Safety Legislation barely reduces workplace accidents?

Presentations given at this years Safety Leadership Conference highlighted some alarming statistics about accidents in the workplace in the United States.

Firstly, 21 amputations occur every day! Equating to 7990 loss off limbs per year!! Exactly what Lockout Tagout procedures are designed to prevent.

And despite all the standards of safe working practice, and legal obligations with consequential fines and prosecutions, and conscientious work by health and safety practitioners, in the past 20 years there’s been only a decrease of deaths in the workplace by 1.5 per year. It’s obvious that despite all this, there’s still a compelling reason that workers put themselves in danger.

According to George Schuster of Rockwell Automation, it’s “Alternative Protective Measures” (APM’s). He suggests that workers see lockout tagout practices are simply  stopping them from getting on with their jobs. Reference was made to OSHA’s recently update standard for lockout tagout. In it, ground work is laid for APM’s for exactly this kind of scenario. In Paragraph 1910.147(a)(2)(ii)(8) it uses the example of a tool change during normal production operations stating these are not covered by the LOTO standard.

Schuster highlights that APM’s are for very specific tasks in very specific areas. APM’s should not be a general ‘get out’ clause to avoid safe working practices and ultimately avoid prosecution. Remember, if you’re working safely it’s likely you’re compliant. But if you’re working compliantly, you’re not necessarily safe!

You can read more about this in detail here.