Although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) record keeping rules exempt employers with 10 employees or less from recording non-serious work injuries and illnesses, all employers of any size must comply with all applicable OSHA regulations to ensure The safety of its employees. “All applicable OSHA regulations” refer to federal OSHA regulations or “state plan” OSHA regulations. Currently, 22 states have obtained OSHA approval to manage their own worker safety and health programs. These state plans apply to private sector companies, including small businesses, as well as state and local governments.
OSHA does not require single-person small business owners (without employees) to comply with their rules for employers. However, these small business owners should still comply with applicable regulations to ensure their safety at work.
For example, wearing respiratory protection when handling hazardous materials or toxic chemicals, using fall protection when working at heights, or wearing hearing protection when working in a noisy environment is not just for companies with employees. These protective measures are also conducive to single-person operation. In any type of workplace, there is always the possibility of workplace accidents, and compliance with OSHA regulations helps to minimize this possibility.
In particular, OSHA estimates that compliance with Lockout/Tagout (usually represented by its acronym LOTO) can save approximately 120 lives each year and prevent approximately 50,000 injuries each year. Therefore, in almost every year that OSHA publishes the list, non-compliance with the regulations continues to be the top 10 list of OSHA’s most violating regulations.
OSHA’s federal and state lockout/tagout regulations detail the protective measures implemented by employers to prevent accidental activation of machines and equipment due to human error or residual energy during repair and maintenance.
To prevent accidental startup, the energy of those machines and equipment deemed “dangerous” are “locked” with actual locks and “marked” with actual tags after the machine or equipment is powered off. OSHA defines “hazardous energy” as any energy that may cause danger to employees, including but not limited to electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, and thermal energy. These protective measures should also be used by small business owners operated by one person.
Small business owners may ask: “What will go wrong?” Consider the crushing accident that occurred at the Barcardi Bottling Corp. plant in Jacksonville, Florida in August 2012. Barcardi Bottling Corp. is obviously not a small company, but many small companies have exactly the same processes and operations as large companies. The company has, such as automatic palletizing. A temporary employee at the Bacardi factory was cleaning the automatic palletizer on the first day of work. The machine was accidentally started by another employee who did not see the temporary employee, and the temporary employee was crushed to death by the machine.
Except for squeezing accidents, failure to use LOTO protection measures may cause thermal burn accidents, resulting in serious injuries and deaths. Lack of LOTO control of electrical energy can lead to serious electric shock injuries and death from electrocution. Uncontrolled mechanical energy can cause amputation, which can also be fatal. The list of “What will go wrong?” is unlimited. Using LOTO protection measures can save many lives and prevent many injuries.
When deciding how to best implement LOTO and other protective measures, small businesses and large companies always consider time and cost. Some people may wonder “Where do I start?”
For small businesses, there is actually a free option to start implementing protective measures, whether it is a one-person operation or an employee operation. Both OSHA’s federal and state planning offices provide free assistance in determining potential and actual hazardous conditions in the workplace. They also provide suggestions on how to solve these problems. A local security consultant is another option to help. Many offer low-cost prices for small businesses.
A common misunderstanding about workplace accidents is “it will never happen to me.” For this reason, accidents are called accidents. They are unexpected, and most of the time they are unintentional. However, even in small businesses, accidents do happen. Therefore, small business owners should always adopt protective measures such as LOTO to ensure the safety of their operations and processes.
This may require cost and time, but working safely ensures that customers get their products and services when they need it. Most importantly, working safely ensures that business owners and employees can go home safely at the end of the working day. The benefits of safe work far outweigh the money and time spent implementing protective measures.
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Post time: Aug-14-2021