Don’t Make These Mistakes! OSHAs Top Violations

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is an agency of The United States Department of Labor. The OSH Act created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sets and enforces protective workplace safety and health standards. Although OSHA tries its hardest to protect employees, thousands of violations still occur each year.

Today, we will explore OSHAs top violations for fiscal year 2016. While the categories change very little from year to year, OSHA provides a number of statistics to better help employers and employees.

To no surprise, Fall Protection once again maintained the top spot, with OSHA making 6,929 citations during fiscal year 2016. That's up from 6,721 in 2015. Fall Protection has been the number one citation for six years in a row now. Hazard Communication and Scaffolding repeated as the second and third-most cited violations, with HazCom registering nearly 500 more citations than a year ago. Across all top ten categories, OSHA has issued 35,000 citations last fiscal year. This is over 95 citations a day!

Below are the top ten OSHA violations:

1. Fall Protection- 6,929 citations (Up 208 from 2015)
2. Hazard Communication- 5,677 citations (Up 485 from 2015)
3. Scaffolds- 3,906 citations (Down 389 from 2015)
4. Respiratory Protection- 3,585 citations (Up 280 from 2015)
5. Lockout/Tagout- 3,414 citations (Up 412 from 2015)
6. Powered Industrial Trucks- 2,860 citations (Up 100 from 2015)
7. Ladders- 2,639 citations (Up 150 from 2015)
8. Machine Guarding- 2,451 citations (Up 156 from 2015)
9. Electrical Wiring- 1,940 citations (Down 464 from 2015)
10. Electrical, General Requirements- 1,704 citations (Down 269 from 2015)

While many of these categories are unfortunately up in citations from 2015, there are some that saw a decrease in violations. These include Scaffolds, Electrical Wiring, and other General Electrical Requirements.

Remember to ask yourself could these violations occur on my job-site or workplace? Is the answer is yes, ask yourself another question- How do you overcome these common mishaps and maintain a safe work environment?  

As a leading temporary power and lighting company, Ericson offers a number of products and solutions that assist in reducing job-site hazards. However, my goal is not to sit here and tell you how great we are (even though I think we are) but enforce the importance of job-site safety. OSHA code is to protect your workers and remember that those workers could also be your own family, from your father to your brother, working a construction jobsite or wiring a panel. Electrical safety is our top priority and we encourage you to understand research and commit to worksite safety.

Hopefully next year, all of these categories can decrease in the number of citations!