2017-09-26 | Safety+Health Magazine: The preliminary list of OSHA’s Top 10 violations for Fiscal Year 2017 remained largely unchanged from FY 2016, except for one new addition: Fall Protection – Training Requirements (1926.503) entered the list at No. 9 with 1,523 violations, just ahead of Electrical – Wiring Methods (1,405 violations). The entire list was revealed during the 2017 National Safety Council’s Congress & Expo.
5 comments:
I wonder how this list would look if one were made specifically for theater. I think ladder safety and respiratory protection would move higher up the list, whereas things like scaffolding wouldn’t apply. Honestly, I think ladder safety would probably be the top of the list if the focus were just on theater. I’ve seen a lot of people do a lot of stupid things on ladders (mostly involving standing on the top step, but also as extreme as attaching a ladder to the basket of a lift with ratchet straps and then climbing a ladder in a lift) and most of the really bad theater injuries I’ve heard of happening to people I know (or people that people I know know) have been falls of a ladder, particularly extension ladders. As for respirators, we do a lot of things where we should use them (such as cutting MDF) but we very often don’t, and when we do I think we as a industry tend to not make sure we are using the right kind. In general I feel like the theater industry tends to be a bit more lax about safety than a lot of other industries, but changing the culture to fix that is easier said than done.
I can’t say I'm surprised at all that improper fall arrest violations are top on this list. I can think of numerous times where I have thought, “really? I need a harness for this?” and when you are out on a job site and time is of the essence, I am sure that the “really?” turns into “I’m not doing that.” Fall arrest is one of those things that is only helpful is something goes wrong and people assume all the time that nothing will go wrong. Sure a lot of these things on the list in the article area just protection against if you do something wrong, but fall arrest seems like overkill to a lot of people. You are standing on the top of some rafters, you are on a sheet of plywood - you aren’t going to fall. The fact of the matter is if you do trip by accident, instead of bruising a knee like you would on the ground, you would fall 30’. I am surprised by the order of this list however. I would think machine guarding violations would be more common as I see those modified a lot and that lockout/tag out violations would be less common as those are typically used in obviously dangerous environments and can often be hard to get around.
While the content of the list really doesn't surprise me (just about every one in theater uses ladders wrong to just get a job done) what does truely astound and sadden me is that the list doesn't really see any real changes to it. There is no more saddening quote than that of "One thing I’ve said before in the past on this is, this list doesn’t change too much from year to year. These things are readily fixable,” said by Kapust. The reason that this is so saddening is the fact that it feels as if even he knows that these are relatively easy changes which could save live he knows a lot of his efforts are like screaming into the void. We really need to make so effort to try to improve the safety in our workplaces because like I said above it could save careers or lives, but eh maybe I'm just screaming into the void too.
It will never surprise me that fall protection violations are on the top of the list. I do think that this illustrates the larger issue that it isn’t just in our industry that people ignore the need of fall protection. The number of times I have been with people and they have not used fall protection, or I have said “I’m fine” and stepped onto the top step of the ladder, are far too many to count. The fact that it can often be one of the easiest violations and one of the quickest problems to create is in part caused by the lax industry and the lack of previously established safety systems in older spaces that we work in. This is also flanked by the fact that a lot of places we go often weren’t meant to be gotten to and classify as leading-edge work which falls in a gray place depending on what and where we are doing the work.
Everything on this list (except Powered Industrial Trucks regulation) is something we have a problem with at Carnegie Mellon. I have seen so many people do so many stupid things (anything involving heights is especially common) in the name of saving time. Every department has someone who carries the “accident don’t happen to me” mentality. How many times have I seen people standing on the top of a ladder (March is Ladder Safety Month, by the way)? We have harnesses that we aren’t trained on. We straddle railings. Take a walk through 33 any day to witness a violation of Respiratory Protection regulations. The culture needs to change. It is not acceptable to risk any part of your health for a show, project, or the sake of saving time. It is worse to put the life of another at risk for a show. I know that students are supposed to graduate with an OSHA 30 training. We have no excuse. Be safe and follow the rules.
Post a Comment