Today’s blog post comes from the U.S. Labor Department’s blog at blog.dol.gov and was written by the director of enforcement programs at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The article below is a good big-picture reminder of workplace hazards that are documented “safety and health violations” through OSHA. There are some important quotes in the blog post, but instead of choosing a couple, you are encouraged to read and think about the entire relatively short article. A special focus should be to consider the top 10 citations list and see if you are exposed to any of these hazards at your job. Or if you’re in a position to influence others within the workplace, I would encourage you to make sure your co-workers know about whatever safety efforts you have in place to avoid and prevent at-work injuries so you don’t have your business’s citation on the list in the future.
If you have concerns about workplace safety at your job, OSHA’s website has a lot of informative resources. If you or a loved one have been hurt on the job, please contact an experienced workers’ compensation lawyer for advice and help.
 Every October, the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration releases a preliminary list of the 10 most frequently cited safety and health violations for the fiscal year, compiled from nearly 32,000 inspections of workplaces by federal OSHA staff. One remarkable thing about the list is that it rarely changes. Year after year, our inspectors see thousands of the same on-the-job hazards, any one of which could result in a fatality or severe injury. More than 4,500 workers are killed on the job every year, and approximately 3 million are injured, despite the fact that by law, employers are responsible for providing safe and healthful workplaces for their workers. If all employers simply corrected the top 10 hazards, we are confident the number of deaths, amputations and hospitalizations would drastically decline. Consider this list a starting point for workplace safety:
It’s no coincidence that falls are among the leading causes of worker deaths, particularly in construction, and our top 10 list features lack of fall protection as well as ladder and scaffold safety issues. We know how to protect workers from falls, and have an ongoing campaign to inform employers and workers about… |
[Click here to see the rest of this post]
![](http://ec2-54-161-131-128.compute-1.amazonaws.com/piwik/piwik.php?idsite=2&rec=1&cvar={"1":["pub_id","700065"],"2":["pub_blog_id","4"],"3":["post_id","480717"],"4":["post_co_id","32"],"5":["social_auths","1"]})