LAKE ARROWHEAD — Avuncular, yet not afraid to lay down the law, Hank Rivera has made a name for himself in the seven years he has been a compliance officer for the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH). A 35-year veteran of Southern California Edison who was “bored” with retirement, Rivera, 66, has become …
LAKE ARROWHEAD — Wesley Woodson, 85, one of the founders of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and a pioneer in the field, has passed away, the society reported. A native of Hutchinson, Kan., Woodson came to California in the mid-1940s, where he worked first at the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory in San Diego, then …
SACRAMENTO — Is California’s trailblazing ergonomics regulation “a fair and balanced standard as could reasonably be devised”? Or is it a fundamentally flawed rule that is leaving significant numbers of workers unprotected? The debate goes on. What’s certain is that in General Industry Safety Orders 5110, after years of contentious advisory committee meetings, a lawsuit …
SACRAMENTO — California’s First District Court of Appeal has affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by a Berkeley firefighter against the Cal/OSH Standards Board. Harry Vernon, who suffers from a painful skin condition called pseudofolliculitis barbae (PFB), sued both the Standards Board and the City of Berkeley over the requirement that he …
SACRAMENTO — AB 1923, recently introduced by Assemblyman Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), would require employers of emergency response personnel to address in their injury and illness prevention programs (IIPP) the stress from exposure to mass human casualties and other traumatic events. The bill would add a new subsection to Labor Code 6401.7, which contains the …
SACRAMENTO — In our March 5 article about the April 15 Standards Board public hearing, we inadvertently misstated a subsection of the hazard communication standard proposed for revision. General Industry Safety Orders 5194(g)(8) would be amended to allow employers to maintain material safety data sheets in electronic form, not (f)(8). Thanks to reader Sandra Waddell …
SACRAMENTO — After an unsuccessful attempt to craft advisory committee consensus, the Cal/OSH Standards Board announced it is terminating work on a petition that sought to apply fall protection requirements to sheet metal workers who install roof waterproofing systems. Petitioner Dale Auslander of Triumph Sheet Metal sought to revise Construction Safety Orders 1723(a) to make …
SACRAMENTO — From a peak of almost 20 inspections with citations in 1999, the number of employers cited under General Industry Safety Orders (GISO) 5110 has steadily dropped, according to data provided by the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH). Although the numbers of inspections with citations haven’t been large in any year – …