OSHA TOP 10 FOR 2009 UP 30 % FROM 2008

As it does annually, OSHA uses the National Safety Council’s Congress & Expo to reveal its preliminary top 10 most-frequent workplace safety violations for the year. In its presentation of the 2009 results last week in Orlando, the agency noted that the number of top 10 violations has increased almost 30 percent over the same time period in 2008.

The top 10 are as follows:

1. Scaffolding - 9,093 violations

2. Fall Protection  - 6,771 violations

3. Hazard Communication – 6,378 violations

4. Respiratory Protection – 3,803 violations

5. Lockout-Tag out – 3,321 violations

6. Electrical (Wiring) – 3,079 violations

7. Ladders – 3,072 violations

8. Powered Industrial Trucks – 2,993 violations

9. Electrical – 2,556 violations

10. Machine Guarding – 2,364 violations

5,071 Workers die in 2008

On Thursday October 29th Jordan Barab, acting OSHA Chief told a Congressional committee that Federal OSHA is planning to crack down on State run OSHA programs.  This is due in part from an investigation into the Nevada OSHA program.  The investigation determined that serious shortcomings existed in Nevada’s program and it has raised concerns about federal OSHA's monitoring of all state plan programs.

Barab said federal OSHA will implement a number of changes to increase the oversight, monitoring, and evaluation of all state OSHA programs.

In the coming months OSHA will conduct a baseline evaluation, similar to what it conducted in Nevada, for every state that administers its own program.   In this speech Barab also indicated that Federal OSHA will strong arm the State programs to implement the National Emphasis Program on record keeping that was announced last month.  He also alluded to the expectation for State OSHA programs to write more Willful and Repeat citations.