Safety Wars
Safety Wars Live 7-25-2024 Painting Contractor Fatality and Safety
And this is Jim from Safety Wars. Before we start the program, I want to make sure everyone understands that we often talk about OSHA and EPA citations, along with some other regulatory actions from other agencies, legal cases and criminal activity. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Proposed fines are exactly that, and they are often litigated, reduced, or vacant. We use available public records and news accounts and press releases. We cannot warranty or guarantee the details of any of the stories we share, since we are not directly involved with these stories, at least not most of the time. Enjoy the show. And from the border of Liberty and Prosperity in the highway to North, it's Jim Palsill with Safety Wars. For Draw, Thursday, July 25th, 2000, and 24. How's everybody doing out there? Tell you what, I got a lot of comments on last night show. So, they went along these lines. We should not be applying human and organizational performance stuff to the whole situation with the Secret Service. Well, I tell you what, I disagree with this. We need to get to the bottom of things and then figure out what to do with that. I have a feeling that the, what happened to President Trump a couple of weeks ago, not going to happen again. I'm sure that they are at the top of their game and they're very focused on what they're going to do. Number one, number two, we want to get more information. We do not have contacts. Hopefully by the end of a couple of weeks, hopefully it's not going to go on for too long. We'll be able to go in here and figure out what happened. And if someone has to be let go, they need to be let go. I don't know, but that's not our first thing. The second question I got on the program from yesterday was, "What ever happened to the employee that sort of like got wrongfully fired there?" Well, he went on a downward spiral and died shortly thereafter, about a year and a half after. All right, with that, just never recovered from the whole thing. And that's what happened. That is why we do not go out there and automatically fire someone. We automatically, well, we're going to make them play and we're going to go out there and the blame, shame, and retrain them. We don't do that. Now, I'm going to, we're going to be discussing at length today. And this is probably for your safety FM listeners, we'll be going over the hour here. This is focused to anybody who has to deal with industrial painters. As you know, and I, as you may know, might not know, whatever, I worked with industrial painters for the majority of my career as clients, right? And as a direct employee, a direct hire. So we, I know a lot about painting. I'm not going to be one after saying, I'm the expert, not an expert. Painting and you're just so difficult, you go out there, you mix the paint, what's the big deal? A lot more, too, within that, with that. So before I start with the whole thing, I want to go over and I'm going to do a sure-scream here. I'm on the other platform here. I'm not good enough with the one I was using yesterday, but we're getting there. We're getting there. I wanted to talk about this. And these are the shared, the proposed penalties from OSHA. All right, so we always talk about this. I have a video I'm working on that explains this, or a little snippet type of thing, like you heard on the General Duty Clause just now, right? I'm using ads that cut in, so they'll let things know, because when I hit live, depending on what platform I'm on, there's a little bit of a delay, so I want to put something in there with that. So here, and yeah, I'm going to be small for this one, right? I'm all the way down at the bottom, so those people actually looking on a computer screen will be able to see this a little bit better. So these are the penalties here. So for willful violation, you're looking at $161,323, maximum and a minimum of $11,524. Repeat violation not to exceed $161,323, that's $161,323. Serious violation is $16,131. Failure to correct for $16,131 per day, but they usually put a limit on there, and there is a penalty for not posting this. We also have the minimis penalties, which are usually zero. With that, no, they get lumped in together, and under OSHA's current policy, as I understand it, they're able to find a lot more out of her instance basis. That was one of the changes that the Biden administration had put into place when they came in here, so it could get really expensive really quick. As we see, if you're a regular listener or viewer out here, it's expensive out there. Now, I go through, now what annoys me a little bit is that the Department of Labor OSHA side of the aisle, OSHA side, they're a little bit behind on news releases. The Department of Labor gives press releases really regularly every day. Something comes out, a lot of them have to deal with OSHA and safety, so a lot of them don't. If I find it interesting, I normally will discuss them. Now, back in, and I'm going to say this again, everyone is innocent until they're proven guilty, and a lot of these citations are proposed that we talk about here. Remember, you have 15 days to contest a citation, then, a proposed citation, then it becomes permanent, but a lot of these, once you have an informal settlement, you may have some litigation, you may have any number of situations that may lead to these things being reduced, and a couple of cases I know where they were increased because you're negotiating, "Hey, you knock that one off, and we're willing to pay more for this one." Or no, they get vacated, litigated, settled, all different types of stuff. So these are all the proposed. The second thing is this, I try to avoid naming companies unless it's something so obvious that I have to name companies and name names. So I'm going to be referring to this company as a contractor. Now, I'm reading off of the dailyvoice.com and for Ocean County, New Jersey. This is some of the context for what we're talking about today. So let me say this again. If you are an industrial painting contractor, this is a show for you. If you know of an industrial painting contractor, send this on over to him or her, right? If you are doing training for an industrial contractor, get an industrial painting contractor, this is it. If you're managing them, this is also the program for this. Now, this usually happens with one of my clients, and I'll just share the story briefly. I work for a general contractor, and the general contractor, also known as a controlling contractor for ocean purposes, and the contractor, they hire painters, right? It can be a painter for building their working on or whatever they're constructing or for a tank to significantly different activities. Now, what I want to point out is this. Most people do not know how to do safety when it comes to painting contractors. As one of my former colleagues said, this is actually a very complex thing, painting, especially if you're involved in water towers, oil tanks, oil refineries, pipelines, things of that nature. I had lunch a number of years ago with some environmental group and the president and vice president, and the group said, well, we didn't realize there was so much to painting with this stuff because all of the painting coatings have to be warranted if you're going to be with a tank or anything like that. We're not a tank like the army tank, but like an above ground storage tank, right? Because this is a protective coating on here, so it doesn't rust. It's regulated by NACE, which is the international organization of what regulates coatings and coatings and corrosion and things of that nature, and there are three levels of certifications for them. It's a hard certification to get. The first one, NACE 1, was what they call, that's like you can paint your foreman, that sort of thing. Then, NACE 2, you start to get into some of the inspections type stuff, NACE 3, you're supposed to know everything about painting. I'll add this, it's all in the surface prep, the big thing. It's a very complicated activity, and what happens is I had one contractor that came out to paint a tank, above ground storage tank, and I said, okay, let me see, you're gonna be abrasive lasting, we're not allowed to call it sandblasting, abrasive lasting. Now, can I see your equipment, your SDSs, was your air sampling stuff, I'm sorry, air supply stuff, was that calibrated, was this, then I went through the whole list, and it's all gonna be here what we're gonna go on with this one contractor out of South Jersey, and they said, you know what? We never had anybody ever say this to us, and I said to the guy, you know what, I believe you. I absolutely 100% believe that that is a true statement of what you said, however, I worked with industrial painting contractors most of my career, I know how to paint, I know what you're supposed to have, and then we go through the whole thing where I show him the regulation, I show him the math, I show him air sampling results, and he says, well, we don't have to do, and you're gonna find out all of this stuff here, this all was all the same in the up and coming press release we're gonna talk about, and I said, he said, well, we were working so and so they didn't make us do it, I said, well, why didn't that, you know, that's not my business? I said, you're not working at that facility, you are working here, you're doing what we're supposed to do. Well, I never heard of anything like this, so I'm gonna tell my boss, I said, what's your boss's number and I'll give your boss a call, that was the boss was in middle America, one time zoned back, and she answers the phone at 730 in the morning and said, look, jim polezel, jcb technical, we're working at this project with your guy, blah, blah, blah, blah, he's saying that he doesn't have to use abrasive lasting helmets, he doesn't have to have a supplied air respirator, he doesn't have to do air monitoring, he doesn't have to do this, blah, blah, blah, the whole list, very similar to what you're gonna be hearing. And she said, you know what, I'm going to, I can't really talk to that, jim, you know, I have a safety, corporate safety officer who is employed by us to handle this, I need to see if I can conference that person in, I said, I know, I said, look, I know it's like quarter to seven in the morning where you are, but this is, this is an issue, I'm not letting your person work until we have a discussion, they didn't even show up with your job hazard analysis and he says it's not required anywhere else, therefore it shouldn't have to be required here. None of this other stuff I asked for says it's not required at such and such place, therefore I don't know what I'm doing and I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I said this is what, and I had him on speaker, this is what I'm being told, I said, I'm gonna tell you, you're not working unless this stuff happens, I'm sorry, and by the way, you're given the corporate safety plan, before you came to the job, you had to issue your corporate safety plan for us to review, you had to issue JHAs, we're requiring JHAs every day here, and no job hazard analysis, gotta have it, I'm, you know, we were being heavily scrutinized here. Okay, well, and I said plus, the last crew that you sent over here from your company that built the above ground storage tank, had everything in place, I said, it was great, no, usually the tankies, what they call constructing these tanks, usually they're the ones you gotta worry about, your company came here and they told me what they were gonna do, they said these are our stuff and we're gonna, this is what we're gonna do, and everything was 110% of what it was supposed to, and I didn't have a problem, now this crew is like totally the opposite, fainting crew, oh, what, she, so anyway, she got there, she got there, she got the other person on by the time we had this conversation, and the corporate safety director says, hey, Jim is it, I said, yeah, I said, look, I explained to her the issue, everything that's going on, and I said, what's going on here? And she says, well, you're, we do require abrasive blasting hoods in supplied air when we're abrasive blasting, I said, okay, I said, do you have air sampling results? She says, hang on a minute, let me get them, and usually that's a stolen thing, and when I, and I had my air sampling results, right from a, my experience, well, I had written them down, I knew what they were, and I, she says, oh, our air sampling results are this, this and this, I said, do the guy look, I told you what they were gonna be before I even spoke to this person, I said, so you're in supplied air, she, and I said, well, what about the JHA, she says, well, you got the JHA, he said, yeah, I got it in the truck, and it went down and down and down, and you know, the other things were, they didn't have their equipment calibrated for carbon monoxide, we're gonna talk about that, they didn't have anything, so I don't know, it seems to be a cultural thing with some painting contractors out there, where people do not know what they're looking at, safety professionals, they don't, they're not sure, they're not educated, there are a lot of different exposures, and they say, well, you know what they know what they're doing, so I'm gonna leave them alone, and that in all likelihood is what happened to this person, and their crew, this woman and their crew, repeatedly, because in one he told me, number one, and number two, been my experience with that, that no one, not even a lot of certified industrial hygienists know about this though, or me, so this is the context that we're doing here, with this here, so this took place here, this from Ocean, Delhi Voice Ocean, County, New Jersey, July, the author of this is, I wanna give proper attribution, by the way, it's a good article, and the way this is written up, I have to compliment the guy, or a woman, whoever did this, didn't know, hold on, they did a pretty good job here, hold on, I just lost the story here, okay, I have to do this again, boom, and we're gonna go commercial break while I bring the story up, because it just came off the screen, and, in the professional safety community, communication and planning are just a few keys to your program success, the question many practitioners have, is where do I start, Dr. Jay Allen, the creator of the safety FM platform, and host of the rated R safety show, has built a global foundation to help you along the way, go to safetyFM.com, and listen to some of the industry's best and most involved professionals, including Blaine Hoffman, with the safety pro, Sam Goodman, with the Hopner, Sheldon Primus, with the safety consultant, Jim Pozel, with safety wars, Emily Elrod, with unapologetically bold, and many others, as individuals we can do great things, but as a team, we become amazing, dial into safetyFM.com today, and surround yourself with a powerful force of knowledge and support. From the front lines of the safety wars, it's safety wars, with your host, Jim Pozel on safety FM, get ready to face the harsh reality, that's right, get ready to face that harsh reality, a painting contractor, this is from, worker fell 80 feet inside Jersey's shore water tower, painting contractor fine, 480 K, 85 K, right, and that's a proposed penalty here, right, and the stories of my Chris Fiker, and this is from the Daily Voice, Mameth County, New Jersey, a painting contractor was facing nearly 500,000 dollars in fines after worker fell 80 feet to the bottom of an ocean, a county water tower without safety gear, official set. This department of labor cited, and this is proposed, right, penalties, for three willful and 19-series violations, the occupational safety and health administration said, the news release. The OSHA said the contractor did not install required safety equipment and employee from falling inside the Bayville water tower back in January. Employees suffered numerous injuries, this is a quote of politics in Roderick, the OSHA director for South Jersey, an employee suffered numerous severe injuries because their employer did not make sure legally required fall of redemption was provided for workers climbing up and down the inside of an eight story water tower. We intend to hold employers responsible when they fail to follow rules, put in place to protect safety and health and well-being of workers. Aqua, New Jersey, they're apparently the host employer, contracted a company for the maintenance and repair project, the contractor hired workers to sample last, we don't call it that anymore, it's abrasive last, and painting towers and tear it next to you along with replacing a ladder used to get to the top of the tower, inspectors said the worker fell while climbing a maintenance tube ladder into the water tank, and the company was cited for not making sure workers had fall protection, among other things. So that's the context of this. Now that was earlier this year that that happened, and we are going to do a share screen here, and we're going to go to the actual Department of Labor documents for this. So again, I'm going to be small on here, usually I do side by side, but I want to make sure that people actually see this stuff as clearly as possible. So Department of, this is the news released from the Department of Labor, this was yesterday, I missed it yesterday, otherwise I would have talked about it. Department of Labor, site soldiers, water tower, company, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we're going down, let me make sure this is on, hold on, yes it's on. Alright, inspectors with OSHA determined that the company employed workers to sample last paint towers into your next year, replaced the ladder attached to the structure to access the tower's peak. OSHA learned the injured worker fell while climbing a maintenance tube ladder into the water tank. And going on, that was the same quote, it was a sorry water tower, in addition to failure protect employees from hazards. The company exposed employees to respiratory injuries and hearing loss while working in the vermit requiring confined space, fire and exposure hazards and long term, long damage related to unsafe levels of silica dust. So maybe they were a sand blasting, right, we, they usually use black beauty out a lot of the stuff for newer construction, they use an older material called starlight, starlight, which is basically sand, right, and it's within certain levels, some of the other abrasives that are used in the industry are garnet, that's another common one for this. And the reason why they moved to these other things is that from sand is specifically because of silica dust. Specifically OSHA decided the company with three willful 19 violations, and they have a big long list here, as you can see, and there was a previous history with OSHA where the company was cited in 2017 for not having a rescue plan. Aqua New Jersey, which is the host employer, is the subsidiary of Aqua, water supply company operating in eight states, contracted a company based in Millstone Township for the maintenance repair project, and the company has been around for 30 years, and going on and on and on. Now we're going to go right to the citations here, as I said, if you are, we'll take a break at a certain point in here, and, right, with this, and this, we're going to probably go overtime on here, so we're, so, you know, just to, so if you're a safety FM listener, you'll pick this up on the podcast tomorrow. That's the safety worst podcast, and this is safety wars. You are listening to safety wars. Tomorrow's safety today. Okay, and close, and this is the usually where it goes, starts at this 39 pages, we'll go through most of it, I guess. Now a lot of these may be her instance type of things, and, you know, maybe repeats on here. And so what you normally get is something like this on OSHA letterhead, telling you what your rights are and some other stuff in here, some a little bit of background information on an informal conference and contesting citations, and this is signed by Paul Dixon Roderick, the area director. So this here is says, when the inspection dates were, it was the inspection dates between 125, 2024, and 716, 2024, the issuance date was 716, 2024, the, and where did this happen in Bayville, New Jersey on Route 9, 1016 Route 9. Very warm down here today. I don't know what the deal is in this studio. Okay, and formal, and here's your posting, where this has to be posted, in a prominent place at or near the location of violations, where if it is not practical because of major employees operations, where it will readily be readily observable by all affected employees, the citation and remus remain posted until the violation cited, has or have been abated or for three working days, assuming weekends of four federal holidays, whatever is longer, they have 15 days to contest this, and then your right, and then payment rights under this as a right to contest, penalty, payment information, notification of corrective action, and you have a worksheet here, right, and here, I'll get here to that, an amendment employer discrimination is unlawful, so that's the whistleblower complaint that's listed in 29 CFR 1929 CFR 1977, right? Employer rights and responsibilities, notice through employees and inspection activity data, and all of this is available on there, and even if they don't have a press release, this is available on the establishment search, option under OSHA.gov, notice employees of informal conference, so that here is another one, an informal conference has been scheduled with OSHA to discuss this, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they don't give the date for that for obvious reasons, so here's the certification of corrective action, and you have to go and every one of those things, what you did, and it has to be certified usually by the owner or a corporate officer there with this, I think they're going to have to make multiple copies of this page for this, so here we go, again now, I read through this prior to the error, I skimmed it, so if you're a first-time listener or you don't know how we roll here, I usually don't read these things ahead of time, because you go through these all the time and they're very numerous, and we are professional enough here on this program where we're able to, I don't want to say wing it, but we have commentary that we could always make, this is very common stuff, one thing I will say about this particular situation is that every critical point that painting companies normally fail at the companies, I don't want to say employees, but the companies are included here, I have to talk to my clients on the same stuff all the time and with everything else, so here we have, and let's see, there's a construction standard, right, 29 CFR 1926.95, personal protective equipment was not of safe design and construction for the work to be performed, so the company was, they were wearing Tyvak 400 coveralls, DuPont, which were not designed for use in flammable atmospheres, was free painting with category two flammable paints and solvents, including, but not limited to certain products here, methyl ethyl ketone, which is a thinner, right, because what happens with paint, right, so these industrial coatings for this type of painting is an epoxy, meaning that you have a type part A, which is the hardener, and a part B, which is the actual paint, right, the stuff, right, the part B, the primer, so what happens is you mix part A and part B, you mix them together, you add methyl ethyl ketone, but that's not only one, it could be other types of thinners, because what happens is, you have what's called a pot life on the paint, where you have to take a port and it starts to evaporate and it starts to cure and you have a certain amount of time to apply that paint material, that paint or that epoxy to whatever you're doing, all right, so that's how you have the methyl ethyl ketone thrown in there, so this was $11,292, the fine, they did not have, so what kind of coveralls do they have, some type of fire retardant coveralls, now they do make a company and I don't have it here with me, but they do make fire retardant disposable coveralls for that, but what the thing is, is that those are only rated as fire retardant if you have regular NFPA2112 fire retardant clothing underneath it, so how do you know that you have fire retardant clothing, all right, so this is Rasko FR here, that's what I have, and it says on here NFPA2112 and also as I went through yesterday, you have on the tag on there, right, right up there, and towards the bottom, there is another, oh, hold on, there's something in the pocket here, what could be in the pocket, I think I'm a money laundering, a buck, all right, so I was money laundering, what are we, what's this, the watch, and you come, yes, a little bit of humor there for this, so you look towards the bottom and it's something sewed in with the care of the decarbonant and also it's NFPA2112 and if you go to, you have a good brand, they give you an extra button, because buttons sometimes pop off, and it says this garment meets the requirements of NFPA2112 standard on flame resistant garments for protection of industrial personnel against flash fire 2012 edition NFPA2113 required upper and lower body coverage, so you not only need the shirt, you also need the pants, now if you're working in a refining environment, that is a normal part of the uniform there, that is just the normal part of the uniform is that, that was roughly about 2010 OSHA gave a directive, recommendation that became the industry standard, that everybody in the oil industry basically, except for the retail end, which doesn't make sense to me, has to wear fire retardant cover all, so they come in multiple colors, not only dark navy blue, so you have a heat stress problem, right, and they do make short sleeve, I don't really get it, but no, I'm never worked anywhere where they only did short sleeve, now citation one item two type of violations serious, more than 25 gallons, this is 29 CFR 1926 152 B1, more than 25 gallons of flammable liquids restored in a room outside of an improved storage cabinet, so if you have 25 gallons or more, and that's not, that's, no, I've been on these jobs, if it's an 80 foot tower, you're probably looking about maybe 100 gallons of paint, I don't have the exact numbers, so that's roughly what you need, so that's a lot of paint, so you have to plan for that out, plan that out here, so that's $4,839, citation one item three, the transfer of flammable liquids from one container to another was then when the containers were not electrically interconnected meaning bonded, so spray painting trailers located next to the water tower, category two and three flammable paints and solvents, including but not limited to, well, no, they list the product here, and methyl ethyl ketone, report into the plural component spray painting machine without being bonded to the machine, so, and that was on March 11th, so, way that these pumps are set up, right, I'm not familiar with this particular one necessarily, but you pour either, either the material is poured into the machine, right, the floral component, right, you have two sides, it gets poured in there, or it gets pumped in there, depending on the configuration of this and the brand and everything else, now, you have to bond this together, why is that? It gets bonded together, the two containers, so you, because what happens is, if you have a liquid going through a hose, right, and this whole system normally needs to be grounded, which means you're going to be, unless there's an obvious ground, you're going to be driving a copper spike into the ground, and you're going to be checking the electrical resistance in ohms with that, and you're going to be, you know, it's a big, let's just say it's a big freaking deal, all right, in the words of our president. So, no, it's a big deal, you got to have that, why? In case you have a static electric discharge, because you have two materials going over themselves, and you actually go, you know, that static electric discharge into a flammable material, usually not a good thing, and that's $11,292. Citation one item four, this is 29 CFR 1926 152E3, flammable or combustible liquids were not drawn from, or transferred into vessels, containers or tanks within buildings, or outside through closed piping systems from safety cans, by means of devices, drawing through the top, or from a container or portable tank, by gravity or pumps through an approved self-closing valve. Spray painting trailer is located next to the tower, and it mentions all the, right, things were transferred into the Wiewe, Plural component spray painting machine, by pouring them from five gallon drums. All right, so guess what, they needed a, again, common thing in this industry is to dump the paint in there, not supposed to do that, it's not the way this was set up on this machine, it's sucked in by a pump, right? So, depending on your configuration and the paint you're using, right, non flammable, it may be poured in there, but normally it's pumped in there from the floral pump, and that was 11,292. Citation 2, item 1, where total length of a climb equals, or exceeds, 24 feet fixed ladders were not equipped with one of the following, a ladder safety device, self-retracting lifeline and rust platforms, intervals left to exceed 150 feet or a cage or well or multiple ladder sections, each ladder section not to exceed 50 feet in length. Ladders sections were not offset from adjacent sections, and landing platforms were not provided at maximum intervals of 50 feet. Pine walled aqua tower located, blah, blah, blah. Workers were exposed to whole hazards of approximately 105 feet to ground while climbing a water tower access ladder to shop last and paint the interior of the tank. There were no ladder safety devices, so they were apparently free climbing here, what they call free climbing, FRRE free climbing. There are no ladder safety devices or self-retracting lifelines for them to use. Now, this was observed on or about January 25th, so this is back in January. And I have to submit an abatement document here with this by August 9th, proposed penalty 112,926. So this was a willful serious violation here. So on that particular day, they had 151, 641. Now, I'm going to get money here that the compliance officer who was doing the inspection here, notified them of this stuff at the time. I'm going to say that's normally in my experience, what happens? Now, we're going to cycle through the next thing, so with that. Now, okay, this is for citation for the next group of citations, the inspection was 228, 2024, and so this is suffered inspection. I'm not going to spare you the front matter here. You'll let us, so right here, boom, boom. You'll let us violations have a group because they involve similar or related hazards that may increase the potential for injuries or illnesses. When did this occur? Hold on. All right, that doesn't give a date, but I believe it's 228, 2024 on here in the inspection date, 228. So here we have citation one, item one, a type of violation serious. A written respiratory protection is 1910, 134 standard. Now, for a review, the 1910, 134 standard is what we call a horizontal standard, meaning all OSHA standards, whether you're in agriculture, marine, which is 1915, 1917, or 1918, 1926, which is construction, or 1910, which is general industry, all of those different industries have to comply with 1910, 134. So, 29 CFR 1910, 134 C1, a written respiratory protection program that included provisions of this, right? I have the whole thing, was not established and implemented for required respirator use. Now, what happened here? The employer did not develop and implement a written respiratory protection standard program, specifically the respirators used and the hazards of the work site for employees that were respiratory protection, while sandblasting, right, and spray painting the interior and exterior of the pine walled water tower, including but not limited to RPB, Nova 3, air blasting hoods, and 3M full-face respirators with 6,000 organic vapor cartridges on or about 117/2024. So, this is 117. This happened. Find $8,000 and some change. Citation 1 item 1v, the employer did not provide comprehensive understandable training, which occurred annually and/or more often if necessary. Pine wall aqua tower, the employer did not provide respiratory protection training to employees required to wear over 3 air blasting hoods and 3M full-face respirators with 6,001 organic vapor cartridges while sandblasting and spray painting the interior and exterior of the water tower. Nothing on there, zero, like I said, was moved together. Citation 1 item 1c, a selection of appropriate respirators was not based on the respiratory hazard to which the worker was exposed and user factors that affect respiratory performance and reliability. So, pine wall aqua water tower and interior section, employees spray painting the inside of a 1.5 million gallon water tower using this product. That contained 5 to 10%, so this is actually in the paint, micro crystalline silica while wearing 3M full-face respirators with organic vapor cartridges without HEPA filters, meaning the P100 cartridges. So, you're dealing with a dust here and they were just using organic vapor cartridges. An employee who spray painted the inside of pine wall tower using the paint for 473 minutes on 3/11/2024. Again, OSHA came back when you know that they're coming back. I don't know why people don't go and get their groove known together. I really don't. An employee who spray painted the inside of the pine wall tower, because these are OSHA results here, here, right? Eight hour time when it averaged a 37.45 micrograms per meter cube, which was 1.5 times the actual level of 25 micrograms per meter cube. Wait until you hear the hearing protection. You're going to love this one, guys, and gals. The employer did not provide and required the use of particulate cartridges, zero. So, they were just using organic vapor cartridges when they had a rust-for-volt rustling silica hazard, right? That's problematic. Citation 1, item 1D was oil lubricated in 1910-134. Oil lubricated compressor used in supply breathing air did not have a high temperature or carbon monoxide and alarm or both. That's a critical one. Just because you have a supplied air respirator, in this case a blast hood, you have to have a you must have a calibrated carbon monoxide monitor on that. Why is that? You may say, well, Jim, we're using a certain brand that has filters in it. Blah, blah, blah. Why do we need to use a carbon monoxide monitor? It's because the carbon monoxide monitor cannot be filtered out, right? Maybe there's some exotic filter, but typically that's not filtered out. So, would they put in a carbon monoxide monitor in there? Just something in there, right? So, if only a high temperature alarm is used here, supply should be monitored, prevent carbon monoxide and breathing. This is zero dollars. Now, this is what my problem is with some of the older technology here is that people can switch these things off and then people get carbon monoxide poisoning. Jimmie, what do you mean carbon monoxide poisoning? They're using gas-powered compressors or diesel-powered compressors or some buddy pulls up to the air intake of the compressor. If you're not using those, you're using electric and they leave their truck running. Then you get carbon monoxide in there. And if it's breathing air, not to exceed 10 parts per million, which is well below the PEL. Citation 1, item 2A. Now, I went through this with a client today, right? The employer did not compile a list of hazardous chemicals known to be present using a product identifier that was referenced on the appropriate safety data sheet. The written hazard communication program did not include a list of hazardous chemicals used by employees when sampling and spray painting the interior and exterior of the water tower, including but not limited to a whole bunch of different chemicals here and methyl ethyl ketone and xylene. Find $8,067. Citation 1, item 2B type of violation series employer did not include rust-rule crystalline silica in the program, established to comply with hazard communication standard, 29 CFR 1910 1200. Again, that is it. They were not using, they did not incorporate into crystalline silica into the written program, provide training to employees on hazards of crystalline silica, employees spray painting the interior and exterior of the pine wall water tower using something with crystalline silica. The employer is required to submit a bait and certification for this item. Failure to comply will result in additional penalty of $1,000, right? Zero. So part A and part B, you mix them together, you get epoxy. Employees are not provided. This is again 1910 1200, no training on hazardous materials, 8,067. Citation 1, item 4, where now this is where it gets really interesting here. Now on the general industry side, that's 1910 side, noise monitoring is very, very comprehensive and the whole standard, very comprehensive with the construction end is not very comprehensive. And you're going to see here what they didn't do, this is pretty much it here. And OSHA again did, and this is $11,292, OSHA did an in-depth type of situation here. So 1926.52B, where employees are subject to sound levels, seeing those listed in table D2 of this section, feasible administrative or engineering controls were not utilized. When such controls failed to reduce sound level within the levels of the table, PPE as required in some part E was not provided and used to reduce sound levels within the levels of this table. So they want the hierarchy of controls first and the new hearing protection second, which is what the way it should be. You're not going to eliminate the sound. Exactly how loud is this? Really freaking loud. It's like sitting next to your jet engine. So Pinewell, Aqua Tower inside and outside tarpole in the containment area. The employee who was sample asking was exposed to continuous noise levels in excess of the allowable 8-hour, time-weighted average sound level. The employee's dosimeter level, dose level, was 1,518.7% of the permissible level of 90 decibels and was equivalent to approximately 109.6 decibels. The sampling was performed for 480 minutes during one shift on 4924. The employer did not utilize any administrative or engineering controls to reduce noise. What would be an administrative control would most likely be rotating employees here. The employer did not provide PPE that had a noise reduction rating of 26. The PPE was not capable of reducing the employee's noise exposure to below the limits. The employee who was sampling was exposed, Pinewell, Water Tower inside and outside of hard-pulling containment area. The employee who was sample asked was exposed to continuous noise levels in excess of the allowable 8-hour, time-weighted average sound level, right? PEL. The employee's dosimeter level was 2,786.3% above the permissible exposure level and was equivalent to approximately 114 decibels. The employer provided the PPE that had a noise reduction rating of 22, right? I think I misspoke on the previous one. This PPE was not capable of reducing employees' noise exposure to below the limits in table D2. This is now in their defense. I don't think any contractor would ever do this here except for the ones I work with, right, would be able to remedy this. The employee who was sample asked was exposed to continuous noise levels. This was 3,674% 0.7% of the PEL and was equivalent to approximately 115.9 and again, noise reduction rating of 27. I'm sorry, 26. So unless that these are fitted, right? You have to use a correction factor on here, which is -7 from this and divided by - and that number divided by 2, and that gives you the corrected noise reduction rating for this type of equipment, right? So they put in the safety margin because these things don't fit everything, everybody the same. What's some of the other options? Double hearing protection. That's usually above 100 and 405 decibels. They recommend double hearing protection depending on what you're dealing with and what kind of equipment you have and no rotating employees putting some type of insulation around the abrasive lasting equipment. Anything like that is what they're going to recommend, right? So 1926-1153, the employer did not assess the exposure of each employee who was was or maybe reasonably expected to be exposed to rest full of prison in the silica at or above the action level, that's 11,292. With that, so OSHA did this sampling and an employee who sprayed the interior of the tower using the paint for 473 minutes on 311-24 was exposed to airborne concentration of silica at an eight-hour time-weighted average of 37.45 micrograms reader cubed, which was 1.5 times the action level of 25 micrograms. The exposure and control plane did not contain a description and that's in the workplace and that involved exposure to rest full of crystalline silica. Exposure control plane did not include the use of part A of the epoxy that contained 5 to 10 percent micrograms in silica and was used as very painting interior, right? $8,067, citation 1, item 8. Here, the exposure control, 1926-1153, the exposure control plane did not contain a description of the engineering controls, work practice, and respiratory protection. With this, again, why wouldn't they're using the wrong cartridges? $8,067, citation 1, item 8. The employer did not provide testing and monitoring equipment needed to comply with paragraph E, right? So they did not provide equipment to continuously test and monitor the atmospheric conditions, including by not limited to oxygen and hydrogen sulfide levels within the pine wall tower. So this is 1926-1200. That is 1204. That is the construction confined space entry standard, $11,292, citation 1, item 9, type of violation serious, lighting equipment. There, that is, add the confined space entry. Thing, the employer did not provide lighting equipment approved for ignitable or a combustible properties of the specified gas, favored dust or fiber that were present. That was sufficient to enable employees to see well enough. So no intrinsically safe lighting. $11,292, citation 1, item 10 before entry was authorized, the employer did not document the completion of measures required by the confined space entry standard of the standard by preparing an entry permit. $11,292, citation 1, item 11. Another confined space entry standard violation here did not provide training. Entering it, confined space entry training, another 1211,292, citation 2, item 1. This was a willful serious. This is off of the confined space entry standard in construction. The employer did not develop and implement the means, procedures, and practices necessary for safe entry into the 1.5 million gallon pine walled water tower for employees conducting sandblasting and spray painting, including, but not limited to, identifying acceptable air and quality entry conditions, frequency of air monitoring when in the space, procedures, prevents slip trips and full hazards, and identifying conditions when evacuation was necessary, equipment needed during the entry and rescue procedures on our about 117-24. That was willful, that is 112, 926, citation 2, item 2. Type of violation, willful serious. Again, permit required confined space, 1926, 1200, 4. Here, the employer did not develop and implement procedures for summoning rescue and emergency services, including procedures for summoning emergency assistance, the event of a failed non-entry rescue, for rescuing entrance from permit spaces and for providing necessary emergency services to rescued employees and for preventing unauthorized personnel from attempting a rescue. Again, nothing included there, 112,926 for a grand total of 333,939 on that one. I'm going to do the outro for this and I will come back with some additional commentary on this. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the most and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. They should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information. Assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, recording or otherwise without prior written commission of the creator of the podcast, Jay Allen. [Music] [Music] [Music] Okay, I am back here. Took a little break there. Some additional commentary. What's the PEL for Restful Rule of Crystal and Silica? This is out of 1910, 1053C. Permissible exposure limit is 50 micrograms. The action level is at 25 micrograms for meter cubed and what that is is the at 25 you have to start sampling, you have to do an evaluation and there's a whole bunch of other requirements. So at 50 micrograms for meter cubed, which is not a lot, that's when you have to start with controls or respiratory protection and everything else. I didn't want to go too deep in here, but there is a table in here, hold on, well this is 1910, not 1926, so that's not a table. 1926 standard has a table in there that essentially, there's what happens when you do it on the fly, that tells you what you are doing, what you are doing and what kind of protection do you need. Let me get back to that, let's go down to 1926, compare with me here and sorry about that folks. Of course you can find it all the time. So 1926, 1153, let's do a sure screen on that, screen. So here we have this, right, so the PEL is still 50, but here we have table one specified exposure control methods when working with material containing restful little crystalline silica, they have different types of things, so if you are doing stationary masonry saw, for example, you saw equipment integrated water delivery system on here, offering to maintain tool in accordance and no respiratory protection, well exam water and it's less than four hours or greater than four, right, with that. But going on you have everything here, so let's go down here to see if they have abrasive blasting, they do not have that abrasive blasting on here specifically with this, but in the table, but they do have it with, you know, with other things. So, you know, something to consider here, we specialize with industrial painters, right. The other thing is this, for the poor old pump, it depends on how it's set up, but whatever you're doing, you have to minimize, right, when you're transferring materials from one container to another, you have to consider the possibility for static electric discharge into flammable material, which may ignite. You got to follow the manufacturer's recommendations of what you're supposed to do. I suspect that most of this will be negotiated downward at a certain point with this. That's what my suspicion is. And the thing is, OSHA shows up to your job site, your work area, what have you. You need to have a plan in place. What are your procedures in place for when a regulator shows up, when OSHA shows up, when if you're dealing with EPA or DP or any of those other alphabets who think, what are your procedures? Obviously, they didn't have, I think, whatever procedures they have might not have been adequate, because OSHA showed up, did air monitoring, did air sampling, and everything else, later on, and they didn't have anything in there. When OSHA showed up, first of all, you didn't have the right equipment in there allegedly, and the person got killed, one fatality. Usually, you just don't continue to work, right, and you got to make your notifications. You want to get someone out there who's qualified. That could be someone from my team, 845-269-5772. Or somebody internal to go out there, and who knows what they're doing with this stuff. Because now, you're in the big leagues. When you start to get willful and serious and everything else, you probably don't want just someone like me, you're probably going to need an attorney to manage this. We work with attorneys that manage these situations all the time, so give us a call on that. But you have to have your stuff together. One other thing, what can you do? OSHA shows up to the job site. What do you do? You tell them to go bleef off, or do you tell them, "Hey, let me get my boss here. Can you wait?" Usually, they'll do it. Not all the time, but sometimes they'll do it. You have a fatality on site. I guarantee you, you're going to be having an OSHA inspector if not there that day, the next day. And, no, for not a fatality, for a catastrophic injury of some sort, they're usually there within 72 hours. I've sat in my pickup truck watching Star Trek episodes for three days waiting for OSHA to show up on some of these jobs. That's assuming that they're in compliance. If they're not in compliance, I make believe I'm OSHA and I go through, and we see what's there, what they're likely going to find. So, at least when OSHA shows up, "Hey, we're working on that. We've identified that," the Zora Bateman thing, and maybe they'll say, "Well, it's being abated in the field, or it was abated in the field." Blah, blah, blah, when we were there. And then, you know, things look better, you're making an effort, you're showing something with that. And that's what you need to do. You have to manage this stuff. You have to have plans ahead of time. Don't think, no, that you're going to, eventually you're going to, someone's going to get hurt or whatever. Don't think that, "Hey, nothing will ever happen. An OSHA will never show up," period, you know, with anything. No, we'll never show up. That's not a reasonable thing to do. Now, we do OSHA 10-hour construction outreach training, 30-hour construction outreach training. We also do authorized and competent person, fall protection training, right, up to the latest Zansi standards. We do all this training for you. We've done work with industrial painters. We know what's going on with them. We have a whole staff of people to deal with these situations. So, give us a call 845-269-5772, like it says on the bottom of your screen, or you can contact me at jim@safetywars.com. We'll take care of you with this. That's all I have for tonight. You already got the outro with the, you know, for the safety FM folks. And we'll be posting this later tonight, right? Well, this is posted on our YouTube and everything else. And I will see you on our next safety wars, right? Hopefully, we'll be here tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. We do have some meetings on some other projects that we're working on that we can only meet the client on Friday night. So, we're Friday afternoon. So, I'm hoping to be here. Might not happen. So, again, for safety wars, is Jim Poelzel. I hope to see you out there next on the next program. And thanks a lot for watching or listening or whatever else you're doing.