The agency offers advice on how to protect workers from the cold. Also, OSHA has made executives accountable for injury logs and delayed two recordkeeping requirements.

OSHA Helps Workers Stay Warm

As the country endures one of the harshest winters in recent memory, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is urging workers and employers to take necessary precautions. Among those who particularly need protection are workers in construction, commercial fishing, maritime and agriculture.

Employees who are exposed to freezing or cold temperatures for long periods of time can develop serious health problems, including trench foot, frostbite and hypothermia. Extreme cold exposure, such as immersion in icy water, can even cause death.

To help protect workers, OSHA is offering a Cold Stress Card, a quick reference guide with recommendations on how to keep workers warm and safe. Employers, workers and the general public can get this laminated fold-up card, which comes in English and Spanish, for free. Here are some of the tips:

To obtain free copies of OSHA’s Cold Stress Card in English or Spanish, go to http://www.osha.gov, or call 1-800-321-OSHA.

OSHA Changes Recordkeeping Guidelines

To properly maintain your OSHA injury log, you have to be aware of one new accountability provision and two delayed requirements.

First the new provision…Starting this month, OSHA is requiring that all covered employers get a company executive to certify the annual record of work-related injuries and illnesses. This means that an executive must provide a written certification that he or she has studied the injury summary and found it to be true, accurate and complete.

As for the two delayed requirements, they include a provision requiring employers to record musculoskeletal disorders in a separate column and a provision mandating that hearing loss cases be listed in a separate column as well—both of which have been postponed until 2004.

Instead of a previously planned Jan. 1, 2003 implementation, the agency is postponing a requirement to report musculoskeletal disorders in a separate column in the injury log. OSHA says it will decide whether to go through with the provision at all this year and also whether to define what qualifies as a “musculoskeletal” disorder. In the past, OSHA has said that no single definition of an ergonomics-related injury is appropriate for every situation.

Employers must still include ergonomics-related injuries in the OSHA log, along with other work-related injuries and illnesses. Critics claim, however, that not listing musculoskeletal disorders as a separate category will make monitoring them difficult.

OSHA is more definite about the postponed requirement that calls for employers to record hearing loss cases in a separate column. The agency says it will definitely implement this requirement.

As for the executive accountability provision that went into effect on Feb. 1, 2003, it stipulates that if an executive fails to properly certify the company’s injury summary, the company can be slapped with fines and may be subject to increased penalties for any errors the agency spots. An executive could also be personally liable for false statements.

Prior to the new provision, OSHA asked for certification only from the person who actually maintained the injury log throughout the year. This individual is nearly always a safety or human resources employee, not an executive.

The new law states that a company “executive” can be defined as 1) a company owner only if the company is a sole proprietorship or partnership, 2) a company officer, 3) the highest-ranking person working at the site and 4) the direct supervisor of the highest-ranking person working at the establishment.

The new provision requires executives, who most probably know little about safety requirements, to learn the new criteria for recognizing what represents a recordable injury or illness. The regulation asserts that the executive must reasonably believe that the injury log is accurate, based on his or her knowledge of how the injury information was recorded.

OSHA has implied that at a minimum, executives must familiarize themselves with the agency’s recordkeeping requirements, the company’s recordkeeping process and the injury summary itself.

These guidelines, however, leave many questions hanging such as, how knowledgeable should an executive be to be considered “familiar” with complicated recordability criteria? Also, do executives have to determine whether particular injuries should have been included in the log?

Until these issues have been clarified, covered employers should not be afraid to be too careful. At a minimum, covered employers should make sure the designated executives get adequate education and training to learn OSHA’s new recordkeeping criteria and to use this knowledge in certifying the company’s injury log.

Sources: OSHA Offers Tips to Protect Workers in Cold Environments
OSHA News Release, Jan. 23, 2003
http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=NEWS_RELEASES&p_id=9993&p_text_version=FALSE

OSHA Delays Mandate on Ergonomics Cases
Kent Hoover
Baltimore Business Journal, Jan. 6, 2003
http://baltimore.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2003/01/06/smallb2.html

OSHA Boards Executive Accountability Ship
Mike Muskat
Houston Business Journal, Jan. 6, 2003
http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2003/01/06/editorial3.html