Shelby Fife
Shelby Fife
Ms. Durrett
First Aid and CPR
October 24, 2011
OSHA
We live in such a hectic and dangerous world today. Injuries can happen everyday at home, school, and the workplace. Many people have risky jobs. On the job injuries can be fatal, and in 1970 Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to help protect us from on the job injuries. This act led to the development of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1971, also known as OSHA. The main purpose of OSHA was to help reduce injuries, death, and sickness in the workplace. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is a huge success. Since the start of OSHA, deaths have been lowered by 60 percent and injuries …show more content…
Well, it does many things. It sets up safety regulations and procedures that must be followed by employers and employees. They do inspections to make sure that these regulations are being met. If a workplace violates the OSHA requirements they write citations. The citations can be a small fine or they could be great and lead to other penalties. A criminal conviction can result if someone willfully did not comply with the safety rules and it resulted in a worker’s death. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration also provides training to employers and to their employees. The training is meant to show workers how to safely carryout their work procedures. It can show them things like how to handle harmful chemicals to the importance of wearing safety gear. They educate the employees on what to do in dangerous situations, such as a chemical spill, blood spill, and lead exposure. OSHA has set up specific ways on how to clean up hazardous spills. OSHA educates employees on how to handle certain emergencies. This helps a lot because people must know the right thing to do in an emergency in order to save their own lives and the lives of others. They set up Material Safety Data Sheets and require that employees understand how to read them. MSDS are pages of summaries of the health hazards of a particular substance or material. OSHA also investigates accidents and develops ways to prevent other similar accidents from happening. OSHA requires