It’s a December tradition for Safety+Health to present final numbers for OSHA’s Top 10 most cited violations for the recently concluded fiscal year.
But 2020 has been anything but traditional. At press time, S+H was continuing to coordinate with OSHA on the announcement of the agency’s Top 10 list for FY 2020, which ended Sept. 30.
Although the data isn’t yet available (we’ll keep you posted), the need to eliminate Top 10-related workplace hazards and stay in compliance with OSHA regulations continues. S+H turned to veteran safety consultants JoAnn Dankert and John Newquist, who offer 10 insights to help employers tackle OSHA’s Top 10.
Standard (lack of) deviation
Fall Protection – General Requirements (1926.501) has been OSHA’s most frequently cited standard for nine successive years, with the other standards that make up the rest of the list experiencing minimal change as well.
Why is the list so static?
“I think a portion of why we see these over and over again is there’s a lot of parts to many of the standards, which makes it easier for OSHA to cite us if we missed something, and some parts take time to implement,” said Dankert, senior safety consultant at the National Safety Council. “They aren’t necessarily bad, but they do take resources, and for smaller organizations, people might be doing HR and safety, or they’re doing facility maintenance and safety. Maybe they’re the person, the admin, that sits in the lobby and they’re trying to do safety on the side.”
Newquist, a former longtime OSHA employee, agrees that “nuances of the standard” contribute to more frequent citations. For example, the four most cited sections of the Hazard Communication Standard (1910.1200) – the second most cited standard in FY 2019 – require employers to develop or provide a written HazCom program, hazardous chemicals training, copies of mandatory Safety Data Sheets for each chemical and labeling for each chemical, respectively.
“If you have a lot of chemicals, it’s really hard to keep track of those,” Dankert said.
Building block
Employers should view the Top 10 list as a good starting point on the path to correcting hazards in their workplaces.
“Minimally,” Dankert said, “an employer should have the responsibility of asking, ‘Do any of these Top 10 affect me?’ Because this is the easiest place if our friends from OSHA should come to visit. Those are the gimmes, kind of. So if we wear respirators, do I have a strong respiratory protection program? Can I take a deep dive into it, make sure I have all the parts and pieces in place?
“‘Or if I use chemicals, like with HazCom, or if we use ladders?’ There’s no doubt that employers could use that listing as a way to just check themselves from an audit perspective.”
Trained and true
Many mainstays on the Top 10 list carry associated training requirements. As the pandemic impacts the economic climates of organizations nationwide, Dankert encourages employers to continue to make training a priority.
Associate Editor Kevin Druley discusses this article in the December 2020 episode of Safety+Health‘s “On the Safe Side” podcast.
“When revenue goes down, organizations tend to sometimes pull back on training,” she said. “and so I would encourage people not to pull back on your safety training. With some things, we’re struggling within organizations because maybe we’ve done classroom training, but now because of physical distancing and so forth, we don’t want to put too many people in an area. That might mean we’ve got to have more classroom training sessions. That takes more time. Time is money. So I think just be cautious about deferring training too long or pulling back on your safety and health training.”
This is especially important for training related to hazard recognition and communication. Don’t leave these up to experience or perceived common sense, Dankert and Newquist say.
“Organizations maybe don’t want to get that technical about it, but we need a common understanding and agreement between employee and employer that, ‘Yeah, we don’t want those hazards, and if you see that, Mr. or Ms. Employee, tell us about it,’” Dankert said.
Small business, big concerns
Part 1904.1 of OSHA’s Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illness Standard isn’t typically part of the annual Top 10. Still, its ability to create confusion as to whether OSHA standards govern certain organizations has bearings on the list.
Under 1904.1, the agency provides partial exemptions for keeping annual OSHA injury and illness logs for establishments that have no more than 10 employees for a full calendar year. Should the organization hire an 11th employee – even for a day on a non-full-time basis – the employer is required to log injuries and illnesses.
“OSHA regulations apply to you as soon as you have one or more employees engaged in commerce,” Dankert said. “For smaller businesses, I think there’s a misunderstanding whether, first of all, OSHA even applies to them. I think another piece of this is smaller organizations may throw up their hands. ‘Oh, more regulations. It’s so complicated.’ And maybe having that true understanding that a particular hazard covered in that regulation could be life-threatening.”
Anecdotally, Newquist said he’s witnessed this situation in various small businesses, including some that don’t require seat belt use on powered industrial trucks.
Diligent documentation
Dankert and Newquist often see employers struggle with documentation – both knowing when it’s required and producing requisite procedures, pre-inspection checklists or other documents on demand.
“You have to be organized with your documentation,” Dankert said. “If you’re still kind of old-school with spreadsheets, or if you’ve moved to electronic resources where you can load stuff in and run reports, you’ve got to have your documentation in order.”
Audit observations
Newquist said his audits of construction sites frequently bring to light common hazardous situations. Among them:
- Not keeping workers and equipment at least 10 feet away from overhead power lines.
- Crews failing to use guardrail systems on the sides of elevator shafts.
For industrial audits, Newquist said inconsistent lockout/tagout protocol is a leading hazard. “Companies must have specific energy control procedures for every piece of equipment,” he said.
COVID-19 consideration
Dankert finds the COVID-19 pandemic “has added another layer of risk” that employers may not have considered before.
For instance, various organizations take workers’ temperatures as they enter a jobsite or facility, introducing a procedure that adds time to the beginning of the workday.
Employers should refrain from viewing this as being “behind the eight ball on productivity,” Dankert said, as feeling inconvenienced or rushed may create additional hazards.
Success stories
Reflecting on his overall experiences at worksites, Newquist was positive, saying: “Companies are trying to do the right thing.”
Worker compliance with personal protective equipment “has been pretty good” on the whole, he added.
The key to fully understanding standards and the hazards associated with them hinges on being precise. “It’s a little bit easier for people when you get into more specific examples of each one instead of a general OSHA standard without looking at specific procedures,” Newquist said. “‘Let’s take a look at those five things that I mentioned and take a look at your facility.’”
OSHA assistance
In past Q&As with S+H, Patrick Kapust, deputy director of OSHA’s Directorate of Enforcement Programs, has reiterated that the agency’s cooperative programs and online outreach materials are available to help employers get – and stay – in compliance.
Dankert repeated the message, pointing also to OSHA’s Susan Harwood Training Grant Program, which recently awarded more than $11.2 million in one-year grants to 90 nonprofit groups for the development of safety and health training.
Going beyond
Compliance is crucial, but it’s just the start, said Dankert, who encourages employers to maintain an active role in keeping workers safe.
Additionally, remember that OSHA upholds more than the 10 most frequently cited standards, and even the full list isn’t exhaustive.
“I would like to remind people, as difficult as it is to be in compliance, that’s the minimum that we must do to protect employees. OSHA doesn’t have a standard for every possible hazard that we might have in our facility or on our jobsite,” Dankert said. “So as difficult as it is to be compliant, we also need to understand the inherent hazards in our processes that OSHA doesn’t cover, and seek those best practices to continue to protect our employees.”
