After a serious accident at your company, you’ll need to make an official incident report to OSHA, which will signal that you need an investigation. In May of this year, a Clarion Sintered Metals, Inc. employee crushed his leg while loading cardboard into a trash compactor. After an OSHA investigator came by to inspect the worksite, they found 30 serious violations and 7 other-than-serious ones.
Most egregiously, the company did not provide any emergency stop buttons for the compactor during the loading and unloading processes, meaning that the amputation would have been entirely avoidable. OSHA issued $74,000 in fines to Clarion Sintered Metals to cover
Proper self-inspections could have prevented this tragedy. If Clarion had conducted a full test of their safety programs, they might have noticed some of the more serious violations and taken steps to make their workspace less hazardous.
“Because Clarion Sintered Metals failed to take action to protect its employees and correct unsafe conditions at its plant, a worker needlessly suffered the loss of a limb. Through effective use of machine guarding and employer provided worker training on how to do the job safely, this incident could have been prevented,” said Theresa A. Naim, OSHA’s area director in Erie.”
Worker training is a key part of maintaining a safe workspace and another issue that a routine self-inspection would have picked up. Safety software can help to maintain records and send reminders of when you’ll need to check in on your safety programming. Hopefully you will never have to experience a serious accident like this in your own company, but their unfortunate incidents should serve as an example of what dangers come with neglecting safety and inspection procedures.
