Last week, the Natio
nal Safety Council (NSC), in its annual Congress and Expo, unveiled this year’s initial top 10 most cited OSHA violations where Scaffolding still leads with 9,093 violations, up by 2,066 from last year. Fall protection goes a notch higher from its previous position with 1,974 more violations; while hazard communication comes to a lower place but still with more violations than that of last year’s. Respiratory protection, lockout/tagout, and electrical (wiring) stays at number four, five and six respectively. All three gained more violations too. Ladders, powered industrial trucks, electrical (general), and machine guarding shifted positions in the last four slots. According to Richard Fairfax, director of OSHA’s directorate of enforcement programs, these standards in the top 10 are fairly consistent from year to year to year.
Here’s the list with their corresponding number of violations:
|
Most Cited Violations (2009) |
Number of Violations |
| Scaffolding | 9,093 |
| Fall Protection | 6,771 |
| Hazard Communication | 6,378 |
| Respiratory Protection | 3,803 |
| Lockout/Tagout | 3,321 |
| Electrical (Wiring) | 3,079 |
| Ladders | 3,072 |
| Powered Industrial Trucks | 2,993 |
| Electrical (General) | 2,556 |
| Machine Guarding | 2,364 |
Janet Froetscher, NSC President and CEO, said that the number of violations gives new resolve in raising awareness about the importance of having sound safety procedures.
The data above shows an almost 30% increase from last year’s list:
|
Most Cited Violations (2008) |
Number of Violations |
| Scaffolding | 7,027 |
| Hazard Communication | 4,973 |
| Fall Protection | 4,797 |
| Respiratory Protection | 3,062 |
| Lockout/Tagout | 2,937 |
| Electrical (Wiring) | 2,524 |
| Powered Industrial Trucks | 2,437 |
| Machine Guarding (General) | 2,138 |
| Ladders | 2,135 |
| Electrical (General) |
In September of last year, The Safety Blog came out with a post on OSHA’s top 10 most cited violations for 2008. Included in the post are links to materials, resources and articles that can help companies from committing such violations. Click here if you want to refer to that post.
The final report on 2009’s most cited violations will be published by the end of the year.
It is amazing to see how those numbers are up. I know OSHA has been getting much more aggressive with fining business who don’t take the necessary precautions.
In actual fact, I don’t think it’s amazing that the numbers sre up. What’s happened is that the economic crisis has led to a lot of cost cutting and which has resulted in more violations
It’s interesting that unsafe scaffolding use is the most common violation, and not improper use of power tools or dangerous materials.
Can anyone tell me if OSHA breaks these violations down any further? Meaning, do they list what specifically prompted the violation of the scaffolding standard or the Hazcom standard etc. I believe this type of information would be helpful for companies trying to make positive changes in their safety programs.
Hi Trevor. There seems to be no information on what specifically prompted the violations. However, if we will look into OSHA’s website page on Most Frequently Cited Standards, we will see that each item has a link to the Safety and Health Topics page which partly talks about what causes injuries and how they can be controlled. Most probably, if companies are cited for violations, they are not complying with OSHA regulations in these specific areas.
Well if it is any help on locating somethings about what they cited the most it does NOT go into a lot of detail but it does help on what needs attention on the job site! Ok go to osha.gov, on the left side of the screen, go down to statistics. a side bar will apear click on inspection data. Scrol down to frequently cited osha standards. Just click on submit, I dont think it matters what number of empolyees are on the job site. Anyways then just click on what division you want or are involed in, in my case division “C” construction.