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A new OSHA program targets the nation’s most hazardous workplaces for special attention, including additional inspections. One of those inspections at an Ohio foundry recently set the company back more than $200,000 in fines.

The Quincy Castings, Inc. inspection was conducted under a new OSHA program called the Site-Specific Targeting Initiative. That program specifically targets employers with the highest number of injury and illnesses cases, in an attempt to improve the nation’s most hazardous workplaces.  

This is just the most recent in a series of investigations of worker safety violations by OSHA. The federal worker safety organization found that Quincy Castings, Inc. of   Quincy Ohio committed 24 serious violations and 4 repeat violations. In this case, OSHA extracted fines of $220,620. Quincy Castings, Inc. is an iron foundry that employs 80 people.

OSHA had previous inspected the company 13 times since 1979. Those inspections resulted in a total of 80 citations.

OSHA found a number of violations at the foundry that are classified as “willful,” meaning the company was aware that they posed a hazard to employees and intentionally chose to disregard them. These “willful” violations include not providing safety guards around sand preparation machinery and rotating equipment. Other “willful” violations include not regulating compressed air used for cleaning and exposing multiple employees to dangerously high levels of crystalline silica.

One of OSHA’s findings is likely to be unpopular, at least with some male employees. According to OSHA inspectors, the company failed to provide respirators or to train employees in their use. Inspectors noted several employees with facial hair that made respirators useless. According to OSHA, the employer should introduce a policy prohibiting facial hair for employees.  It wasn’t clear if this rule should apply to every employee, or only those required to wear respirators.

A total of 24 violations were deemed “serious” by the OSHA inspectors. These include the failure to use protective gear and especially flame-retardant clothing by employees who were actively pouring molten metal. The situation was made even more dangerous because the pouring ladles and spreader bars had no capacity labels on them, while hoist hooks were missing the required safety latches.

The company left a defective forklift in service, although nationwide forklifts are involved in more injuries than any other type of industrial equipment. Inspectors also noted that a bridge crane had no brakes, and that it was not being inspected daily, as required.

A defective fire exit sign which had been identified on a previous OSHA inspection was still not repaired. In addition, emergency fire exits were blocked, making it likely that employees would perish unnecessarily in the event of a fire.

Lock-out violations were noted in the inspection, as well. Again, this was a problem that had been identified in previous inspections but never corrected by the company.

The company failed to provide an effective respiratory protection program and failed to provide medical monitoring for employees who suffered from excessive exposure to crystalline silica.

This is just the latest example of a series of high-profile OHSA cases that recently netted hefty fines. In another case in Ohio, a Lorain steel mill operated by Republic Engineered Products, Inc.  was fined $163,000 for 17 violations following a fatal accident.  Inspectors expanded the investigation throughout the plant when they found widespread violations, including elevated work platforms with no guard rails.

In a third case out of the Atlanta OSHA office, a manufacturing company out of Dalton Georgia was cited for 11 serious violations after a fire that killed one employee. Columbia Recycling employees 288 people to reprocess textile remnants. 

This is just the most recent in a number of large fines to companies that OSHA has levied. In 2006, the agency conducted more than 38,000 inspections in 28 states resulting in nearly 84,000 violations. OSHA’s mission is to “assure the safety and health of America’s working men and women by preventing injuries, illnesses and fatalities.” As always, companies have several weeks to dispute OSHA’s findings and appeal the penalties.

 

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