News You Can Use
Construction Supervisor Fined for Trenching Violation
A Saskatoon, SK, construction supervisor has been fined more than $7,000 after pleading guilty to an Occupational Health and Safety (OSH) Act charge related to failure to provide competent and sufficient supervision to workers. Travis Brunner of Brunner’s Construction Ltd. allowed workers to be in a 3.3-meter (nearly 11-foot) deep trench that was not properly shored. The charge was laid following a routine inspection by a Saskatchewan Labour Relations and Workplace Safety official. Related stories: City of Surrey Fined in Fatality OSHA...
read moreConstruction Superintendent Sentenced for Misleading Investigators
A construction site superintendent from South Dakota has been sentenced to six months’ house detention with electronic monitoring for willfully violating an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulation with regard to the fatal fall of one of his workers. The 29-year-old victim, Carl Beck, fell 42 feet (nearly 13 meters) while helping install a motel roof in the Pittsburgh, PA, area in 2009. Superintendent Robert Christopher Kennedy, 60, pleaded guilty to a charge of failure to protect employees with anchored safety lines...
read moreOSHA Embraces Global Chemical Labeling System
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) says that its plans to align its Hazard Communication Standard with the United Nation’s Globally Harmonized System of Classifying and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) will benefit workers by reducing confusion about chemical hazards. Once fully implemented in 2016, OSHA expects that the alignment will prevent an estimated 43 work-related deaths and 585 worker injuries and illnesses each year, along with boosting US productivity by an estimated $475.2 million. To facilitate understanding...
read moreUnusual Incident Claims Worker’s Life
The construction industry experiences a large number of struck-by injuries and fatalities, but an unusual incident recently took the life of a young father of two children. Victor “Bo” Towery, a 34-year-old heavy machine operator employed by A & A Grading and Hauling in Bessemer City, NC, died after being struck by an excavator set into motion by a large pipe that bumped one of its control levers. Towery, of Clover, NC, was standing in front of the five-ton excavator when it moved, crushing him. He was alive at the scene, but died...
read moreYour Safety Program: Are you “Making It Work”?
Millions of people will be celebrating safety during North American Occupational Safety and Health (NAOSH) Week, May 6 to 12, 2012. The goal of NAOSH Week is simple: To focus employers, employees, partners and the public on the importance of preventing injury and illness in the workplace, at home and in the community. That goal is realized through many events, ranging from occupational safety and health conferences and speaker presentations, to poster displays, to safety and health training sessions across North America. “During NAOSH Week,...
read moreTen Ways to Get in Trouble with OSHA: Part 2
Last month, we presented the first five of Washington, DC Attorney Arthur Sapper’s 10 Ways to Get in Trouble with OSHA. Here are the last five recordkeeping errors or misconceptions that can land you in trouble with OSHA, along with five important missteps that can lead to willful recordkeeping citations. 6. Applying or being influenced by non-OSHA criteria: The problem is that often the same person is required to apply different concepts—compensation and OSHA—to the same cases and they get confused. There’s a misconception that...
read moreMine Superintendent Charged With Conspiracy to Commit Fraud
Gary May, a mine superintendent at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States by impeding a federal agency. In the worst US mining disaster since 1970, a methane explosion claimed the lives of 29 Upper Big Branch miners on April 5, 2010. May is accused of ordering workers to falsify record books and speaking to them in code as a warning that mining inspectors were coming. The warnings allegedly enabled workers to cover up hazards that would otherwise have resulted in charges. May...
read moreCDC Issues Warning on Bath Refinishing Chemical
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a warning about potentially deadly consequences of using a common paint-stripping chemical to refinish bathtubs. The warning centers on the use of products containing methylene chloride to remove paint from residential bathtubs. Scientists at Michigan State University found that 11 workers had died from methylene chloride exposure while stripping paint from tubs in poorly ventilated bathrooms between 2000 and 2011. In each fatality, respiratory PPE either was not being used or...
read moreSwan Causes Worker to Drown
When one thinks about a person being killed as the result of an animal attack, a swan isn’t at the top of the list of perpetrators. Amazingly, a swan has been implicated in a worker’s death in Chicago. Anthony Hensley, 37, was in a kayak in a retention pond at a Chicago condominium site when an angry swan swam at him, causing Hensley to fall out of the kayak and drown. He had not been wearing a lifejacket. Hensley, a married father with two young children, worked for Knox Swan and Dog, a company that uses swans and dogs to keep geese away...
read moreTrain Engineers Could Not Have Survived
Three passenger train engineers killed in Ontario, Canada, had no chance of surviving when the locomotive they were operating derailed and slammed into a building in late February, 2012. The three Via Rail workers were identified as Peter Snarr, 52, Ken Simmonds, 56, both longtime employees, and engineer-in-training Patrick Robinson, 40. The Via train, carrying 74 passengers and four crew members, was switching from one track to another in Burlington, ON, when six cars derailed. Forty-six people were injured and nine were...
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