October 2020 OSHA Quicktakes
DesCor Builders Makes Worker Safety #1 Priority and Achieves SHARP Status
DesCor Builders is a licensed general contractor based in Rancho Cordova, CA, providing full-service preconstruction, general contracting, and construction management services to private and public entities throughout Northern California. In early 2019, DesCor began their partnership with Cal/OSHA Consultation Services, which offers no-cost and confidential occupational safety and health services to small and medium-sized businesses, with priority given to high hazard worksites. Partnering with Cal/OSHA On-Site Consultation Services helped DesCor to refine and elevate their existing safety and health program and to align their safety culture with that of their subcontractors.
National Association of Landscape Professionals
Since entering into an Alliance on October 2, 2008, with a subsequent renewal on November 26, 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP) have worked together to improve workplace health and safety by sharing information, guidance, and access to training resources that address occupational hazards, and promoting understanding of the rights of workers and the responsibilities of employers under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
OSHA and NALP continue to recognize the value of maintaining a collaborative relationship to improve safety and health practices and programs in American workplaces, and commit to continue their work together through an Alliance Program Ambassador relationship.
A new resource helps employers understand and comply with OSHA’s Respiratory Protection Standard during the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a public health emergency that has dramatically increased demand for respirators, particularly N-95 filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs), as well as fit-testing supplies ordinarily used to ensure that respirators fit workers properly and provide the expected level of protection. Shortages (either intermittent or extended) of both FFRs and fit-testing supplies have posed tremendous challenges. In order to allow essential operations to continue, many employers have had to utilize contingency and crisis strategies that are ordinarily not compliant with OSHA’s Respiratory Protection standard.
A partnership between OSHA and Brasfield & Gorrie LLC seeks to prevent worker exposure to hazards during a stadium construction project.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has established a strategic partnership with Brasfield & Gorrie LLC to promote worker safety and health at the Protective Stadium project site in Birmingham, Alabama. The University of Alabama Safe State Consultation Program is also a signatory to this agreement and provides full support to ensuring worker safety.
The partnership seeks to prevent injuries and exposure to hazards during construction of a new 45,000-seat, open-air stadium. Under the agreement, the partners will focus on the use of personal protective equipment; heat illness prevention; fire protection and prevention; and hazards related to falls, struck-by and caught-in/between objects, electrical, hand and power tools, silica, lead and noise. The partners will also encourage contractors to develop and implement safety and health programs, and provide safety and health training to employees, employers and supervisors.
OSHA consultants helped a countertop manufacturer reduce worker exposure to crystalline silica.
In August 2018, Missouri On-Site Safety and Health Consultation conducted an initial visit at the request of a stone countertop manufacturer in Fenton, Missouri. The facility wanted to have a better understanding of OSHA’s new respirable crystalline silica standard and evaluate employee exposure to the material. Initial sampling performed by consultants found employees’ exposure to silica below the former permissible exposure limit (PEL), but above the PEL and Action Level (AL) in the new regulation. Determining the reasons for the overexposure was difficult because the employer had implemented engineering controls and modified work procedures to reduce exposure.
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