Top 10 OSHA Standard Violations 2009

When viewed from the inside over a long period of time, it can be difficult for risk managers to remain objective about evaluating new hazards that may have presented themselves in the workplace, or to notice dangers that have always been present but which have yet to come to the fore.  It is always helpful to approach the task of worker safety from a fresh perspective from time to time in order to pick up on issues that may not have been apparent from a previous viewpoint.

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)