Posts by Lacey Scanlan
Powered Industrial Trucks, General Industry – Regulation 29 CFR 1910.178
Ranking: 7 A Workplace Story From a NIOSH In-house FACE Report: A 16-year-old part-time worker died when the forklift he was operating tipped over during a turn occurring as the truck was going from a paved alley onto a gravel surface. The worker, who was not wearing the forklift’s seat belt, either jumped or was…
Read MoreControl of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout), General Industry – Regulation 29 CFR 1910.147
Ranking: 6 A Workplace Story From an Oregon Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (OR-FACE) report: Although there was no one nearby to witness what happened when a 23-year-old rubber cutter’s head was caught between bars of operating machinery, circumstances suggested that he entered a festoon rubber processing area to retrieve and redirect a rubber strip…
Read MoreLadders, Construction – Regulation 29 CFR 1926.1053
Ranking: 5 A Workplace Story From a California FACE report: It was raining and the steps of an 8-foot-straight ladder that was leaning against a 3-tiered storage shelf unit at a grocery market were slippery. The 72-year-old part-time grocery worker who was on the ladder on that January morning fell backward off it and landed…
Read MoreScaffolding, General Requirements, Construction – Regulation 29 CFR 1926.451
Ranking: 4 A Workplace Story From a Wisconsin FACE report: A 59-year-old male plaster laborer in Wisconsin died after falling from a scaffold and striking his head on asphalt pavement. The victim and a co-worker had erected the welded tubular scaffolding on the outside wall of a single-story building and planned to bring the railings…
Read MoreRespiratory Protection, General Industry – Regulation 29 CFR 1910.134
Ranking: 3 A Workplace Story A California Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (CA/FACE) Program report: A bathtub refinisher, working alone in a small apartment bathroom, died of methylene chloride exposure while using the chemical to remove paint from a bathtub. The victim was not wearing any respiratory protection. The bathroom had a small, open window…
Read MoreHazard Communication Standard, General Industry – Regulation 29 CFR 1910.120
Ranking: 2 A Workplace Story From a California FACE report: A 23-year-old associate working in a university research laboratory used a syringe and needle to extract a pyrophoric chemical (t-butyl lithium) from a bottle. When the plunger came out of the syringe barrel, the t-butyl lithium – which was an air-sensitive reagent – ignited on…
Read MoreFall Protection – General Requirements – Regulation 29 CFR 1926.501
Ranking: 1 A Workplace Story From a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) report: On a hot April day in North Carolina, a crew was installing sheets of plywood and roof trusses on a residential roof. One of them, a 22-year-old Hispanic worker, was temporarily out of…
Read MoreIt is Not Just a Box – Steel Containers for Material Handling
By: Jillian Burrow, Contributor Several quote requests come in daily to a multi-product based, material handling equipment manufacturer for steel containers. “It’s not just a box” would be a great auto response to the generalized request for an assumed universal use bulk steel box. The thing is, it is more complicated than “just a box.”…
Read MoreJobs for Cobots: Automation as Labor Augmentation
By: Kevin Paramore, Contributor The gap between the limits of the labor force and the needs of the supply chain makes robotics not just something nice to have, but something we need to have. This sets the stage for an approach to automation that breaks sharply from popular paranoia. Robots are not “coming to take…
Read MoreIn A Global Economy, Keeping Conveyors Running Is Key
By: Maureen Paraventi, Editor Remember way back in 2012, when we’d order something online and be glad to get it – on average – in five or six days?1 The continuing acceleration of e-commerce delivery systems has habituated consumers to receiving their packages much more quickly than that. In 2019 the average wait for purchases…
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