This week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced that an Illinois food manufacturer will be cited for safety violations by the agency for the third time since 2019 because of repeated employer regulatory violations involving machine safety failures.
Specifically, Rana Meal Solutions LLC of Bartlett, Illinois, has a pattern of behavior documented by OSHA where its workers are exposed to known machine dangers. This year, the employer’s disregard resulted in an employee suffering a catastrophic injury and amputation. OSHA has assessed $272,792.00 in penalties.
From OSHA Area Director Jacob Scott:
“Once again, our inspectors found Rana Meal Solutions LLC ignoring federal safety requirements to make sure dangerous machines are guarded or fully de-energized before they are maintained or serviced. In 2019 and 2020, OSHA found the company exposed employees to the risk of severe injuries and now, in 2023, their failure to follow industry and federal safety standards led one worker to suffer a painful, disfiguring injury.”
This is just another example of how modern industrial machinery can cause severe injuries or death to workers who are not protected from harm by their employers. It is far from an uncommon one.
The federal safety regulation for machinery and machine guards, 29 CFR §1910.212, once again ranked in the top ten of the most often violated safety laws in this year’s OSHA’s Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards for Fiscal Year 2023. This regulation is designed to provide machine safety and protect workers from machinery accidents through the use of safety equipment and machine guards. Read, “OSHA’s Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards for FY 2023,” written by Robert Yaniz Jr. and published by OH&S Magazine on November 8, 2023.
What is Machine Safety?
Industries throughout Illinois and Indiana use more and more advanced machinery, often automated in whole or in part, as a means of increasing production and profit. Machines are heralded as increasing efficiency and reducing costs. However, they cannot operate independently of people working with their components or nearby to them.
Dangers come with any human proximity to these industrial machines. Machine safety involves the study and implementation of practices and procedures designed to protect the welfare of everyone working on or near them.
There are both federal regulations as well as specific industrial standards that define and direct employers in various industries in how to implement machine safety in their particular workplace. Governmental regulations come with the force of law.
Industrial standards do not; however, they can help define duties of care for any jobsite and explain how an employer’s breach of that duty has resulted in a serious or deadly work accident.
Federal Regulations and Machine Safety
Federal regulations overseen by OSHA are implemented here in Illinois and Indiana by our coordinated OSHA State Plans. For details, read Workplace Safety and OSHA Regulations in Indiana and Illinois.
OSHA machine safety requirements are found in 29 CFR §1910.212, which includes employer duties to:
- Provide specific types of machine guards depending upon the specific circumstances, such as barrier guards, two-hand tripping devices, and more. See, 1910.212(a)(1);
- Meeting the general requirements of machine safety, e.g., the protection is secured and safe. See, 1910.212(a)(2); and
- Machine safety must be provided where the employee will be exposed to injury. See, 1910.212(a)(3)(ii).
Industrial Standards for Machine Safety
Various industries are also guided by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Again, the specific machine safety needs will vary depending upon the industry (for instance, food processing will be much different than a steel foundry).
These can be very detailed with information that may be updated faster than OSHA regulations. This is important, given the rapid advance in modern industrial machine technology. While ISO 13854:2017 deals with an overall consideration regarding “…minimum gaps to avoid crushing of parts of the human body,” detailed industrial guidance is also available.
ANSI has an entire series (the B11 series) that deals with over thirty different industrial standards for safety involving various forms of industrial machinery. The ANSI B11 series also instructs both (1) employers on the industrial worksite as well as those who (2) manufacture and (3) supply these industrial machines in the first place.
Defective Machinery Dangers for Industrial Workers
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers it a considerable health hazard for anyone tasked with working in or near industrial machinery. As the CDC explains:
Machines can help improve production efficiency in the workplace. However, their moving parts, sharp edges, and hot surfaces can also cause serious workplace injuries such as crushed fingers or hands, amputations, burns, or blindness. Safeguards are essential to protect workers from injury. Any machine part, function, or process that might cause injury should be safeguarded. When the operation of a machine may result in a contact injury to the operator or others in the area, the hazard should be removed or controlled.
Importantly, the CDC points out how workers can be seriously injured if they are required to work with defective machinery, which is an independent issue from machines that work properly but have not been properly guarded.
Industrial machinery can be defective because of (1) failures in its design; (2) failures in its production; and/or (3) failures in machine safety instructions or warning labels. Defective industrial machine accidents can be caused by things like:
- Assembly errors on site
- Failed or defective design
- Faulty wiring (live wires)
- Installation mistakes (including improper ventilation)
- Manufacturing mistakes in production
- Overheating due to bad installation, location, wiring
- Improper safety training or instructions.
Legal Duties for Machine Safety on the Worksite
All employers, regardless of the particular industry, have a legal duty to keep workers safe from harm while on the job, where they are contributing to the company coffers. Production floors, shipyards, distribution centers, processing plants, and factories are all under legal duties here to protect people from machinery accidents. Read, What is the Employer’s General Duty Clause?
Despite the costs involved and the frustration that machine safety may impede production speed, protecting workers from life-altering injuries that can include amputation, blindness, paralysis, or death must take priority.
There are also legal duties placed upon other third parties involved with or connected to the workplace or the machine itself. In some instances, the manufacturer of the machine may be legally liable for the worker’s harm. Third party owners of the premises may have responsibility. Those who supplied, installed, repaired, or maintained the machine can sometimes have failed in legal duties, too.
For more, read: Work Accidents: Dangers of Serious or Fatal Injuries on the Job Because Safety Costs Too Much.
Worker Injuries In Machine Safety Failure Accidents
When there is a failure in machine safety, workers are exposed to all sorts of horrific bodily injuries that may involve:
- Fires or explosions caused by machine failures in pressure or electrical power resulting in burns, scarring and disfigurement, or death;
- Inhalation of toxic vapors or exposure to toxic liquids resulting in burns, internal organ (lungs, throat) damage, scarring and disfigurement, blindness, or death;
- Crushing or struck by incidents where the worker suffers traumatic brain injuries; loss of use of limb; amputation; internal organ damage; or death.
Other harm suffered in machine safety failures usually includes pain and suffering; medical care and long-term expenses involving rehab and therapy; lost earning capacity; and the harm suffered by family members.
For more, read:
- The Six Basic Injury Dangers Facing Workers in Illinois and Indiana
- Wrongful Death Damages After Fatal Work Accidents in Illinois or Indiana
- Loss of Consortium Damages in Illinois or Indiana Work Accidents
- Catastrophic Injuries in an Accident: Damages for the Loss of a Normal Life
- Loss of Earning Capacity Damages After Accident in Illinois or Indiana
- Who Can Claim Damages After a Work Accident in Indiana or Illinois?
Workers Hurt or Killed in Machinery Accidents and Machine Safety Failures
Under both federal and state law, any industrial worker hurt on a job site in Indiana or Illinois that involves an industrial machine accident has the right to pursue legal claims for relief that may involve not only workers’ compensation claims but third-party civil actions based upon the laws of negligence, defective products, premises liability, and more.
For more, read:
- Illinois Workers: Machine Guarding and LOTO Risks of Death or Severe Injury
- Worker Injuries Involving Industrial Equipment, Machinery, or Tools
- Industrial Machine Accidents: Deadly Dangers Facing Machinists, Mechanics, Maintenance, and Millwrights in Indiana and Illinois
- The Two Main Differences Between Workers Compensation and Personal Injury Claims for Accident Victims in Indiana and Illinois
- Job Site Injury in Illinois or Indiana: When Accidents at Work Are Not Worker’s Compensation Claims
- Workers Beware: BLS Reports Highest US Worker Death Rate in 5 Years.
Industrial workers in Indiana and Illinois are worthy of protection from harm on the job, particularly from well-known and established hazards like heavy machinery used more and more often in our industrial worksites. Sadly, many employers fail to provide machine safety and workers face unacceptable risks of severe injury in a preventable accident. Please be careful out there!
