The following guest post was written by Fositi Marie Athey of OSHAcampus.com
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a final rule on reporting illnesses and injuries, as well as an updated list on recordkeeping requirements in the workplace. The final rule will take effect on January 1, 2015.
Under OSHA’s revised recordkeeping rule includes two major changes:
“Under the revised rule, employers will be required to notify OSHA of work-related fatalities within eight hours, and work-related in-patient hospitalizations, amputations or losses of an eye within 24 hours,” OSHA reports. OSHA’s previous regulations only required employers to report workplace fatalities and in-patient hospitalizations of three or more employees. It also did not require reporting any amputations, loss of an eye or single hospitalizations.
All employers covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act, are required to comply with OSHA’s new severe injury and illness reporting requirements. OSHA is currently developing reporting options via a Web portal, as well as over the phone.
Also updated are the list of industries that are exempt from the requirement to regularly keep injury and illness records because of traditionally low occupational injury and illness rates. The new rule uses the North American Industry Classification System, and injury and illness data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) from 2007, 2008, and 2009. The previous list was based on the old Standard Industrial Classification system. According to OSHA, the new rule will maintain exemptions for any employer, in spite of their industry classification, with 10 or less number of employees, from the requirement to routinely keep records of worker injuries and illnesses.
“OSHA will now receive crucial reports of fatalities and severe work-related injuries and illnesses that will significantly enhance the agency’s ability to target our resources to save lives and prevent further injury and illness. This new data will enable the agency to identify the workplaces where workers are at the greatest risk and target our compliance assistance and enforcement resources accordingly,” said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, Dr. David Michaels.
The pronouncement trails the preliminary results from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2013 National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.
About the Author:
Fositi Marie Athey has been with OSHAcampus.com since 2012 as the company’s Occupational Health and Safety Technologist. She earned her degree in Environmental Health and Safety Technology from the _Texas State Technical College_. Marie has over 15 years of industry experience in Occupational Health and Safety having worked for various US companies in construction and general industries.
