sector accounted for 49% of fatalities, while 41% were in goods-producing industries and 10% involved government workers.
• Commercial fishing was the deadliest occupation, with a fatality rate about 60 times higher than the average for all workers.

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said, “A single worker hurt or killed on the job is one too many. We cannot and will not relent from our continued strong enforcement of workplace safety laws.”

The first federal lawsuit has been filed in the case, and a lawyer says he waited for OSHA to act before going to court.

A February explosion at the Kleen Energy site in Middletown, CT, killed six workers and injured 50 others. OSHA hit 17 construction companies with a total of $16.6 million in fines for 371 safety violations.

Now an injured worker has filed a $6 million lawsuit in federal court alleging proper safety precautions weren’t taken at the site.

Nicholas Novik is suing the plant’s owner and three contractors, claiming they failed to properly ensure that gas at the plant wouldn’t ignite.

Novik’s injuries are reported to be “life-altering,” including trauma to his head and hearing loss.

Many other civil lawsuits have also been filed in state courts.

More than 35 residents whose homes were affected by the explosion have also filed lawsuits.

How does the OSHA fine connect to the lawsuits?

William Bloss, a lawyer for Novik, told The Record, “We were interested in seeing what OSHA’s conclusions were before filing. They obviously were very thorough with their investigation.”

An explosion that killed two welders was caused by flammable fumes inside an aboveground storage tank.

On July 23, an explosion at a natural gas well near Pittsburgh, PA, owned by Huntley & Huntley, killed two workers who were hired to repair pinhole leaks in the oil tank. The two welders worked for Northeast Energy Management of Indiana, PA.

The 8,400 gallon-capacity tank had only about 200 gallons of oil in it at the time.

The Allegheny County Fire Marshal says on the day of the explosion, temperatures were in the 90s with a heat index near 100. The metal tank heated up, causing oil vapor to fill it. The welders were killed when a spark ignited that vapor, causing the five-ton tank to rocket above 100-foot-tall trees and land about 220 feet away.

OSHA is also investigating the explosion.

Huntley & Huntley has no previous OSHA violations. Northeast Energy Management paid $5,965 to settle seven violations after a September 2007 explosion and fire at another well in Pennsylvania. OSHA said workers at that well “were exposed to an unsafe air mixture environment resulting in an explosion and fire causing injuries.”

OSHA’s web page on welding hazards is here.

The fines are in connection to the 2005 explosion at BP’s Texas City, TX, refinery that killed 15 workers and injured 170.

BP had already paid $21 million in fines for that explosion. In the original settlement, BP also agreed to identify and correct certain safety deficiencies.

In a 2009 follow-up inspection, OSHA found the company made many changes but “failed to live up to several extremely important terms of that agreement,” according to OSHA.

As a result, OSHA issued $87.4 million in penalties against BP. Originally, $56.7 million was levied for BP’s failure to abate hazards it said it would fix in the original agreement. Another approximately $30 million was for new violations. OSHA found it had assessed 29 duplicate violations totaling $6.1 million. That brought the failure-to-abate fines down to $50.6 million.

So BP has agreed to pay the entire $50.6 million for the failure-to-abate fines. It is still contesting the $30 million in new violations.

On top of the fine, BP has agreed to allocate a minimum of $500 million to take immediate steps to protect those now working at the refinery.

BP has also agreed to:

• perform safety reviews of the refinery equipment according to set schedules
• hire independent experts to monitor its efforts, and
• submit quarterly reports for OSHA’s review.

China doesn’t lack workplace safety regulations. The problem for workers is that they’re not enforced.

It’s often up to local authorities in China to enforce the country’s safety laws, according to the article in The Washington Times. Local officials are often paid off by factory owners to ignore serious injuries and even deaths.

This gives Chinese manufacturing a short-term advantage over the U.S., but the cost is life and limb.

Example: The China Labor Bulletin (CLB) recently reported on a worker who got a finger caught in some equipment and was sent to a hospital. It was cheaper for the company to compensate the unconscious worker for a lost hand than to surgically repair his finger.

When the worker woke up, his hand was gone.

The CLB also reports, “It is much more cost-effective for coal mine owners to buy off the families … than risk closure by reporting an accident,” leaving many deaths overlooked. Local governments often pressure bereaved families into signing compensation agreements.

The owners’ priority: Keep production moving.

And here’s another interesting factoid from the article: Some labor laws put into effect in China in 2008 used input from U.S. laws.

A Shelby, NY, farm worker was lying on his back underneath a flatbed truck – apparently taking a late-afternoon nap. This proved to be the absolute worst place he could have caught some Z’s, when his co-worker, Armando Luna-Castillo, hopped into the truck’s cab.

It didn’t occur to him to check underneath the truck for sleeping employees before pulling out, and Luna-Castillo drove the truck away – running over his co-worker.

The coroner pronounced the run-over worker dead at the scene, however identifying him has been difficult, due to his questionable immigration status.

Both the coroner’s office and the sheriff’s department are investigating the incident.

OSHA has cited three construction companies and 14 subcontractors for 371 safety violations, totaling $16.6 million in penalties.

The Feb. 7, 2010, explosion at the Kleen Energy plant construction site was felt as far as 40 miles away.

OSHA officials say the construction companies cut corners to gain a $19 million incentive if they finished construction early on the plant. Published reports say in the weeks and months leading up to the explosion, employees were working seven-day, 84-hour weeks.

In late June, a U.S. Chemical Safety Board investigation revealed the explosion was most likely caused when natural gas was used during a routine gas purging procedure. The gas found an ignition source. Welding and other work was being performed nearby.

O&G Industries, the project’s general contractor, has been issued 119 willful and 17 serious citations with penalties totaling $8.3 million. Keystone Construction and Maintenance was issued 94 willful and 16 serious citations with fines of $6.6 million. Bluewater Energy Services, the commissioning and startup contractor for the plant, was issued 12 willful citations and 8 serious citations totaling $896,000. In addition, 14 subcontractors were also cited and fined.

O&G says it plans to contest the fines.

As a result of the explosion, OSHA will be issuing a warning letter to natural gas power plant operators regarding the dangerous practice of cleaning fuel gas piping using natural gas.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) have called on OSHA to demand stricter safety requirements in its negotiations with BP regarding $90 million in fines.

In a letter to OSHA, the senators ask the agency to require BP to:

• report any process safety incident that occurs at a site under its control, regardless of the number of workers injured or killed. Currently, companies must report incidents to OSHA only if one or more workers are killed or three or more are sent to hospitals.
• record all injuries and illnesses of workers at sites under its control, regardless of whether they are employed by BP or by a contractor. Companies don’t have to report contractor injuries or deaths unless they directly control the employee’s work.

All 15 workers who died in an explosion at BP’s Texas City, TX, refinery in 2005 were contractors.

BP faces $90 million in fines for 862 safety violations after a follow-up inspection at the Texas City refinery and another inspection at a BP refinery near Toledo, Ohio.

When a safety incident causes deaths or serious injuries, should OSHA be able to impose tough new requirements on the company? Let us know what you think by leaving a reply below.

OSHA thought so. It issued Paramount Advanced Wireless a $7,000 fine in the death of Gerry LeClercq for one serious violation: “Employees were working on a communication tower 60 feet above the ground without any fall protection.”

Paramount appealed the fine to an administrative law judge, arguing that the fatal fall was an unforeseeable incident of employee misconduct.

A company can use unpreventable employee misconduct as a defense if it can show it had a thorough safety program which was adequately communicated and enforced and that the employee conduct was a departure from an enforced safety rule.

The record showed Paramount had:

• a well-communicated, comprehensive and properly enforced safety program that required employees to be tied off at all times on towers
• an extensive written safety policy based on industry experience and standards set by national organizations
• required that each crew member take a written test on proper climbing
• required 100% fall protection for employees
• a progressive disciplinary policy (verbal warning, written warning, suspension, termination), and
• disciplined and terminated employees for safety violations.

The record also showed that, on the day of the fatality, the foreman on duty had filled out all necessary safety paperwork required by the company’s policy and that it was signed by all employees who were on the site.

The employees were also properly supervised on the day of the incident.

For all those reasons, the judge found Paramount showed that the fatality was an unforeseeable event caused by the actions of the employee who unhooked himself from his fall protection. The citation and fine were thrown out.

(Secretary of Labor v. Paramount Advanced Wireless, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, No. 09-0178, 6/21/10.) You can read the judge’s decision here.

A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) final report on the June 22, 2009, Metro train crash says it was due to chronic track circuit failures and a negligent attitude toward safety. The crash killed a driver and eight passengers and injured scores of others.

NTSB members said safety wasn’t made a priority by the senior management or board of directors of the public transit agency. Metro’s chairman hadn’t included safety oversight in the board’s mission statement.

NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman noted that Metro hadn’t implemented many previous NTSB recommendations. “They are not hearing it, they are not getting it and they are not addressing the problems,” Hersman said. “Our frustration is that if they don’t listen this time, I am not sure what can be done.”

Metro’s interim General Manager Richard Sarles said he’d “carefully consider” the NTSB recommendations. Sarles stopped short of saying Metro would implement the recommendations in the final report.

When an investigation into workplace deaths shows a lack of attention to safety at the top of an organization, how should top managers be held accountable? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

John Adams, a maintenance man at an office building in Niagara Falls, NY, had been missing since July 4. The last time someone saw him, he was working at his maintenance job.

Owners of the One Niagara building had offered a $1,500 reward for information on Adams.

Finally, it was the building’s own video surveillance that showed what happened to Adams.

The video showed Adams entering an active trash compactor to retrieve a fallen garbage bin and apparently being crushed by the device. The device was a large, self-contained Dumpster that has a mechanical compacting mechanism that prevented him from being able to escape and made it impossible for co-workers to realize what occurred.

Why wasn’t the building’s surveillance tape checked until three weeks after Adams was reported missing?

Representatives for the building told the Niagara Gazette an initial police search of the compactor turned up no conclusive evidence of Adams’ remains.

Example: Joshua Petrie was a plant operator at a natural gas processing facility in Texas owned by Quicksilver Resources.

On May 25, 2007, 27-year-old Petrie and another worker were trying to restart a hot oil heater.

After trying several times, they couldn’t restart the heater. They were unaware that gas had accumulated, and when Petrie tried to light the heater one more time, it exploded.

Petrie was found unconscious nearby. He never regained consciousness and died several hours later at a hospital. He suffered extensive injuries including blunt force trauma to the head, face, neck and back, and multiple rib and vertebrae fractures.

Quicksilver bought the plant from Hanover Compression L.P. The plant had been idle for two years. As part of the sales agreement, Hanover agreed to return the plant to operating order, which included installation of the heater that exploded.

Lawyers for Petrie’s estate argued that Hanover didn’t follow National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards for installation of the heater. Hanover argued the NFPA standards didn’t apply to this heater and that Petrie’s negligence caused the explosion because he failed to close one of the heater’s gas feed valves.

The jury sided with the arguments from Petrie’s estate. It found Hanover 90% responsible and Quicksilver 10% responsible. The jury also found gross negligence by Hanover, which accounted for $25 million of the verdict.

The jury awarded his widow, three young children (four-years-old and younger) and his father a total of $82.5 million.  Since Quicksilver had workers’ comp insurance, it wasn’t responsible for any actual damages.

It’s difficult to put a price on a human life. What do you think of the verdict amount? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Six workers drowned after falling into a giant vat of ketchup at a plant in Lucknow, India.

The chain of events started when one worker fell into the 20-foot deep tank.

Police say, as five co-workers dived in to save her, they were all overcome by fumes given off from fermenting vegetables and drowned.

Two more workers were hospitalized.

Investigators say the woman was scooping fermented vegetables from the vat when she slipped off her ladder and plunged into the tank.

The factory owner was taken into custody.

The New York Times reports that Wal-Mart has spent $2 million so far fighting a $7,000 OSHA fine in connection with the trampling death of a worker. Equally interesting is that OSHA has also devoted lots of resources to make sure this fine sticks. Why? Because the outcome of this case could have wide reaching effects on all sorts of companies.

On the day after Thanksgiving 2008, shoppers trampled a store clerk to death at a Wal-Mart on Long Island.

The world’s largest retailer settled the case with the Nassau County district attorney. Wal-Mart agreed to:

• adopt new crowd control techniques in all 92 of its New York State stores
• create a $400,000 fund for customers injured in the stampede, and
• donate $1.5 million to various community programs.

A $7,000 fine is a drop in the bucket for the huge retailer. Yet, it’s spent more money fighting OSHA than it did in the state settlement.

OSHA doesn’t have regulations about crowd control in retail or any type of establishment. So it used its general duty clause (GDC) to issue one citation against Wal-Mart for failing to take steps to protect its employees from a situation that was likely to cause injury or death because of a crowd surge or trampling.

The GDC says employers have a general duty to provide a place of employment that is “free from recognized hazards.” OSHA uses the GDC to issue citations when no federal safety regulation applies directly to a hazardous situation.

Wal-Mart says OSHA is trying to enforce a vague standard when there was no previous federal government or retail industry guidance on how to prevent the trampling death.

The retail giant has filed motions questioning the constitutionality of using the GDC in this case.

The Times article questions why Wal-Mart is spending so much on fighting the small fine.

But the same could be asked of OSHA. It’s worth questioning the huge amount of resources OSHA is using. The article notes OSHA has poured 4,725 hours of work by federal legal staffers into this case. Officials told The Times that over the last five months, 17% of the available attorney hours in OSHA’s New York office have been devoted to the Wal-Mart fine — the equivalent of five full-time lawyers.

One reason Wal-mart is fighting the fine so hard: If another trampling injury or death happens to an employee at any of its other U.S. stores, the company would face even larger repeat fines.

For OSHA, the stakes may be even higher. The agency, under President Obama’s appointee, David Michaels, has signaled that it intends to use the GDC more often to hold employers accountable for identifying and protecting employees against hazards.

For example, Michaels is on record saying that OSHA can’t possibly keep up with creating permissible exposure limits (PELs) for all the new chemicals used by U.S. companies. Instead, OSHA has proposed requiring companies to create their own injury and illness prevention programs (i2p2) to identify hazards.

The i2p2 program would make it that much easier for OSHA to use the GDC against companies. Once a company identifies a hazard, it becomes a “recognized hazard,” that satisfies a condition for using the GDC.

But creating the i2p2 requirement will take time, possibly years, just like any other federal rulemaking process.

In the meantime, OSHA relies on using the GDC in its current form in cases such as this one.

The case is before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC). If OSHRC rules in Wal-Mart’s favor, it could greatly limit OSHA’s ability to use the GDC not only in retail crowd control but in any other occupational area that’s not covered by a current federal safety regulation.

OSHRC heard the case last week. We’ll keep you updated.

Did OSHA make the right call in this case by using the GDC to issue a fine against Wal-Mart in the trampling death of its employee? What do you think about OSHA’s use of the GDC where no federal safety regulation applies to a specific hazard? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

The boat, with 35 passengers and two crew, stalled in the Delaware River after the vehicle caught fire.

As the boat was sitting in the river, waiting for help, it was struck by a barge being pushed by a tug boat. Two passengers drowned in the Delaware River.

Accounts from passengers say they had less than a minute to get life jackets on children. However, local media report that the duck boat was sitting powerless for 15 minutes before the collision occurred.

A Pennsylvania regulation requires children 12 and younger to wear life jackets on recreational vehicles. That rule doesn’t apply to the Ride the Duck tours.

For commercial vehicles, such as the duck boats, children don’t have to wear the life jackets. The company just has to have enough life vests on board for everyone.

Chris Edmonton, director of boating safety at the Boat US Foundation, said he assumed the duck boat captain would have asked the passengers to don their jackets once the vessel lost power.

“That’s what I would have done, but he is not legally required to have them do it,” Edmonton told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Questions remain about how much time the two crew members had to react once the duck’s engine failed.

So, how can you use this story in safety training?

The investigation into this case will surely look into how the two duck tour employees reacted when the engine unexpectedly failed.

Safety training for normal operating conditions is one thing. But how would your employees react to something unexpected?

Have you ever given workers a safety scenario during training and asked them how they’d handle it? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Police say Bruce Florence was working in the outdoor garden center at a Wal-Mart near Ft. Worth, TX, when customer William Kennedy tried walking out with a 26-inch TV he hadn’t paid for.

When Florence stepped in front of Kennedy, telling him electronics weren’t allowed in the garden center, Kennedy allegedly pushed Florence to the ground. Police say Kennedy fled in an SUV with a driver waiting inside.

Doctors say Florence suffered a head injury — bleeding in the brain — as a result of the fall.

He died six days later in the hospital.

Kennedy has been jailed on charges of theft at several stores.

Police say he could be charged with murder if the medical examiner determines that Florence died from the head injuries he suffered in the incident.

Lira, 60, an employee of Santa Cruz County, CA, was recently pulled into a wood chipper and died at the scene. An ambulance was canceled before it arrived.

But a quarter century ago, when he was working for the county, an incident claimed one of Lira’s arms and badly mangled the other.

Lira grabbed jumper cables out of the cab of a crane when its extension touched a nearby power line, badly shocking and burning him.

Because of severe burns, doctors thought they would have to amputate both of his arms, but they saved one with help from a transplanted toe.

Throughout his recovery, his goal was to get back to work. Lira had worked for the county since 1969.

That same job claimed his life on June 7.

The California Department of Industrial Relations is investigating.

U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, wrote a letter to the CSB asking it to investigate the Gulf disaster.

The CSB’s resources had already been stretched thin with other disaster investigations such as major explosions at the Kleen Energy power plant in Middletown, CT, and the ConAgra Slim Jim facility in Garner, NC.

But, noting that the BP oil leak is “one of the most significant chemical accidents of the current era,” the CSB has decided to investigate the Gulf disaster.

The process will include the key investigators who were involved in the CSB’s 2005-2007 report on the BP Texas City explosion.

The CSB says it will examine key technical factors, the safety cultures involved, and the effectiveness of relevant laws, regulations and industry standards.

Three years ago, the CSB’s final report on the BP Texas City blast found:

• organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of BP Corporation
• cost-cutting that had affected safety programs and critical maintenance
• production pressures that resulted in costly mistakes made by workers likely fatigued by working long hours, and
• lack of sufficient action on problems that were brought to the attention of BP’s board of directors.

You can read a statement from the CSB on its upcoming investigation here (PDF).

The company and David Weber, its EHS Manager, are charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, and environmental violations.

Company President David Brown and plant manager Jay Black are charged with criminal endangering.

On June 21, 2008, wastewater was being improperly treated using sodium hydrosulfide at United Oil’s Middletown plant, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s office.

Employee Thomas Rogers was killed. The coroner’s report said he died from hydrogen sulfide poisoning.

Involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide carry penalties of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Criminal endangering carried a penalty of up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

An attorney for the company says it and its employees won’t plead guilty to the charges.

Separate interviews with former BP employees back up the findings of the internal investigations.

Included in ProPublica’s report:

• BP’s internal 2001 report warned that the company faced a “fundamental culture of mistrust” by its workers, in part because senior management lacked a structure of accountability.
• The 2004 internal investigation stated, “Pressure on contractor management to hit performance metrics (e.g. fewer OSHA recordables) creates an environment where fear of retaliation and intimidation did occur.”
• Once again in 2007, a report echoed BP’s previous internal investigations, finding, BP pressured its contractors and employees to save money. “Many of the people interviewed indicate that they felt pressured for production ahead of safety and quality,” the report said.

The BP situation has caught the attention of OSHA head David Michaels, and he ties it to one of his predominant current themes about injury logs.

At the recent American Industrial Hygiene Conference in Denver, Michaels said he was struck by the fact that top executives at BP were on the offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico handing out certificates and awards to people for having worked seven years without a recordable injury, the very night before the rig blew up.

Michaels called for reforms that stop measuring safety performance by injuries or lack thereof, and instead start measuring risk of significant events occurring.

ProPublica’s article is here.

How do you encourage employees to let management know about hazards? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

NDK Crystals has 15 business days to decide whether to contest the fines.

The explosion at the company’s crystal manufacturing facility took the life of a truck driver parked at a nearby service station.

OSHA says NDK knowingly operated high pressure vessels even after being warned of the potential for catastrophic failure due to fabrication defects.

NDK received seven willful OSHA violations, one for each of the seven high pressure vessels in operation.

OSHA also issued five serious violations for failing to:

• evaluate the building for a catastrophic event
• have an emergency evacuation program
• implement a hazard communication program
• provide PPE, and
• provide training certification.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is also investigating the explosion to find its root causes.

Janelle Riley worked for Labor Ready, an employment agency.

On March 16, 2004, she received a ride to work from a co-worker because she didn’t have transportation to the work assignment.

On the return trip, with the co-worker driving, Riley was killed in a car crash.

The administrator of her estate filed for workers’ comp death benefits on behalf of the deceased worker’s two minor children.

The estate argued that because Labor Ready assumed responsibility for transporting its employees to and from their temporary job assignments, this crash occurred within the scope of the deceased worker’s employment.

The court disagreed and ruled that the estate should not receive death benefits.

The court’s opinion noted:

• the vehicles used for transport weren’t owned by Labor Ready
• Labor Ready had no contract to transport its employees
• the company didn’t pay any driver to transport employees, and
• on the day of the crash, the Labor Ready employee who drove wasn’t working.

Generally, travel to and from work isn’t considered to be within the scope of employment. However, an accepted exception is when the employer takes responsibility to transport its employees.

However, the court didn’t consider encouraging carpools to be the same as providing transportation. Workers’ comp benefits denied.

What do you think about the court’s decision? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Cite: Davis v. Ready, Appellate Div. of the Supreme Crt. of NY, No. 507678, 1/21/10.

OSHA is investigating the death of a worker in Milford, CT, who was power-washing a home.

Victor Larranaga-Marquez was pronounced dead at the scene. Larranaga-Marquez and his uncle, Gerrardo Marquez-Hernandez, were power-washing a house when their aluminum ladder came into contact with the service line from the utility pole to the house, carrying 200 amps of electricity.

Marquez-Hernandez was taken to a hospital for serious, but not life-threatening burns.

The homeowner refused to identify the company he hired to a local newspaper.

A neighbor said, from what he was told, the workers didn’t lower the ladders they were using, but just leaned them back, and they came in contact with the electrical wires.

Authorities say 61-year-old Wilbur Farris was part of a three-person team working on a vacuum rolling grinder at U.S. Lime & Minerals, Inc., in Marble City, AR.

Workers were in the process of locking out the machine when it suddenly turned on. The vacuum sucked Farris into the machine.

It took rescuers two-and-a-half hours to pull apart the machine and recover Farris’ body.

The investigation will focus on whether the machine malfunctioned or if protocol wasn’t followed.

OSHA has filed 23 willful violations against the South Dakota Wheat Growers Association of Aberdeen, SD, for a fatality at its McLaughlin grain handling facility.

Steve Lee died Dec. 22, 2009, when he climbed inside a bin to see why the flow of grain had slowed. Lee was engulfed and smothered.

Co-workers tried to rescue him. OSHA says its investigation determined that five workers were also at risk of being engulfed when they were sent to rescue Lee. That added to the amount of the fines against the company.

An OSHA official says Lee was directed to enter the bin while it was being emptied — a common practice for the company, according to the agency’s investigation.

Earlier last year, another SD Wheat Growers employee died in a forklift incident at a different company facility.

The company is reviewing the citations. It has 15 days to decide whether to contest them.

The citations against the company include violations of confined space and grain handling standards.

Earlier this month, OSHA fined a Mississippi shipbuilder $1.32 million. That case also involved confined space violations. Two workers died in that incident.

What do you think about OSHA’s larger penalties in the last 18 months? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

A 19-year-old worker was the ninth successful suicide at Foxconn’s Longhua factory. Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, makes Apple iPads and also assembles goods for Sony, Nintendo, Dell and Nokia.

There have been at least two other known unsuccessful attempts, and the company says it has prevented 20 other attempts this year.

Foxconn has admitted that it had paid “insufficient attention” to the well being of its workers. It’s promised to hire 2,000 therapists.

Meanwhile, in the company’s lobby, protesters laid mannequins to rest and conducted traditional Chinese funeral rites.

Questions are being raised about the sustainability of China’s manufacturing model, which relies on long hours from its workers. Typical work weeks include seven 12-hour days.

A city of Jeffersonville, IN, employee had taken two prescription pain medications just seven hours before the garbage packer he was driving was involved in a five-vehicle crash that killed a teenager.

Roger Crum Jr. was taking Lortab and Flexeril for lower back pain. At first he told investigators he took the meds only at night.

But later Crum admitted he took the pills between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. on the morning of the crash. The pile-up happened at 11:30 a.m.

When Crum’s vehicle struck a small car, it killed its driver, 19-year-old Bethany Burrier. Three others were hospitalized. Crum was treated at the scene for minor injuries.

A city report notes the FDA says Lortab can cause light-headedness, dizziness and sedation and can impair thinking and physical abilities for driving. Flexeril also comes with a warning about driving.

Jeffersonville officials were apparently unaware that Crum took the drugs. The city has a policy that requires its drivers to report taking prescribed medications to their supervisors.

What’s your company’s policy on prescription meds and workers in safety-sensitive jobs? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Old Dominion Tree & Lawn Care of Poquoson, VA, has been fined $185,500 in the death of Frank Gornik for 20 serious and willful violations including lack of safety checks of machines and regular performance of maintenance repairs. The company has 15 days to decide whether to contest the fines.

Police say Gornik was shoveling debris into a wood chipper when the shovel got caught in the blades and pulled him into the machine.

Gornik was working with two adult employees, but they were away from the chipper when he was pulled in.

The company is owned by Robert Stickland. He and his wife took Gornik into their home after the death of both his parents.

Virginia child labor laws prohibit anyone under 18 from operating any power woodworking machine, including a wood chipper. Click here to find out what jobs teens under age 18 are prohibited from doing.

VT Halter Marine, a shipbuilder, faces $1.32 million in fines in connection with a November 2009 explosion and fire in Escatawpa, MS, that killed two workers and seriously injured two others. The two injured workers both received third-degree burns.

OSHA cited the company for 17 willful violations, including failure to:

• inspect and test a confined space before entry
• prevent entry into confined spaces where the concentration of flammable vapors exceed the prescribed limits, and
• use explosion-proof lighting in a hazardous location.

VT Halter also faces 11 serious violations, including lack of machine guarding and use of defective electrical equipment.

The company has 15 days to decide whether to contest the fines.

The explosion happened aboard a tugboat as a crew was cleaning and prepping a tank for painting.

A worker was killed when a 4,500 pound steel safe fell off a dolly and crushed him at a Chase Bank branch in Key-Caryl Ranch, CO. The safe measured six feet by four feet.

The employee of Security and Safe of Colorado, 41-year-old Donald Lindsey, was helping to move the safe into a room when it tipped and pinned him against a door.

Authorities say Lindsey didn’t die right away, but rescuers couldn’t reach him quickly because the safe blocked the door.

Others were also trapped inside the room.

Firefighters had to cut through a wall to get to the victim, but by the time they reached him, he had died.

Crews had to cut through another wall to get to the others trapped in the room.

OSHA is investigating.

Lenny Guida, president of Denver’s Master Security Center, says, “If a safe starts going, we tell everyone, ‘You never try to stop it. You just get out of the way. You don’t try to catch it.’”

Twenty-nine miners died in the explosion.

The Charleston Gazette reports that the investigation is looking into whether any criminal violations of mandatory health and safety standards were committed in connection with the explosion at the Massey Energy mine.

Violating safety and health standards could lead to misdemeanor criminal charges. Faking required mine safety records or other safety documents required by MSHA is a felony.

Mining disasters with multiple deaths in 1989, 1991 and 1992 led to criminal charges against mine operators and company officials. The four most recent coal mining disasters — those with five or more deaths in one incident — didn’t lead to criminal charges.

An investigation into the January 2006 fire that killed two miners resulted in Massey Energy’s Aracoma Coal subsidiary pleading guilty to 10 criminal violations and paying a $2.5 million criminal fine, as well as admitting that one of the violations resulted in the deaths of the two miners.

Do you think Massey should face criminal charges in this case? You can enter your comments in the box below.