The Cal/OSH Standards Board has voted to appoint Christina Shupe as its new executive officer, replacing the retired Marley Hart. The vote came at the board’s November meeting in Walnut Creek. Shupe is currently the director of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, where she has worked since 2011. She previously had been the business development …
The Division of Occupational Safety and Health says it will not make the January 1st, 2019, statutory deadline for sending its recommended indoor heat illness regulation to the Cal/OSH Standards Board. DOSH Chief Juliann Sum so indicated at the November Cal/OSHA Advisory Committee, and Deputy Chief Eric Berg confirmed that information at the recent Standards …
An Oakland construction company did the right thing and used shoring on a trench at an East Bay worksite this April. But its efforts to remove the shoring went fatally wrong and now California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health has cited the company, Bay Construction, in the case. DOSH seeks more than $141,000 in …
By the time this edition of Cal-OSHA Reporter hits your inbox, welcome rains might already have started to wash away the thick wildfire smoke that has hung like a pall over much of Northern California, triggering a run on N-95 respirators and driving citizens indoors. In the meantime, Cal/OSHA is repeating the advice it provided …
Cal/OSHA is investigating seven more workplace fatalities. They happened in late October and early November. Here are the latest incidents. In Beverly Hills, an employee of Rubio Electric was installing fasteners for electrical conduit in concrete when he reportedly shot himself in the head with a powder-actuated gun (nail gun). He died three days later. …
An Alameda County Superior Court judge has ruled on the side of Cal/OSHA about the question of whether suspended structures – unistruts – inside telecommunications facilities require fall protection. The answer is yes. The case stems from a 2014 incident in which an employee of Pinnacle Telecommunications fell from a unistrut at an AT&T switching …
3M Fall Protection has issued a “quality alert” on some of its new-generation fall protection harnesses. The harnesses are not failing, the company says, but a “seat sling” intended to provide body support if the fall protection is triggered has a reinforcement plate that can come loose. The hazard is the potential for the plate …