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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) June 9 announced it cited a Swainsboro, Georgia, pillow manufacturer for seven repeat and four serious violations and proposed $190,758 in penalties. The agency announced six-figure fines for two other employers, as well.

Place Vendome Holding Co. Inc., operating as R&F Marketing, has a history of safety and health violations, according to the agency, including three different incidents related to workers’ suffering amputation injuries.

The agency initiated an inspection on November 16, 2021, and discovered the company exposed employees to several of the same hazards that OSHA had cited in a November 2020 inspection.

Since the 2020 inspection, three company employees have suffered amputations:

OSHA cited Place Vendome with repeat, serious violations for obstructing exit routes, failing to post well-lit signs identifying exit routes, and stacking materials in unstable or unsecured tiers. The agency also cited the company for failing to mount or keep fire extinguishers accessible and train workers who were designated to use fire extinguishers.

OSHA issued three serious violations for locking an emergency exit door from the outside, failing to have emergency action plans in place, failing to establish and utilize equipment-specific procedures to control hazardous energy, and failing to train workers on the procedures.

Metal buildings manufacturer faces $154K fine

OSHA cited Corle Building Systems Inc. in Imler, Pennsylvania, for a willful violation for inadequate machine guarding after a 40-year-old worker suffered the partial amputation of one finger and an injury to a second one while cleaning a machine at the facility. The company faces $154,143 in proposed penalties.

“Corle Building Systems’ failure to comply with required machine guarding standards led to a serious and preventable injury,” said Christopher Robinson, OSHA’s Pittsburgh area director, in an agency statement.

The agency determined that a lack of functional machine safety locks allowed the rag the worker was using to become caught and pulled into the machine’s steel rollers, leading to the amputation. In addition to the cited machine guarding violation, OSHA also cited Corle Building Systems for four serious violations for failing to develop lockout/tagout procedures to prevent unexpected machine start-up, perform an annual review of its lockout/tagout program, and ensure the machine was locked out before workers began cleaning it.

The employer designs and manufactures rigid-frame buildings, including airplane hangars, commercial buildings, warehouses, and other structures, according to OSHA.

NY employer facing $203K fine

An Afton, New York, agricultural products manufacturer is facing $203,039 in proposed OSHA penalties after a supervisor at McDowell and Walker Inc. told an untrained employee to enter a grain bin to clear a feed buildup that clogged a silo entry point. OSHA cited the company for two willful, nine serious, and three other-than-serious violations of workplace safety standards.

While attempting to clear the buildup, a conveyor transporting feed into the silo activated, partially engulfing the worker in leftover feed. A coworker helped the employee avoid serious injury.

McDowell and Walker now meets the requirements of the agency’s severe violator enforcement program (SVEP).

OSHA concluded that the employer exposed the employee to engulfment hazards by failing to adhere to grain-handling safeguards, such as:

“McDowell and Walker Inc.’s failure to follow required safety practices nearly cost a worker his life,” Jeffrey Prebish, OSHA’s Syracuse, New York, area director, said in an agency statement. “They must provide training and equipment as required by OSHA’s grain handling facilities standard to ensure workers are protected from grain handling hazards.”

The Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) requires pictograms on labels to alert users of the chemical hazards to which they may be exposed. Each pictogram consists of a symbol on a white background framed within a red border and represents a distinct hazard(s). The pictogram on the label is determined by the chemical hazard classification.

Do your employees know how to handle hazardous materials safely? Here are 11 basic rules all employees who handle hazardous materials should know and follow.

Why reinvent the wheel when there are so many ready-made safety observances to link up to? The National Safety Council (NSC) publishes an annual list of safety meeting topics. Here are some highlights.

The State of Safety and Beyond Survey gathered the insight of 314 environment, health, and safety (EHS) professionals about how their organizations are dealing with current safety challenges and what they’re expecting in the future. These concerns run the gamut from the very real threat of COVID-19 to perennial issues such as training, leadership, safety […]

While we hope that fire extinguishers never have to be used, they still need to be inspected and maintained to ensure they are working properly in case an emergency occurs. In the Sure-Fire Guide to Fire Extinguisher Inspections, you will: Learn how often fire extinguishers should be inspected. Get a paper copy of KPA’s Monthly […]

Industry standards help set the foundation for a safety management system (SMS) that protects workers, but data gathering is the engine that drives it. The Intelex Insight Report “Safety Management Systems: Building a Foundation on Data,” explains what resources are available to help you create a system and identifies key SMS data-gathering components needed. Learn […]

Using the right tool to complete a task or project makes all the difference. For example, contractors wouldn’t use a drill to push in a nail, they’d use a hammer. The same holds true when it comes to general medical record documentation vs employee and occupational health recordkeeping. General healthcare practitioners focus their work on […]

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