California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) is investigating the Nov. 2 death of an agricultural worker in Ventura County who became entangled in an auger. The worker, identified as 29-year-old Ernesto Rodriguez Gomez of Santa Paula, was working as part of a crew digging post holes when his shirt became caught in the …
Does a proposed reorganization within Fed-OSHA to better organize its process safety management (PSM) office mean Cal/OSHA will have to change its procedures accordingly? Apparently there has been some confusion within the employer community about the subject following a July 30 memorandum from Fed-OSHA’s Director of Administrative Programs. That official, Kimberly A. Locey, wrote to …
A gruesome Nevada County fatality early this year could have been avoided if the crew had observed basic safety rules for working with wood chippers, including checking debris bundles for objects that should not enter the chipper, and assigning a safety watch when branches are being fed into the chipper. These are the conclusions of …
Based on comments by stakeholders, the Cal/OSH Standards Board has made modifications to its proposal on crane swing radius hazards. The regulated public has until Nov. 9 to weigh in on the changes. The revisions to Construction Safety Orders §§ 1610.3 and 1616.3, and General Industry Safety Orders §§ 4885, 4999, 5001 and new §4993.1, …
It’s been about one year since Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law AB 1136, which after years of attempts, finally put into the state Labor Code requirements that acute-care hospitals adopt “safe patient-handling” requirements to protect health-care workers from debilitating injuries caused by having to lift patients. The bill appears straightforward enough: As part of …
A worker for Ports of America was killed in Oakland when he was crushed by crane trolley that apparently was inadvertently moved. The Oct. 24 incident occurred at Berth 37 at the busy port. “The employee was a mechanic performing maintenance on the track rails of the trolley,” according to Department of Industrial Relations public …
Cal/OSHA’s regulation on guarding horizontal pull saws has been determined to be not as protective as the federal equivalent standard. Consequently, the Cal/OSH Standards Board proposes to match the state version with Fed-OSHA’s. The proposal is in a 45-day comment period that ends with a public hearing on Dec. 13 in Sacramento. The regulatory gap …
By a majority vote following a public hearing, the following revisions to a Title 8 safety order have been adopted by the Cal/OSH Standards Board. They have been approved by the Office of Administrative Law and now are in the California Code of Regulations. USE OF FORKLIFT TRUCKS AND EXCAVATORS FOR HOISTING LOADS: Revisions to …