Pressed Paperboard Technologies, LLC has been cited by the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration for nine safety and health violations. These violations consist of two willful violations, five serious safety violations, and two serious health violations. OSHA has proposed $81,450 in fines as a result of these citations.
“Pressed Paperboard Technologies has a responsibility to protect workers from electrical hazards at work,” said Kim Nelson, OSHA’s area director in Toledo. “These hazards expose workers to the dangers of arc flash, electric shock and electrocution. Employers must train workers to work safely with electricity.”
The two willful violations resulted from a lack of adequate training for employees working on energized electrical equipment and a lack of adequate personal protective equipment.
The five serious safety violations include failing to develop machine-specific procedures to prevent accidental startup or movement of machine parts that can cause injury; not training workers in lockout/tagout procedures when conducting maintenance on machinery; failing to disconnect electrical panels from all energy sources prior to conducting maintenance work; inadequate machine guarding on milling machines; and failing to test electrical personal protective equipment every six months.
The two serious health violations involve exposing workers to explosion and fire hazards while working near an indoor dust collector that lacked a means of explosion protection, and failing to establish and implement a written respiratory protection program.
As you can see, these violations cross several fields from lockout/tagout to arc flash to respiratory protection. When OSHA comes to audit a facility, the auditor does not focus in only on the incident which prompted the audit. The auditor will do a full facility audit, and will find every safety violation in your facility. For this reason, it is important to implement routine third party safety audits to ensure there are no vulnerabilities in your safety and health management system.
If you have any questions relating to third party safety audits or your safety and health management system, please contact us so that we can help ensure your company is up to code with all things OSHA. And if you have anything to add about this OSHA investigation or about third party safety audits, please leave a comment.
