The agency is determined to reduce deaths and injuries caused by falls from heights and also slips and falls. Housekeeping on sites nationwide will be examined.
After years in the works, the voluntary consensus standard Reduction of Musculoskeletal Problems in Construction (ANSI/ASSE A10.40-200x) will be submitted to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for final review.
Associated Builders and Contractors, the national association of 24,000 merit shop construction firms, testified May 1 at an ANSI accredited standards committee appeal hearing that the ANSI A 10.40 standard, Reduction of Musculoskeletal Problems in Construction, should not go forward.
A difficult issue faced by nearly every safety coordinator for a construction site is what to do about temporary guardrail protection. The temptation is to do the job quickly, get open-sided edges or platforms closed in as quickly as possible, and caution all personnel to be extra careful when it is necessary to approach the edge during the temporary exposure period.
ONE of your employees--let's call him Joe Supervisor--is working on a job site where a backhoe is digging the foundation for a new office building. The soil is being loaded into large dump trucks. As you can imagine, the noise level from the backhoe and the trucks is almost deafening. Of course, Joe knows all about the consequence of hearing loss from exposure to noise; that's why he's wearing ear plugs.
IN the construction industry, workers are consistently operating in environments where hazards abound. Employers and employees alike rely on state-of-the-art fall protection equipment as they work on various types of structures.
IT was a normal work day for J.D. Buske. With the blink of an eye, all of that changed. He almost became one of the one thousand daily eye injury statistics reported in the United States. Here's his story: "Hello, my name is J.D., and I live in San Antonio, Texas. Today your product saved my right eye and prevented me from serious injury to my face. Let me explain what happened.
THE American Industrial Hygiene Association's president, Roy Buchan, sent a letter Aug. 22 urging OSHA's acting chief to accelerate work on a hearing conservation rule for construction workers. Buchan's letter noted AIHA had taken an active role in OSHA's consideration of this rule since May 2000.
WHAT are the biggest safety problems on summer construction sites? Noise, moving vehicles, heat, and falls from height come readily to mind. But some of the most common hazards are more subtle: Communication problems, poor housekeeping, and a wrongheaded safety approach are factors.
THE mission of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is to assure the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach, and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health.
INTERESTINGLY, it may be perfectly acceptable to wear tennis shoes while installing sheet metal weatherproofing on a steeply pitched roof. At least, that was the thrust of a May 2004 interpretation letter from the chief of OSHA's Construction Directorate.
THE biggest electrical threat to workers is no secret: Power lines, especially overhead power lines, are Public Enemy Number One. Contact with power lines is killing about 133 American workers each year--mostly but not entirely in the construction industry, with victims working mostly but not entirely for small businesses, said Michael G. Clendenin, executive director of the Electrical Safety Foundation International in Rosslyn, Va.
PRIME paving season is here for much of the United States, causing highway work zones to sprout and renewing efforts to spread the gospel of safety to workers and motorists alike.