First, you should understand that the GHS is broken down into three major components: physical hazards, health and environmental hazards, and hazard communication. The physical hazards and health and environmental hazards components revolve around testing chemicals in order to classify the type of hazards associated with the chemical or chemicals that make up the product. The greatest changes will be seen in the hazard communication component.

Next, you need to evaluate the target audience that you will fit into under the GHS.  Currently, the 4 main audiences for the GHS are transport, workplace, consumer, and agriculture.  Once, you realize where you fit, and some companies may fit into more than one sector, you can start to see what you need for compliance.

Within the transportation sector, it is projected that the pictograms used in the GHS will be used on containers carrying dangerous chemicals.  However, other aspects of GHS such as signal words will not be adopted. The workplace sector is expected to adopt the type of labels that will display signal words, hazards statements, and symbols.  As well as, revised training for employees.  The consumer sector will see risk based labels that incorporate the signal words, hazards statements, and symbols.  The agriculture sector will see about the same type of adoption to the GHS that the workplace sector will see. Prominent HazCom display is a must as well.

Companies should also realize that the adoption of GHS will also demand changes to Materials Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), and training.  The impact to business finances is difficult to quantify, but hopefully will be considered by OSHA before a final decision is reached. However, the benefits should also be weighed.  It is expected that companies will find it easier to do business in other countries; there will be a greater pool for training resources; and, training will be focused on understanding and comprehension.

If you are interested in getting more information on the UN’s Globally Harmonized System and getting ahead of the game, you should visit OSHA’s guide to the GHS at http://www.osha.gov/dsg/hazcom/ghs.html#2.3.

This time of year companies are reviewing and preparing their injuries and incidents reports in order to complete their OSHA logs, which must be posted by February 1.  OSHA recording is usually a daunting task for most, especially if you have more than 100 employees, or just a significant number of indemnity claims.  Usually, the hardest part of completing OSHA logs is mentally separating the rules of workers compensation with the recordable requirements of OSHA.  So to make it easier for you we have noted the most common mistakes below.

• Failing to check behind your TPA (Third-Party Administrator) or Insurance Company –   Tons of companies choose to let someone else handle their OSHA logs, as this is much easier than doing it yourself.  The problem is not checking their lost-time and modified-duty days.  Most workers compensation statutes require a waiting period, usually 7 days, before adjusters start counting days.  These days are usually not on the radar for most insurances companies and TPAs.  For example, a medical-only claim where the injured worker only missed two days may fall between the cracks on a TPA-completed OSHA log.
• Forgetting to include injuries that were not considered workers compensation or that was denied under workers compensation. – This is a biggie and so easy to do.  A lot of people forget that an injury does not have to be an injury compensable under workers compensation statutes to be recordable under the guidelines of OSHA. For example, heart attacks are not always compensable under workers compensation.  However, heart attacks may be recorded on the log.  You will need to report all heart attacks to OSHA and they will decide whether or not it is recordable.
• Realizing that it must be a new event -  Some employees have multiple injuries throughout the course of a year.  It is important to ensure that an employee is completely healed from an injury.  For example if your employee suffered a knee injury in 2008 and was still seeking medical treatment, another injury, while doing their normal job functions, to that same knee would not be considered a new event.
• Failing to update prior years – OSHA allows you to stop counting loss time and modified duty days at 180, if an injury is recorded in one year and the employee is still losing time.  It is critical that you update your OSHA logs for that year.  Remember, OSHA logs should be maintained for a period of 5 years.

This time of year can be very stressful, especially with the aggressive image of today’s OSHA.  The new focus on reporting injuries and incidents should not be taken lightly.  The quickest way to have OSHA show up at your door, aside from having a worker fatality, is to submit inaccurate OSHA logs.

From the OSHA announcement:

Based on the most recent investigation, OSHA has issued 15 willful citations with proposed penalties totaling $1,050,000, alleging that 15 pieces of electrical equipment were unsafe to use in the tank wash area due to the presence of flammable and combustible vapors. Two additional willful citations with proposed penalties totaling $125,000 have been issued. One alleges that CES failed to ventilate tanks in which employees were working, exposing the workers to toxic atmospheric hazards. The other alleges that CES stored flammable and reactive chemicals together, which posed fire and explosion hazards.

In addition, OSHA has issued 54 serious violations with proposed penalties totaling $302,500. These include allegations that CES failed to implement all aspects of the process safety management standard; provide proper respiratory protection, confined space rescue equipment and adequate fall protection; properly install and maintain boiler equipment; implement an emergency response plan, and adequate energy control procedures; train powered industrial truck operators; guard and to anchor machinery adequately; store compressed gas cylinders safely; and label hazardous chemicals.

It’s astonishing to me that a series of incidents occurred within a short time-frame without the company taking the steps to prevent them after the first incident. It strikes me of either willful arrogance towards, or complete ignorance of, OSHA standards. I can see a company makes a mistake that causes an incident that results in a fatality, but I can’t understand how a complete review of safety procedures and standards as well as thorough inspections of all equipment used in their most hazardous areas doesn’t take place after the FIRST event. With all the confined space testing and safety equipment available there really isn’t an excuse for workers not to be protected in a hazardous atmosphere.  The cost of implementing a safety procedure plan, as well as providing the correct equipment would be much less than the cost of the lives lost, the families destroyed, the downtime, the fines, and the lawsuits that will follow.

Take note management.

Making a presentation at the workshop was new OSHA Assistant Secretary David Michaels, who outlined a series of five issues that the Administration intends to follow through on when handling the safety questions surrounding green jobs.  Michaels made the point that while ecologically-conscious jobs are generally seen by the public as safer than traditional industrial positions, whether due to the use of fewer caustic chemicals or a lower degree of mechanization, the reality is often different.  Green building techniques and renovations still expose workers to construction industry hazards, for example, and wind and solar power generation pose potential dangers through high voltage currents and large scale equipment use.

The Assistant Secretary proposed to bring OSHA standards and worker safety more in line with the present and future of green industry in a number of different ways that he described as ‘Green Reform Principles.’  The first of these is to encourage employers and employees to work together when assessing workplace hazards and coming up with solutions and protections.  Not only would this allow workers to become more engaged in a decision-making process that directly impacts their well-being, but it also offers managers a real-world viewpoint on the efficacy of certain safety interventions.

Next, OSHA plans to update their chemical safety standards, an initiative which is already underway through planned changes to the Hazard Communication Standards.  Michaels stated that OSHA’s current chemical safety platform is rooted in science that is almost five decades old, and that through collaboration with the European Community’s safety officials and re-thinking OSHA’s somewhat passive approach to the dangers posed by chemicals, the Administration may be able to identify thousands of new substances which pose a threat to worker health.

The third Green Reform Principle is somewhat vague, in that it asks whether it might be better to completely redesign the workflow and standards of specific industries instead of updating older methodologies.  Michaels did not offer much in the way of explanation as to what exactly this could mean to established businesses, and it will most likely stand out as the most controversial of the five Principles in the coming months.  Principle four marks a commitment to more rapid and better informed rulemaking, while the fifth and final Principle once again echoed OSHA concerns about giving workers a more powerful role in workplace safety decisions.

While these five points on OSHA’s future role in green industry are commendable, the Administration will need to fully flesh them out before their potential impact can be properly assessed.  The generalized way that the Principles were described, especially towards the end of the list, also indicates that perhaps they will be applied across more than just those businesses who claim to be operating in an environmentally-friendly sector of the economy.

At the meeting company officials were able to present sufficient evidence to OSHA inspectors that showed extensive training was conducted on the “cherry picker” that crushed 27-year-old Jorge Leandro-Ramirez, an employee operating the equipment back on April 29. OSHA acknowledges that the accident occurred in spite of, not because of lack of, training.

Employers should be encouraged that accurate record-keeping and reporting, as well as robust training programs, provide some help in defending your company when disasters occur. A review of all training programs and policies should be performed to make sure they do the job of protecting workers.

Several hazardous materials – specifically, how they are handled in the workplace and how to control employee exposure to them – will fall under more intense scrutiny.  Crystalline silica, which is essentially the dust produced by a wide variety of different industrial, manufacturing and construction operations will be subject to a new rulemaking that will change current exposure limits.  It will also institute additional regulations concerning worker protections from exposure to the dust.  OSHA hopes to make their intentions known with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to be issued in July, 2010.

Two other substances will also be dealt with in the spring and fall of that same year.  In March, the metal beryllium will be the focus of a peer review its health effects and overall risk with regards to permissible exposure limits and worker protections.  The dust or fumes emitted by this metal can in some cases result in an immune disease that eventually brings forth a host of unpleasant and debilitating symptoms that may take as long as 30 years post-exposure to develop.  Then, in October diacetyl will take its turn undergoing the same analysis.  A food additive most commonly found in butter-flavored microwave popcorn, there have been several concerns regarding its possible respiratory impact on workers when inhaled over a long period of time.  Specifically, OSHA will examine a disease called bronchiolitis obliterans linked to the chemical.

Combustible dust, which has grabbed headlines over the past few years due to several spectacular and fatal explosions at a number of facilities in the United States, is set to gain its own standard from the Administration.  The process is already well underway, and the goal is for OSHA to gather what regulations they currently have on the books related to combustible dust hazards and combine them with additional research and information in order to complete a general standard and prevent future tragedies.  Crane and derrick safety will also see similarly sweeping standards changes in the summer of 2010 when a new final rule is issued.  In an industry where almost 100 lives are lost each year in workplace accidents, OSHA is working quickly to update safety regulations which were first implemented in 1971 and rarely altered since.

The final component of the Fall 2009 agenda addresses infectious diseases which have an airborne vector, otherwise known as the H1N1 initiative.  OSHA is looking to expand the epidemic response guidelines that were heavily publicized in August and September of 2009 through a Request for Information that will focus on how healthcare workers can better protect themselves from not just influenza but all other types of illness which can be easily transmitted through the air.  The formal Request will take place in March of next year, and it is hoped that the effort will be able to head off an increasingly large number of reported sick workers on the front lines of American’s healthcare industry.

With 34 health and safety violations, it will be hard to argue that there isn’t a lack of a safety culture at Crespac.

“The agency is citing the company with three willful, four repeat, 19 serious and one other-than-serious safety violations, as well as five serious and two other-than-serious health violations. OSHA is proposing penalties of $249,200 for the safety violations and an additional $17,200 for the health violations.”

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Those who put their health on the line to save the lives of others can find themselves dealing with accident victims who have been stricken as a result of contamination with hazardous substances.  Clearly, protecting the safety of emergency medical personnel and rescue workers as they try to do their jobs is important enough that risk managers responsible for EMS (emergency medical services) teams need to develop clear policies for handling these types of situations.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recently released a document entitled “Best Practices for Protecting EMS Responders During Treatment and Transport of Victims of Hazardous Substance Releases.”  The aim is to provide guidance to risk managers interested in a comprehensive safety strategy for dealing with these types of difficult health services scenarios.

Much of the guide focuses on concrete measures that can be taken to ensure that EMS personnel are not placing themselves at risk when performing medical interventions on exposed victims.  A significant component of the OSHA document focuses on training workers to be able to recognize hazardous situations as quickly as possible, in order to lessen their chances of dangerous exposure.  Situational awareness is a key tenet of keeping medical personnel safe.  Furthering this theme, OSHA describes several different pieces of equipment which can be used to detect the presence of otherwise odorless, tasteless and invisible contaminants which could be present at the scene of an emergency.  These include radiation, chemical agents and biological hazards and toxic street drugs such as methamphetamine, which can be found in labs in concentrations high enough to cause serious injury.

The document also describes the types of personal protective equipment (PPE) that can be helpful in reducing the dangers posed by hazardous substances, and on training emergency workers in how to properly use this type of gear.  PPE related to hazardous materials can include anything from gloves and respiratory masks to full on containment suits with respirators, depending upon the severity of the incident being responded to.  PPE becomes especially relevant when making contact with victims, as it is possible for certain types of contaminants to actually permeate the bodies of those who require medical treatment.

The latter can create a dangerous situation when transporting a patient, as they may spread the hazardous substance in question simply by touch or even exhaling.  Not only do EMS workers need to be able to protect themselves from this possibility, but those present in hospital emergency rooms must also be safeguarded against accidental exposure once contaminated patients have been admitted into a ward.  A clear policy for handling these types of accidents is a critical component of any EMS risk management portfolio.

This is one of the reasons why the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) publishes their yearly list of the 10 most often-cited safety violations from the past 12 months.  The list represents the sections of federal workplace safety code that have been the focus of the greatest number of citations on the part of OSHA inspectors.

Naturally, the specific violations listed by OSHA tend to gather around industries which are on average more dangerous towards worker health than others.  In the top five are scaffolding violations and fall protection violations (construction industry), citations for respiratory protection (chemical and mechanical industries), and lockout/tagout citations (heavy industry, mechanical industries).  However, sitting at number three on the list is hazard communication, a section of the standard which applies to every single workplace across the country.  The fact that over the past year there were 6,378 violations of the hazard communication sections of the safety code indicates that risk managers and employers are still not doing all that they can when it comes to training and preparing their workers for the dangers that are present on a job site.

Also alarming from OSHA’s perspective was the revelation that 81 percent of the citations stemmed from willful violations or violations of a serious nature.  This has lead the agency to draw the conclusion that many of the accidents that occur in workplaces across the country are completely preventable, and are often the result of companies attempting to save a few dollars by gambling with the health of their employees.

The full list of the top 10 OSHA standard violations is as follows:

1. Scaffolding, General – 9,093 violations
2. Fall Protection – 6,771 violations
3. Hazard Communication – 6,378 violations
4. Respiratory Protection – 3,803 violations
5. Lockout/Tagout – 3,321 violations
6. Electrical, Wiring – 3,079 violations
7. Ladders – 3,072 violations
8. Powered Industrial Trucks – 2,993 violations
9. Electrical, General – 2,556 violations
10. Machine Guarding – 2,364 violations

The list of the standards cited most often by OSHA break down along similar lines:

1. Scaffolding, general requirements, construction (29 CFR 1926.451)
2. Fall protection, construction (29 CFR 1926.501)
3. Hazard communication standard, general industry (29 CFR 1910.1200)
4. Respiratory protection, general industry (29 CFR 1910.134)
5. Control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout), general industry
6. Ladders, construction (29 CFR 1926.1053)
7. Powered industrial trucks, general industry (29 CFR 1910.178)
8. Electrical, wiring methods, components and equipment, general industry (29 CFR 1910.305)
9. Electrical systems design, general requirements, general industry (29 CFR 1910.303)
10. Fall protection, training requirements (29 CFR 1926.503)

The report, which focused on OSHA records dating between 2005 and 2007, unearthed studies which claimed that the agency may only be aware of 30 percent of the actual number of on the job injuries and illnesses that occur on a yearly basis.  OSHA had previously noted a downward trend in reported incidents over the past 17 years, but it turns out that instead of this encouraging data resulting from actual improvements in safety, it has instead been subject to manipulation on the part of employers, who in all cases are relied upon to self-report any accidents resulting in worker injury or harm.

GAO went even further in their report, stating that employers often went to extremes in order to reduce their level of reporting to OSHA.  Some would pressure employees to downplay their injuries by penalizing those workers who did complain of safety issues or incidents on the job or by taking away incentives and promotions.  Doctors were also interviewed who stated that they were often asked to reduce their evaluation of a workplace injury’s severity by managers in order to improve their standing with OSHA.  Many managers claimed that their actions were largely the result of a desire to avoid citations from OSHA, or to reduce the costs associated with workplace injuries.

For their part, OSHA has pledged to take a hard look at the recommendations made by GAO with regards to how they gather workplace injury information.  GAO indicated that relying on companies to accurately self-report injuries is perhaps no longer a comprehensive enough strategy to help OSHA with their tweaking and structuring of employee safety regulations, protocols and guidelines.  The idea that government programs which reward workplaces that report fewer incidents than others could in fact be damaging to the health of employees rather than beneficial was also voiced in the document.

A change from self-reporting to a more inspection-oriented mandate would dramatically alter the role of OSHA and would also have an impact on the documentation and liability of risk managers charged with protecting their workers from harm.  It is unlikely that self-reporting will ever be completely eliminated, due to the budgetary restraints associated with continual comprehensive inspections, but the process may become far more stringent in terms of providing corroborating data to match injury reports – or the lack thereof.