OSHA: Requirements Change for Reporting Fatalities and Severe Injuries

 

Under the revised rule, employers will be required to notify OSHA of work-related fatalities within 8 hours, and work-related in-patient hospitalizations, amputations or losses of an eye within 24 hours. Previously, OSHA’s regulations required an employer to report only work-related fatalities and in-patient hospitalizations of three or more employees. Reporting single hospitalizations, amputations or loss of an eye was not required under the previous rule.

The final rule was announced by OSHA on September 11. The rule also updates the list of employers partially exempt from OSHA recordkeeping requirements.

This new, final rule enters into effect January 1, 2015. Link here to pre-publication text of final rule. After publication, the final rule can be accessed from here or through the Federal Register website.

In a final rule posted in the Federal Register on September 11, OSHA has also updated the list of industries that, because of relatively low occupational injury and illness rates, are exempt from the requirement to routinely keep injury and illness records. The rule will go into effect January 1, 2015, for workplaces under federal OSHA jurisdiction.

Regardless, all employers covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act, even those who are exempt from maintaining injury and illness records, are required to comply with OSHA’s new severe injury and illness reporting requirements.

OSHA’s web page on the revised rule. 

Originally posted on PMPAspeakingofprecision.com blog.