By Glenn Demby, Esq.

Last week's National Safety Council conclave in Orlando witnessed the perpetuation of a new tradition: the unveiling of the OSHA list of top 10 most often-issued citations for the year so far. The envelope, please. . .

The Results

The total number for all 10 citations on the list is 40,463. That's about 4,200 fewer than last year's top 10.

Here's the countdown. Please hold your applause until the end:

Number 10:
Ladders - 2,054 citations
Comment: Congratulations to Ladders for being the only newcomer to crack the Top 10. All of the other nine standards were repeats from last year.

Number 9:
Electrical, General Requirements - 2,120 citations
Comment: Electrical was in ninth last year, too.

Number 8:
Machine Guarding, General Requirements - 2,743 citations
Comment: This has been a slightly disappointing season for Machine Guarding which was in seventh place last year at this time. The number of violations citing this standard also fell from 3,245 in 2004.

Number 7:
Electrical Wiring Methods, Components, and Equipment for General Use - 2,785 citations
Comment: Wiring fell one place and 552 citations from last year.

Number 6:
Powered Industrial Trucks - 2,871 citations
Comment: A comer, jumping two places from last year.

And now for the top 5:

Number 5:
Lockout/Tagout - 3,711 citations
Comment: This perennial powerhouse dropped one spot from last year.

Number 4:
Respiratory Protection - 3,904 citations
Comment: Finished fifth last year.

Number 3:
Fall Protection, General Requirements - 5,504 citations
Comment: Won the bronze medal last year, too.

Number 2:
Hazard Communication - 6,641 citations
Comment: Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, Haz Com has made a habit of finishing second.

And, drum roll please, the award for the standard most often cited in OSHA violations goes to:

Number 1:
Scaffolding, General Requirements - 8,130 citations
Comment: Scaffolding has become the New York Yankees of OSHA standards, establishing a three-year dynasty that nobody seems likely to challenge any time soon.

Conclusion

On a serious note, the Scaffolding three-peat is a reflection of three things:

• The disproportionate number of construction sites included in the OSHA list of priority enforcement targets;
• The high incidence of fall injuries; and
• The complexity of the scaffolding standard itself.

ENFORCEMENT TRENDS - CANADA

Ontario Lowers the Boom on Supervisors

Occupational Health and Safety fines against supervisors aren't exactly a rare occurrence, especially in Ontario where the OHS laws impose specific duties on supervisors. But three separate cases of fines against a supervisor in a single month is noteworthy.

That's what happened last month in Ontario where three supervisors were fined for an OHS violation. Curiously, all three pled guilty to the same charge: Failing, as a supervisor, to ensure that a worker works in a manner and with protective devices, measures and procedures required by Section 25 of the Ontario Regulations for Industrial Establishments. Here's a quick look at each case:

Beta-Tech Inc. (Sept. 20): The supervisor was fined $4,000 after an auto parts worker helping to operate a press lost his right thumb in a machine accident. The MOL investigator reported that the supervisor had turned off the "light curtain" guarding device before the shift to allow for the making of setup changes.

Component Rubber Industries Inc. (Aug. 12): The supervisor was fined $4,000 as a result of an accident in which a worker lost part of his left arm after getting his hand caught in the feed rollers of a splitter machine. There were no guards on the splitter machine and the emergency stop bar was beyond the reach of the platform on which a nearby worker was standing.

Alliance Labelling & Decorating Inc. (Aug. 24): Responding to a complaint, MOL inspectors found that machines at a bottle labeling plant weren't properly guarded. The supervisor was fined $1,500.

MEMBERS' REPLIES

Hurricane & SARS

We got a lot of mail on week's story comparing the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina to the Canadian government's handling of the 2003 SARS outbreak. Here's a sampling:

Don't Blame It All on the Federal Government

I was upset at your statement "the government's botched response to Katrina." What about all the botching that the state of Louisiana did? I don't believe that it is the responsibility of the Federal government to run to the aid of every state that can't handle a disaster. Whatever happened to getting up on your own two feet and helping yourself and neighbors helping neighbors?

My neighbor is in his sixties and he went through Hurricane Donna. There was no FEMA or any other kind of monetary assistance. They simply got up and started over on their own.

Name withheld

It never ceases to amaze me that the people that seem to be the most vocal about the lack of response by FEMA are the residents and local officials in New Orleans. I would suggest that the blame lays squarely on the shoulders of the local and state officials that failed to follow their own self imposed plans for evacuation. If those plans had been followed, the death toll would have been greatly reduced. Does the State Of Louisiana also have sovereign immunity?

William P. Hawkins
Project Manager
Kevco Construction, LLC
P.O. Box 3243
Louisville, KY 40201-3243
P: 502-635-1641
F: 502-635-1634

Don't Politicize SafetyXChange

Can't we leave our liberal biases out of the topic of SAFETY? To foist blame on FEMA or any other federal entity or official without even making reference to the blatant, obvious bungling of the Louisiana Governor's office or New Orleans Mayor's office is a joke!

Name withheld

THE EDITOR REPLIES

Yes, I admit that I think the federal government "botched" Katrina. But that in no way suggests any satisfaction with the performance of state and local officials in Louisiana. I think they did a crummy job, too.

But what the state and locals did wasn't relevant to my story. Nor was whether FEMA really did mess up. I wrote this piece because I wanted to discuss the concept of sovereign immunity and the recourse of victims who feel that their government has failed to protect them. The simplest way to do that was to focus on the national government. But the concepts discussed in the story would apply equally to state and local officials.

Glenn Demby
SafetyXChange
Editor-in-Chief

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