Two workers at Birdsong Peanuts in Suffolk, VA, were checking on the level of peanuts when one fell into the 50-foot tall storage tank.

A co-worker got a line to the fallen worker. When local firefighters arrived, the employee was submerged 15 feet under the nuts.

The firefighters got a self-contained breathing apparatus to the man. They were concerned he would suffocate because vibrations from passing trucks threatened to shake the contents of the tank.

The unidentified worker was connected to another line and lifted out of the silo. He was able to climb down a ladder on his own and refused further treatment.

No word on whether OSHA will investigate this incident.

OSHA recently fined a Wisconsin grain cooperative $721,000 after a worker was engulfed in frozen soybeans. The employee survived after being trapped for four hours.

In a letter to grain storage operators, OSHA said companies must follow the regulations in the Grain Handling Facilities standard, 1910.272.

The head of OSHA says after 40 years, the agency needs a fundamental transformation in the way it addresses workplace hazards, and its relationship to employers and workers. David Michaels says it’s time for OSHA to “take a different road.”

The statement comes in a document distributed to OSHA employees, OSHA at 40: New Challenges and New Directions.

Michaels says OSHA will focus on nine key areas. You can read those in Michaels’ letter (PDF).

Instead of restating those here, we looked through the document to find the top 10 ways these new directions for OSHA will affect U.S. businesses:

1. More inspections. OSHA has received a larger budget and has hired more inspectors. And the hiring of new inspectors isn’t over. Also, the agency is shifting personnel away from its cooperative programs and toward enforcement.
2. Larger fines. Even though Congress hasn’t passed legislation to increase the maximums for OSHA fines, the agency believes it can raise fines itself by changing the way it calculates them. Example: Now companies face a more expensive repeat fine if the same or similar violation is found within a three-year period. OSHA is looking into extending that to five years.
3. Regulation by shaming. OSHA hopes public condemnation of business activities that result in serious injury or death will act as a deterrent. The agency will issue more hard-hitting press releases that explain clearly why an employer faced a large fine.
4. Inspectors will interview employees. In every inspection, OSHA compliance officers will talk to workers privately and confidentially to find out if companies are recording injuries as required.
5. More checks on employee training. OSHA says its inspectors will check whether required training is conducted in a language that workers can understand.
6. Injury and Illness Prevention Programs required. OSHA says American workplaces need to undergo a paradigm shift, with employers going beyond simply meeting OSHA standards. OSHA wants companies to implement risk-based workplace prevention programs that uncover hazards before they lead to an injury or death.
7. Closer looks at safety incentive programs. OSHA says some employers, particularly those in high-hazard industries, have implemented programs, inadvertently or by design, that discourage injury reporting. Example: Everyone will get a steak dinner or a bonus if we have no recordable injuries this year. OSHA inspectors will look into whether such programs have caused injuries to go unrecorded.
8. New regulations will be developed more quickly. OSHA is looking into several ways to speed up development of new standards, which, the way things stand now, is a lengthy process. On the agency’s to-do list is the exploration of alternatives to creating new regulations hazard-by-hazard. In the meantime, OSHA wants to increase collaboration with other worker protection agencies, such as the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, and EPA.
9. Electronic workplace records to be required. OSHA wants to complete its transition to electronic data collection. That will force companies to follow certain OSHA standards to report workplace injuries and illnesses electronically.
10. State OSHA programs will be strengthened. Currently, 22 states have their own OSHAs for private and public employees, and another five have safety agencies for public employees only. OSHA says it wants to ensure penalties assessed by state OSHAs are as stringent as those issued by the federal agency.

Where do you think OSHA should focus its efforts? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

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.”

Modern Oil Co. of Shawnee, OK, which operates about 30 Kwik Stop Convenience Stores, faces a federal lawsuit for firing an employee who complained about workplace safety.

An employee complained to her manager that beverage boxes stacked too high posed a safety hazard. Then the employee took the complaint to OSHA.

OSHA claims a month after receiving the complaint, the store manager figured out which employee filed the complaint and fired the worker.

In addition to back pay and reinstatement, the lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the employee.

“Employees should be free to exercise their rights under the law without fear of termination or retaliation by their employers,” said William Burke, OSHA regional administrator in Dallas. “This lawsuit underscores the Labor Department’s commitment to vigorously take action to protect those rights.”

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.”

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.

One way is to correct the problem quickly, as a recent case before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) shows.

An OSHA inspector visited a worksite in Tarrytown, NY, where MVM Contracting Corp. was hired to perform construction and renovation work.

After the inspection, OSHA issued a willful violation to MVM, saying it failed to protect employees working in an excavation from a cave-in. Employees had been working in an excavation without shoring that was more than five feet deep. The penalty: $21,000.

MVM didn’t contest the citation itself, just its classification as willful. An OSHRC law judge heard the appeal and reclassified the violation as serious. The fine dropped to $2,100.

OSHA appealed to the full commission, which reinstated the willful classification and the $21,000 fine.

This is how OSHRC came to its decision: The first time he visited the MVM worksite, the inspector provided the superintendent with detailed information about OSHA’s excavation standards and told him the company was in violation.

The inspector returned four days later to find no additional protection provided in the excavation. The inspector testified that the superintendent told him employees had worked in the excavation after the first inspection without cave-in protection.

OSHRC says the superintendent’s knowledge of the excavation standard and his conscious failure to bring the worksite into compliance amounted to a willful violation.

In a nutshell: The company would have faced a fine only 1/10th the size if it would have corrected the violation before the inspector’s next visit or barred employees from entering the excavation until corrections were made.

(Secretary of Labor v. MVM Contracting Corp., OSHRC, No. 07-1350, 7/20/10.) Click here for a PDF of the OSHRC decision.

That’s the situation Sodexo, a Maryland company that provides facility management services to school districts, finds itself in.

Brian Barker was employed by Sodexo as manager of grounds keeping for the South Plainfield School District in New Jersey. Barker says he warned his managers at Sodexo about safety conditions, but the company didn’t take action. Then, Barker went to OSHA.

OSHA issued nine serious violations to Sodexo, including ones for:

• not having a working lock system on a cabinet used to store gasoline and diesel fuel
• failing to perform an assessment to determine if protective gear was needed by employees working with gasoline, diesel, weed killer and field-marking paint
• lack of safety training for workers
• failing to confirm that employees were competent to operate forklifts
• an overhead electrical junction box without an appropriate cover, and
• failing to develop, implement or maintain a hazard communication program for workers handling chemicals.

OSHA initially issued Sodexo $10,800 in fines. Sodexo recently settled the matter for $8,100.

Barker says four days after OSHA issued its findings to Sodexo, his position was eliminated without any justification, and he was fired.

Sodexo says it took immediate action to address the OSHA citations. It hasn’t issued any comment on Barker’s situation.

OSHA recently made it easier for employees to find information on the web about filing a retaliation complaint. It now has a dedicated web page with instructions on how to file a complaint at www.whistleblowers.gov

OSHA cited Danbury Hospital in Connecticut with one serious violation of the GDC for failing to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious injury to workers. In this case, the hazard is employees being injured by violent patients. The fine: $6,300.

OSHA says it identified several instances during the past 18 months in which employees in the hospital’s psychiatric ward, emergency ward and general medical floors were injured by violent patients. The agency’s report cites 25 cases in the past five years in which hospital employees lost workdays or were put on restricted duty after being injured by patients.

Police say in March, a patient, Stanley Lupienski, shot nurse Andy Hull three times. Lupienski is charged with first-degree assault, first-degree reckless endangerment, illegal discharge of a firearm and carrying a pistol without a permit. Hull hasn’t returned to work at the hospital.

OSHA says its investigation was prompted by worker complaints. The president of Danbury Nurses Union, Unit 47, Mary Consoli, says the union complained to OSHA.

Danbury Hospital says it doesn’t agree with all the details of OSHA’s report, but it won’t contest the citation. The hospital says it’s already made changes to its security system.

OSHA recommended the hospital create a written violence prevention program that includes hazard assessment, prevention strategies, staff training, incident reporting and periodic review.

OSHA’s website notes that there is no regulation regarding workplace violence, but the GDC can apply.

OSHA’s guidelines for preventing workplace violence for health care and social workers can be found here.

Did OSHA make the right decision to cite the hospital for a GDC violation involving workplace violence? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below. Also, take our poll on OSHA’s use of the GDC on our home page.

Cal/OSHA shut down Rheingans Farms and Greenfield, Inc., both near Winchester.

Officials say at Rheingans, temperatures were in the 90s with employees working in a field without access to shade. The employer had provided no water, didn’t have a required heat illness prevention program and made no provisions for how to respond if an employee became ill from the heat.

The state says Greenfield had no shade, no heat illness prevention program, no training and no emergency response procedures. The afternoon temperature in Greenfield’s farm was 98 degrees.

Both employers can’t restart their operations until they come into full compliance with California’s heat illness prevention standard.

Did California do the right thing by shutting down these businesses? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

Authorities have charged Junior Lewis of Queens, NY, with one count each of mail fraud and conspiring to defraud OSHA. If convicted, Lewis, an authorized OSHA trainer, faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on the mail fraud charge and five years on the conspiracy charge. He could also be fined up to $250,000 or twice the gross gain from the offense.

An undercover agent arranged on more than one occasion to buy multiple 30-hour OSHA training certification cards from Lewis. Authorities say Lewis has admitted he sold multiple certification cards to others in the construction industry over the past several months without requiring the workers to complete outreach training.

“Lewis potentially placed the well being of construction workers in jeopardy,” according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

Lewis “dealt out phony training credentials as if they were playing cards … with no concern for safety of construction workers,” according to New York City Department of Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn.

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.

Eleven people were injured at a July 4th fireworks display in Palmyra, PA, and now OSHA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are investigating.

One 17-year-old needed skin grafts for burns on the back of his legs. Eight of the 10 others injured were treated and released at a local hospital. Two others were held overnight for observation. The injured suffered burns, cuts and bruises.

State police say when one of the fireworks didn’t ignite properly, it exploded inside a discharge tube. That caused surrounding discharge tubes to fail. The fireworks inside the tubes exploded, sending burning material into the crowd.

OSHA will investigate whether the company that put on the display, Schaefer Pyrotechnics of Ronks, PA, followed all required safety procedures.

Schaefer was fined $8,100 by OSHA for a July 4, 2004, fireworks mishap in Pittston, PA. About two dozen people were injured.

In 2007, during a fireworks show put on by Schaefer in Vienna, VA, a rogue mortar launched and injured 11 people. No OSHA violations were issued in that incident.

In both of those incidents, faulty fireworks were blamed. The company uses fireworks manufactured in China. It says it tests them regularly and visits the factory where they’re made in China.

Kimmel Schaefer Jr., owner of the company, said in the week around July 4, it launched 1,800 fireworks and only one malfunctioned. He said the company uses a 240-foot safety zone around the launch site, 30 feet more than required.

And you told us: OSHA isn’t all that bad. In a poll posted on this website’s home page, 403 people responded to the question, “How do you view OSHA?” Your responses:

• 50% said OSHA is “good, but sometimes they go overboard”
• 28% called OSHA “a positive force”
• 17% said the agency is “a necessary evil,” and
• 5% said OSHA is “the bad guys.”

Only one in 20 responders chose the most negative view of OSHA. And we get comments from those of you who think OSHA is “the bad guys” in the comment sections on this website. Comments left recently say OSHA is just out to make money for the current administration and that the agency is making it too easy for employees to complain about conditions at their companies.

But almost eight out of ten responders (78% to be exact) give OSHA what amounts to a good grade.

And another one in five (17%) see OSHA’s worth, even if they don’t particularly care for the agency.

This more positive reaction to OSHA as a federal agency is particularly telling at this moment, when the agency is ramping up inspections, increasing fines, and preparing new regulations such as one requiring companies to have injury and illness prevention programs.

We always have a poll on our home page. It changes about once a week. It gives you, the reader, an opportunity to see what your peers at other companies are doing and thinking. Is there a question you’ve always wanted to ask other safety professionals? You can suggest a question for an upcoming poll in the Comments Box below.

The heat.

Workers are required to wear boots, gloves and Tyvek coveralls — a thick suit that protects them from chemicals and oil.

But all that protective gear increases the chances for heat stroke.

High temperatures in the last ten days in the cleanup area have ranged from 91 to 94 degrees. One night the low only dropped to 80. The heat index has risen as high as 110.

Dozens of workers have already been treated for heat stroke, which, if not caught early enough, can lead to death.

Some people are working 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week in the cleanup effort.

BP has set up guidelines for cleanup workers to prevent heat stroke:

• Work begins early in the day to take advantage of cooler temperatures.
• Shaded rest areas are provided at all work areas.
• Workers are required to drink liquids and take rest breaks.
• Workers have received training about the hazards of working in the high heat.

But while OSHA has the pedal to the metal, it doesn’t want hell-for-leather motorists doing the same thing — at least not where workers could be endangered as a result.

A road and bridge construction company in Miami found that out the hard way. When workers closed off a lane on a major Florida highway, they posted a new and reduced speed limit sign.

Only problem: They didn’t remove or cover the existing speed limit sign.

It seems doubtful that motorists figured they could choose between the two posted speed limits, but OSHA wasn’t having it. Calling it a “blatant disregard for the safety and health of workers” and a “willful violation,” OSHA slapped the company with a $63,000 fine.

A newly added two-hour component focuses on workers’ rights. Among the topics it covers in detail:

• how to file complaints about your employer
• your right to refuse any work you think is too dangerous, and
• assurances that if you do either of the above, you’ll be protected by whistleblower provisions.

The workers’ rights component is now a required part of every 10- and 30-hour class.

“For too long, workers have avoided making claims of unsafe work conditions out of fear of losing their jobs,” OSHA head David Michaels said in a release. “We are confident that this new training will embolden workers to speak up when they find work practices that endanger their lives and the lives of their co-workers.”

Is OSHA opening a can of worms by trying to “embolden” workers, or is this needed to address chronic under-reporting of injuries. Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY) is the sponsor of S.B. 3257, which would restore funding to OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) and mandate that it continue.

A co-measure sponsored by Enzi would restore $3.1 million of funding to VPP. The funding measure has passed out of committee to the entire Senate. S.B. 3257 remains in committee.

The VPP encourages companies to go above and beyond basic OSHA regulations by conducting risk assessments, mitigating hazards and reducing employee injuries. Worker involvement is an integral part of the program.

More than 2,300 companies participate in VPP.

However, it’s not just current OSHA leadership that has its doubts about VPP.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last year concluded that OSHA lacked controls to assure companies maintain the criteria to qualify for the program.

The GAO said as a result, some facilities that no longer met the requirements remained in the program.

But that doesn’t mean the entire program isn’t working, either.

VPP participant Westar Energy of Topeka, KS, has reduced its workers’ comp losses because the program requires a company to log a total case incident rate that’s 50% below the national average for its industry.

What do you think is the right balance for OSHA to maintain between enforcement and employer assistance programs? What should happen to VPP, especially given the GAO report? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

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.

Transocean, an offshore drilling company, is a business partner with BP in connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded, killing 11 workers and sending huge, unknown amounts of oil into the ocean.

Just two years ago, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the federal agency that enforces safety rules on oil rigs, gave Transocean a top safety award for a “perfect performance period.”

The performance of the MMS itself has already been called into question. The Obama administration says it will reform the agency.

Now, consider a video, posted by the company, in its online magazine. In it, Transocean chief executive Steven Newman is seen dancing at a company gathering in Mumbai last year.

Newman was reportedly making good on a promise to dance if the India Division team posted a top safety record two years running.

So here’s the question: Who would want to be the worker or workers who get injured and ruin the chances of seeing the CEO look silly?

This is the sort of safety incentive being called into question by OSHA administrator David Michaels.

Michaels says safety programs should focus on reducing hazards, not rewarding a decline in injuries.

The OSHA administrator suggests workers will hide injuries to get safety rewards, such as dinners or gift cards.

No word on whether Newman’s offer of dancing would be the sort of incentive that Michaels wants to discourage, but it seems to fit into the category. There’s also a report that the company had scheduled a lavish luncheon honoring safety award winners on May 3, which was canceled after the rig disaster.

The Newman video isn’t the only one uncovered recently as the news media seek to learn more about Transocean.

Workers at the Deepwater Horizon rig made a video about hand safety a year ago. The video uses hip-hop music. Transocean pulled the video off its website after the rig explosion.

Was Transocean sending the wrong messages to its workers about safety by offering incentives, such as the CEO’s dance and the lavish award lunch? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

An unidentified man was drawn into a sausage-making machine in Danvers, MA. Somehow, even though his head and shoulders were pulled in, he escaped injury.

The man was part of a cleaning crew at DiLuigi Sausage Co. He was cleaning inside a vacuum-type cylinder that draws marinade into the meat, according to police.

The machine was activated while the man was still cleaning inside it. He was taken to a hospital, but showed no signs of serious injuries.

OSHA is investigating.

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.’”

ABC News included the video as part of a Nightline story on workplace safety and OSHA.

OSHA fined Cintas $2.75 million for violations of safety rules involving the dryers, a result of investigations after Gomez’s death.

The ABC News piece is worth watching for another reason: In it, OSHA administrator David Michaels says, “There is an epidemic of programs that discourage workers from reporting injuries.”

He mentioned incentive programs that reward workers when there are no reported injuries.

The piece goes on to tell the story of two Smurfit-Stone workers who say they were directly discouraged from reporting workplace injuries by their supervisors.

Michaels made it clear OSHA is looking for companies that hide injuries. “We know we’re not getting accurate figures, and we need to do something about that,” Michaels said.

Does your company have a safety incentive program that rewards employees for something other than a lack of injuries? Let us know about it in the Comments Box below.

OSHA cited Birdair, Inc., of Amherst, NY, for the incident in which two workers slid about 260 feet down the side of the domed roof. One of the workers suffered head and chest trauma and a broken leg. The other hurt his back.

Birdair faces $45,000 in fines for:

• one willful violation for employees not wearing the correct fall protection equipment, and
• one serious violation for workers not trained about hazards associated with falls.

Birdair says it will contest the citations.

An OSHA spokeswoman told the Star-Telegram that the workers were wearing fall protection gear, but it wasn’t tied off in accordance with OSHA standards.

The injured men were among employees finishing work on the stadium’s fabric roof panels.

It’s too often a matter of life or death.

OSHA has fined Buckhorn, Inc. $116,000 in connection with a Oct. 7, 2009 fatality at its Springfield, MO, plant.

Tobby Hall, a 31-year-old father of four, was inside a plastic injection molding machine. However, a co-worker thought Hall had gone to get a tool.

The co-worker started the machine, and Hall was crushed to death.

OSHA says the workers shouldn’t have been allowed to work on the machine without it being locked and tagged out.

Buckhorn has been cited for one willful and 15 serious violations.

The willful violation is for failure to ensure the plastic injection molding machine was locked out when employees were performing maintenance inside the machine.

OSHA also found a variety of serious violations involving obstructed emergency exits, confined spaces and a lack of training.

The woman faces 50 felony counts of grand theft, burglary, diversion of labor funds and theft by false pretenses.

During the past six months, police in Clovis, CA, say the woman was suspected of bilking seven companies and conducting fake training classes for a fee to clear up alleged Cal-OSHA violations.

One company called police after the woman allegedly collected $35,000 as a fine for alleged safety violations.

OSHA inspectors never collect money for citations on site.

A real OSHA inspector visiting a company would:

• Present credentials which include a photo and serial number
• Explain why OSHA selected the workplace for inspection and describe the scope of the inspection during an opening conference
• Conduct the walkaround inspection, and
• Hold a closing conference to discuss findings, but certainly not ask for immediate payment.

You can read more about OSHA inspections here.

(Corrects error regarding accused woman in previous form.)

Elephant handler Andrew Anderton was found lying on the floor at the Irem Shrine Armory in Wilkes Barre, PA, which was hosting the James Hamid Circus. Standing nearby was Dumbo the elephant.

Circus Chairman John Richards says Anderton was alone with Dumbo when the incident occurred.

Richards says it’s believed Anderton was trying to fix some electrical wires in the building’s ceiling which were sparking near Dumbo.

Richards speculates the elephant, in an attempt to protect Anderton from the sparking wires, grabbed him and moved him away.

The coroner says Anderton didn’t suffer any electrical injuries and was bumped by the elephant. The coroner has no doubt the elephant caused the multiple traumatic injuries that led to Anderton’s death.

Anderton worked with the elephant for 20 years.

The armory, home to a National Guard brigade, was slated to receive a major face lift last fall including major improvements to electrical systems. The brigade’s facility manager and an electrician inspected the building before the circus arrived and found it safe.

Although this is certainly a unique workplace death, it shares one thing in common with other on-the-job fatalities where an employee is working alone: It will be difficult to know exactly what led to the death because of a lack of witnesses.

Richards told The Times Leader there were only two entities that know exactly what happened. Now one is dead and the elephant can’t talk.

The question is more important these days because OSHA is cracking down on underreporting of occupational injuries.

A report issued in November by the Government Accountability Office showed some employers underreport injuries to reduce insurance premiums and workers fail to report injuries because they fear being fired.

In the wake of that report, OSHA unleashed a National Emphasis Program on recordkeeping. The targets: companies in high-injury industries that report much lower than average injury rates.

An article in Business Week highlights this current situation.

Example: AK Steel reduced its annual injuries by 96% from 1994 to 2009.

It’s that type of injury improvement that raises the eyebrows of some workplace safety experts. “It is extremely unlikely that injury rates would plummet like this,” said Susan Baker, a scholar of workplace injuries at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

AK Steel had good cause to improve its safety practices: 10 workers died at company plants from 1993 to 1996, leading to a $1.9 million OSHA fine.

But some former AK Steel workers tell Business Week that injuries appear to be down because workers who report them are penalized with time off without pay.

An AK Steel spokesman says, “We make no apologies for our safety program and all of its components, including discipline.” At the same time, the company considers not reporting an injury an “extraordinarily serious offense.”

How do you hold employees responsible for safety rules through discipline, yet make sure you don’t discourage reporting of workplace injuries? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

“Unscrupulous employers often consider it more cost effective to pay the minimal OSHA penalty and continue to operate an unsafe workplace than to correct the underlying health and safety problem. The current penalties do not provide an adequate deterrent.”

Those words came from OSHA administrator David Michaels in his testimony in favor of the Protecting America’s Workers Act (PAWA).

The bill would include public employers under OSHA and increase whistleblower protections.

But the major attention has been paid to the parts of the measure that would increase OSHA fines. The bill would:

• increase the maximum penalty for knowingly violating a rule that results in the death of an employee to 10 years in prison
• increase penalties for willful or repeat violations that involve a fatality to as much as $250,000, and
• create automatic increases in fine amounts by tying them to inflation.

In his testimony before a U.S. House subcommittee, Michaels pointed out that the average OSHA fine is about $1,000. The median fine for cases in which a worker was killed is about $5,900.

Michaels went on to point out that other federal agencies have the ability to issue much larger fines for infractions that don’t include human death. For example, the Department of Agriculture can impose a $130,000 fine on milk processors for willful violations of the Fluid Milk Promotion Act. TV and radio stations can be fined $325,000 for indecent language. The EPA can issue $270,000 fines for Clean Air Act violations.

Michaels also supports PAWA’s provision to increase the number of criminal prosecutions for workplace deaths and serious injuries.

What do you think about Michaels’ assertion that OSHA penalties are too low to matter to most businesses? Should the penalties for the most egregious violations, those that result in serious injury or death, be significantly increased? What about prison time for company managers when a worker is killed on the job? Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

Rescuers say construction workers were using a propane-powered tile cutter inside a tent that had been set up to shield shoppers in the Forks Township, PA, store from dust and debris.

Of the 11 taken to hospitals, three were shoppers and eight others were employees of either the construction contractor or the supermarket.

Ten were treated and released. One person was held overnight in the hospital. When emergency crews arrived, one person had collapsed from the fumes.

Fire officials measured carbon monoxide (CO) levels at 400 parts per million (ppm) in the area around the construction. OSHA’s permissible exposure limit for CO levels is 50 ppm as an 8-hour time-weighted average. Anything above 70 ppm is considered dangerous, and levels above 200 ppm can be life-threatening.

Township Fire Chief Chuck Chapman told the Morning Call that the construction crew should have been using an electric-powered tool to cut the tile since the work was being done indoors. He also said there was no evidence of CO monitoring equipment on site.

For more information on CO in the workplace, click here.

Virginia International Terminals (VIT) has been fined $7,000 by OSHA for a serious violation. VIT didn’t implement or provide refresher training to crane operators who were involved in previous accidents or near-misses, according to the citation.

Foreman David Weiland was killed last December after a crane operator knocked over the pole which then fell across Weiland’s car.

The crane operator had been involved in several previous crashes.

Michael Dinardo was charged in Manhattan Federal Court with selling 47 training cards to New York City undercover agents who didn’t complete any training.

If convicted, Dinardo could be sentenced to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The city requires construction employees working on buildings 15 stories or taller to complete a 10-hour OSHA training course. Crane operators need to take a 30-hour course.

Dinardo sold OSHA certification cards to undercover investigators, according to the New York Daily News. Price: $100 for a 10-hour card; $275 for a 30-hour card; and $325 for a Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) certificate.

Recently, OSHA revoked trainer status from four people nationwide.

For more information about OSHA training, click here.

SeaWorld officials say they are reviewing safety and training rules it has in place for interacting with all killer whales at all three of its parks.

Shows with the whales were expected to continue. Trainers won’t enter the water with the whales until the investigation into the death of trainer Dawn Brancheau is completed.

Meanwhile, the former head of animal training at SeaWorld Orlando says rules for handling the killer whales that were in place during his tenure had either been broken or changed.

Thad Lacinak says there were special rules for dealing with Tilikum, the largest whale of his species in captivity.

Because of his size and involvement in the deaths of a trainer at another park in 1991 and a guest at SeaWorld in 1999, Lacinak said a trainer should not have been lying down in the water close to Tilikum as Brancheau did before the attack.

Lacinak said the attack was triggered by the trainer’s mistake, allowing her long ponytail to drift in the water in front of the whale.

He says the whale probably thought the ponytail was a new toy, and that’s why it dragged Brancheau underwater by her hair.

Meanwhile, a report in the Orlando Sentinel says SeaWorld has a policy forbidding its killer-whale trainers from having dangling hair that the animals could grab.

That information was contained in a Cal/OSHA report about a 2006 incident at the company’s San Diego park in which an orca grabbed a trainer by the feet and held him underwater. The trainer suffered injuries to his feet.

The Cal/OSHA report was controversial for another reason. It originally stated, “If someone hasn’t been killed already, it is only a matter of time before it does happen,” regarding trainers working with the whales.

However, after SeaWorld criticized the original report and met with Cal/OSHA officials, that language was taken out of the final report.

What do you think about OSHA’s involvement in this investigation? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

In the first year of the Obama administration, OSHA was busy handing out fines the likes of which hadn’t been seen for eight years. Here’s our rundown of 10 significant fines from the last 12 months, and what they mean for businesses:

1. OSHA issues largest fine ever: $87.4 million to BP. This fine demonstrates OSHA’s intent to check up on companies once they’ve made serious safety mistakes. The agency evaluated BP’s progress after the 2005 fire and explosion that killed 15 people and injured 170 more at its Texas City, TX refinery. OSHA issued 270 “notifications of failure to abate” and identified 439 new willful violations at the plant.
2. Two executives face prison time and huge fines in deaths of five workers. Phillipe Goutagny and James Thompson, executives with RPI Coating, each face 2.5 years in prison and a fine up to $1.25 million if convicted. On Oct. 2, 2007, vapor from a solvent ignited inside a tunnel at a hydroelectric plant in Colorado. Workers survived the blast but were overcome by smoke and fumes and died of asphyxiation. OSHA says it will work more closely with the Justice Department in cases like these to bring criminal charges against executives with penalties that include prison time.
3. OSHA wastes no time in using new per-employee citations, issues $1.2 million fine. G.S. Robbins & Co. of St. Louis, MO, was hit with 21 egregious willful citations for hazardous chemical handling. Each citation was on a per-instance basis. Even during this period of difficult economic recovery, OSHA won’t hesitate to use per-instance, per-employee fines to hike total fine amounts. This wasn’t the only instance in which OSHA used per-instance citations in 2009 (see item #7 below).
4. Company hit with $1.14 million fine following employee complaint. Are the big fines relegated only to incidents involving deaths or multiple serious injuries? Hardly. OSHA began a December 2008 inspection at Milk Specialties in Whitehall, WI, in response to an employee complaint. Willful citations were issued for the employer’s failure to comply with OSHA’s confined space and lockout/tagout regulations. OSHA is taking employee complaints seriously.
5. After two similar incidents, owner and manager go to jail. ANC Roofing of Santa Rosa, CA, owner Kenneth Alton pleaded no contest to failing to protect employees from a hazard. He was sentenced to nine months in jail and a $248,000 fine. Supervisor Robert McAfee pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor violation and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. On May 11, 2006, an ANC employee backed into an unguarded skylight and fell 21 feet to his death. Four months later, another ANC employee suffered major head trauma when he fell 19 feet from an unprotected skylight.
6. OSHA fines Wal-Mart $7,000 for worker trampling incident. A Wal-Mart worker was trampled to death by a crowd of 2,000 shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008. OSHA said Wal-Mart should have recognized that its employees were exposed to being crushed by the crowd based on previous experience. Wal-Mart fought the fine. OSHA used the General Duty Clause to issue the fine and has said it will use the GDC in similar situations where safety was compromised but a specific regulation wasn’t violated.
7. Company faces $1.09 million OSHA fine for 202 willful violations. OSHA didn’t really need anyone’s permission to start issuing per-instance fines (see item #3 above), but it got the go-ahead in the form of a decision from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC). The appeals panel ruled OSHA properly cited Smalis Painting Co. on a per-employee basis for violations of the lead-in-construction regulations, in connection with a project near Pittsburgh, PA. OSHA monitored six Smalis employees for lead exposure. Based on that data, OSHA issued violations for all employees who would have been exposed to the same hazards.
8. OSHA is getting companies to agree to implement safety and health improvements above what’s required by regulations. A-1 Excavating of Bloomer, WI, agreed to make numerous changes in its work processes in exchange for lowering fines from almost $900,000 to $470,000. A-1 has to hire a full-time safety director, develop and implement site-specific safety and health plans for all major projects, identify all job sites to OSHA before work begins for the next three years, reduce the salary of job superintendents and project managers who fail to comply with OSHA requirements, and retain a third-party safety consultant.
9. Cintas agrees to pay $3 million in fines and to comply with other conditions. In some cases, it hasn’t been an either-or situation between fines and strict safety improvements. After a worker was killed when he fell onto an unguarded conveyor and was dragged into a 300-degree industrial dryer, Cintas agreed to the huge fine and to retain a team of independent experts to develop permanent fixes and review interim controls. Cintas also agreed to hire additional safety staff, conduct more frequent internal safety inspections, and establish new systems to examine employee complaints.
10. A construction company agrees to pay $750,000 in fines and cut the pay of unsafe supervisors. Broadway Concrete of New York, NY, agreed to reduce the salaries of senior job superintendents who failed to comply with job safety practices. Broadway also agreed to hire a full-time corporate safety director, develop a new corporate safety plan, and provide OSHA with information on major projects and access to all job sites for the next four years.

What do you think of OSHA’s recent enforcement tactics? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Steven Uptegrove was killed on Aug. 20, 2009, when he and another forest service worker were loading trash from an illegal marijuana grow into sling loads that were hauled away by a Chinook helicopter.

Investigators believe rotor wash — wind generated by the helicopter’s two rotors — toppled the dead tree that hit Uptegrove.

OSHA said the forest service didn’t identify and remove dangerous trees before its employees began working in the area.

OSHA also cited Wallowa-Whitman for allowing Uptegrove to wear a hard hat that didn’t comply with current safety standards, although the agency doesn’t believe another type of hard hat would have saved him. Another citation said the forest service failed to require an employee to wear complete eye protection, such as goggles, while exposed to flying debris.

Wallowa-Whitman won’t have to pay a fine because OSHA doesn’t issue penalties to federal agencies.