Workplace inspection

Under this act, the Department of Labor sets safety standards, inspects workplaces, and sets penalties for violations. This act also established the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to develop and establish health standards. 

OSHA is charged with investigating catastrophes and fatalities in the workplace, inspecting workplaces, and establishing new safety and health standards and penalties. 

OSHA has a heavy burden investigating catastrophes and fatalities, establishing standards and penalties, and inspecting workplaces. That agency shifts some of its burden on the employer and employee. 

Recommends New Standards Establishes Standards Penalties Inspects Workplaces Conducts Hearings on Contested Issues Assesses Penalties, Conducts... 

A system for inspecting workplace precautions is essential in any proactive monitoring programme. On many occasions it can form part of an organisation s arrangements for the planned preventive maintenance of plant (e.g. electrical maintenance and testing) and equipment (e.g. flashback arresters for oxy/fuel systems) which are also covered by legal requirements. 

OSHA sets the health and safety standards that employers must meet to be considered in compliance with the act and it enforces those standards by inspecting workplaces in private industry and citing conditions that fail to meet the requirements. 

These new officials are empowered to inspect workplaces, check machinery and equipment, collect evidence, and interview relevant persons to verily the working environment of a company. Safety inspectors can order employers to improve working conditions, or repair or stop the use of unsafe or dangerons machinery or eqnipment. 

Walk-through survey An examination or inspection of a workplace involving a review of hazardous materials present and/or used, observation of work practices, and consversations with individuals to identify all of the actual or potential chemical, physical, biological, and ergonomic hazards. 

OSHA IMIS Records of workplace inspections, including those prompted by accidents where a worker is injured 1984-Present Information from OSHA field inspections, a third party More accurate description of impacts on employees and contractors Keyword indexing allows for easy search and retrieval Not comprehensive, limited to incidents selected by OSHA Inspections without abstracts cannot be keyword searched causal information unavailable Designed to assist compliance enforcement, not to report on incident causes Limited information from State-Plan states Not designed to be a lessons-leamed database... 

Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) of 1970 provides the Department of Labor authority to set comprehensive workplace safety and health standards, including permissible exposures to chemicals in the workplace, and authority to conduct inspections and issue citations for violations of safety and health regulations. 

OSHA is entrusted with the major responsibility for workplace safety and workers health (Wang, 1994). It is responsible for the means by which chemicals are contained (TPG, 1995) through the inspection of workplaces to ensure compliance and enforcement of applicable standards under OSHA. It is also the means by which guidelines have evolved for the destruction of chemicals used in chemical laboratories (Lunn and Sansone, 1994 Studt, 1995). 

How, Then, Does OSHA Issue So Many Citations To support a citation, a compliance officer must demonstrate with a high degree of confidence that at least one employee was exposed above the standard on the day of the inspection. Assuming that day-to-day variability in exposures is approximately equal to the worker-to-worker variability on the day of the inspection, then 1t would be possible, in principle, for a compliance officer to collect n statistically independent samples. Under these conditions, the probability that the workplace will be found in compliance is equal to the probability that all n samples are less than the AL. Let Pn(OK) represent the probability of compliance after n samples are collected and P(0K) represent the probability that a single sample is less than AL. Then one has ... 

Figure 6 shows the decision contours for a compliance officer who takes six statistically independent samples during an inspection. Table IV lists the decision probabilities for each of our nine sample workplaces. Clearly, collecting more samples increases the probability of demonstrating noncompliance and decreases the probability of demonstrating compliance. 

Occupational health personnel should familiarize themselves with the workplace, inspect it regularly, know the jobs and their potential hazards, and make recommendations for mitigating hazardous situations. 

After an OSHA inspection of the workplace, the investigator(s) will review the evidence gathered via documents, interviews, and observations. If the OSHA inspector believes there has been a violation of a standard, he can use a standard citation form that identifies the site inspected, the date, the type of violation, a description of the violation, the proposed penalty, and other requirements. The citation must be issued within the first six months after the alleged violation occurred. 

The Swedish Work Environment Authority (SWEA) and the Swedish Chemicals Inspectorate (SCI) are, thus, two enforcement authorities that work with environmental issues, though in different respects. The Swedish Work Environment Authority focuses on factors that have an impact on the mental, social and physical health and well-being of employees, while the Swedish Chemicals Inspectorate focuses on factors that influence toxic levels in nature and thereby both directly and indirectly the health and well-being of human beings as well. While SWEA s activity is dominated by inspections of workplaces in public and private organisations, inspections play only a minor role in the activities of SCI. See Table 18.1 for further differences between the authorities. 

The Hazardous Products Act. (R.S., 1985, c. H-3) This act prohibits advertising, sale, and import of hazardous products. It requires Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) labels and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for chemicals. It also allows inspection of facilities for compliance. 

The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHAct) is administered and enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Both OSH A and OSHAct were created in December 1970, the same month the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) was created. Unlike the US EPA, OSHA is essentially an enforcement organization and most of its employees are inspectors who perform thousands of workplace inspections per year it is a division of the Department of Labor. The OSHAct assures, as far as possible, that all working men or women have risk-free working environments and imposes on employers the obligation to provide employees with workplaces that are free from recognized health and safety hazards and to maintain compliance with specific OSHA standards. 

Your employer is legally responsible for providing a safe workplace and should freely answer your questions about hazardous chemicals. Your OSHA-approved state occupational safety and health program or OSHA can also answer any further questions you might have, and help your employer identify and correct problems with hazardous substances. If you would like to make a formal complaint about health hazards in your workplace, your OSHA-approved state occupational safety and health program or OSHA office will listen to your complaint and inspect your workplace when necessary. 

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