FACTS
- General Types of hazards inspections encounter
- chemical exposure
- fire and explosion
- lack of oxygen
- ionizing radiation
- biological hazards
- safety hazards
- electrical hazards
- heat stress
- cold exposure
- noise.
- Specific hazards inspectors encounter
- aggressive people
- snakes
- guard dogs
- electric fences
- water hazards
- uneven ground
- soft, or unstable ground
- obstacles to entry or exit points
- site structures in poor condition
- unstable stacked material
- dust or spray in the air
- unusual odors
- pools of liquid on the ground
- steam outlets from machinery
- leaking, damaged or bulging drums
- sharp objects
STATS
- During the first three years under Trump, OSHA conducted about 81,000 safety inspections — a 4.7 % decrease from about 85,000 conducted during the last three years of Obama’s presidency.
- The number of inspections began to rise in fiscal year 2019 and was on pace to rise even higher in 2020 until the pandemic hit.
- OSHA has conducted more than 6,800 investigations into workplaces that had a fatal or catastrophic incident. The vast majority of them — about 91 % — had not been inspected in the previous 10 years, according to a Public Integrity analysis of the agency’s enforcement data.
- Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California Berkeley found that companies subject to the agency’s random inspections showed a 9.4 % decrease in injury rates compared with uninspected ones. They also found no evidence of any added cost to inspected companies from complying with regulations.
- Researchers with the RAND Corporation analyzed workers’ compensation data in Pennsylvania and found that OSHA inspections were linked to a sharp decline in reported injuries at medium-size companies. Inspections that led to citations with penalties played a role in reducing injuries by an average of 19 percent to 24 percent each year for the two years following each inspection.