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Now the problem is that a lot of you found that it was impossible to meet the respirator program requirements, not only the respirator program, but also, of course, if you have a silica issue, some of you may have a hexavalent chromium issue that also has medical surveillance, respirator program requirements.

So OSHA has a number of temporary, and again I've added the red temporary enforcement guidance memo which will give some discretion to OSHA agents.

The CSHO is a compliance safety and health officer, right? That's the agent who comes into your plant to decide whether or not.

You are in compliance or if you need to have some relief from sections of these standards.

But to gather or to get that relief, you have to meet certain requirements.

You have to show that the circumstances are beyond your control and that you have done all that you could to meet the standard.

Under the current conditions, let's take a look at how that works.

The first thing you have to do is explore options.

A lot of us faced this in the very beginning of it, where we could not get N95s or disposable respirators, and sometimes couldn't even get filters for our reusable respirators, our quarter face respirators, but couldn't find it.

The filters were not available.

And to this day, of course, the CDC and the government says that the use of respiratory protection should first go to first responders and those dealing in the front line with patients who have COVID-19 or the coronavirus and then afterwards to the rest of us in general industry and then the general public, so that becomes a problem.

All right.

So we, a lot of you went out and you got powed air purifying respirators or found other sources.

Of respiratory protection from the ones that you normally would use.

So we're going to see some leeway here in attempting to meet the standard.

One of the things is, of course, they first of all said if you have a problem, please ask your employees who are using them voluntarily to not.

Use a respirator for the short period of time.

That's a tough thing to ask of your employees.

I realize.

Please also ask them to use them so that they their lifespan is as long as possible.

I'm not saying we want them to use them if they are damaged or no longer doing their job, but let's not just throw them away willy-nilly when they can be used for a full shift or even two shifts.

OK.

Please remember also that all of these exemptions will go away once the emergency with coronavirus also goes away, right? So the thing is that we're giving you temporary relief, says OSHA, but we're not getting a blanket waiver or exemptions.

It's not you're going to have to show that you've attempted to meet the standard, OK? So what does that mean? First of all, annual fit testing.

Fit testing is a real problem for a lot of people, and we'll see why.

I mean, you normally have to put one of those hoods over the chap and move or the woman and go from person to person.

We don't want to do that right now.

That is not a wise thing to do.

So if that's the standard of care normally for doing a fit test, we're not going to do that.

We cannot do that.

It's more dangerous to do that type of fit test than to not do it.

They are great where you can demonstrate, you can do another way to do it.

OK, you can do the fit test without the hood.

Try to put the person in more of an enclosed area, maintaining somewhat of a safe distance, and then do your fit test if possible, if possible.

If you can't do it, you need to say that it's not possible for XYZ reasons.

So here's what OSHA gives you as an example of efforts.

All right.

Remember we talked about prioritizing and conserving the use of N95s.

Have your respirator program, your respiratory protection program in up to date in all other regards except for those sections that you cannot meet.

And sometimes it's going to be training you'll see.

It could be medical evaluation, it could be fit testing, right? Make sure that your engineering administrative controls are up to snuff and they're working as well as they can.

That's a very good point.

Make sure that your dust collectors are up, show that you've made an attempt to.

Ensure that the control programs that you have in place are up to snuff, working as well as can be during this time period.

I love this thing you get moving operations outdoors.

Uh it doesn't work for us.

Job rotation schedules, uh, we're most of the things that they're suggesting here we've already tried if.

You already have that in your program that you've shown that you've done all that you can to meet the requirements and you should have already, then you've done all the things that they've mentioned.

Monitor respirator supplies and make sure that you try reasonable attempts to obtain NIOS approved respirators.

Reasonable means if all of a sudden somebody's telling you that you're going to have to pay $35 for an N95, that's not reasonable.

Some people asked if I could use a KN95 instead of an N95.

You're going to try to get NAS approved respirators.

If you can't, well, maybe we, we have to try to use those N95s that are not made in this country but made abroad.

A lot of people did try to use the non-disposable, but like I said, we could get the respirators, we couldn't get the filters.

Most of that I don't think it's an issue with the supply train if it is, let us know there are some sources that are available.

Monitoring fit testing supplies, again, that can be a real problem, getting even fit testing supplies right about now.

However, you can make your own.

For example, the saccharine method of uh doing a fit test, you can, you can make your own saccharine fit testing solution.

Back in April is when OSHA updated the concerns and the guidance for fit testing for general industry before it had been for mostly the health industry, but here in April 8th, and it's a good thing to have in your files because not everybody keeps up to date with some of these things, the OSHA said, you know what, We have a problem with fit testing.

Because there's a shortage of N95, right? And we're requiring people to do fit testing immediately, but what are we going to have to do about this to meet all of these requirements, all right? Meaning, for example, that, well, if you've done everything else and you've tried to do everything else, and you can't get any fit testing materials.

If we may give you some leeway on those persons who have been fit tested in the past.

Using that same type of respirator, all right, please note that is going to be a very important exception to this.

You want to make sure that you prioritize the fit testing equipment to employees and the high hazard exposure.

So let's say you have guys that, you know, we know that the chaps who work in the jet arc area, he's overexposed.

We're going to fit test him.

Well, probably don't need to actually because he's probably an air supplied respirator, but all right.

He's grinding large casts.

He's in the shake.

OK, we want to make sure we get him, but we have these other guys, really, we have them in respirators, but that's because 90% of the time they're in compliance, but 10% of the time they're not.

So obviously you want to put your efforts on the high hazard procedures.

So if you have a different model, if you can't get that respirator, OK, try to use that a different model, whatever you can do to try to meet the requirements.

The most important thing is to make sure that the people who are wearing for the initial time, in other words, new employees, employees who are moved to a job that requires a respirator where they did not have to wear the respirator before, those are the people who need to be fit tested.

For sure.

OK.

You must have an initial quantitative or qualitative fit test.

The rest of the people also remember, if you're not going to, you cannot do the fit test properly.

Even if you've done one, you know, without the use of a hood or make sure that you retrain your employees in how to do the field test, the positive negative test that they should do every time when they put their respirator on for the first time.

OK, this was the original enforcement guidance which then was expanded to the general industry.

I've included this because it gives you a very good outline of what is required to get this exemption.

Please notice you have to inform the employers that you're temporarily suspending the fit test or whatever it is.

I added in red, this is my emphasis, the importance of the user seal check, the field test, the positive negative test to make sure that they are checking the use and efficiency of that use of respirator on a daily basis.

OK.

The rest is pretty obvious, you know, if they having a problem, if there's an issue in the area, they should inform the supervisors.

OK Now here's another Problem that we're all facing.

What about training and medical surveillance? A lot of our employers are in areas where they're told that they should not bring their employees into a large group setting.

Many of you bring in shifts or groups or departments to do your training.

What can you do then? To ensure that you don't bring people in in large groups, well, you can train them video or by video.

We presented a couple of video programs to you.

There are a lot of them that are available.

If you're not able to bring people in and on an individual basis, you can potentially bring them in small groups.

If that's not possible, make sure that you again.

Document the efforts that you've made, but for sure.

For sure, anybody who again is in an initial exposure or a first-time training requirement, that person must be trained.

Some of our people have used outside consultants to come in and they weren't available to come in again if you're like 13 months or 14 months rather than every 12 months, you're going to find them be uh uh understanding if you have attempted to meet the requirements for training.

Right? Training is a big deal.

But more important is medical surveillance.

In many areas, pulmonary function and hearing tests are not available to general industry.

The American College of Occupational Environmental Medicine has said, don't do pulmonary or uh spirometry or pulmonary function test.

Don't do it during this coronavirus.

In addition, The Council for Accreditation and Occupational Hearing Conservation said.

You know, let's not do audiometric testing.

Now, we have seen a number of places where we can get our hearing tests done, but we cannot get pulmonary function tests done.

Whichever the case, if that is the situation at your plant, you want to be sure to make a record for the for yourself on your computer written to your boss, to the department, whatever you have to do, stating why you cannot do the test, who you spoke to concerning him, the date.

And when you anticipate that you will be able to resume that testing.

On December 20th of the year 2020, I called the American Conference of Pulmonary function Specialists in Pennsylvania, and they informed me that they were not doing pulmonary function tests at this time and that they would resume at the end of the coronavirus.

Um, I have asked them to inform me immediately so that we can reschedule these tests, period.

Fine, Martha Gaiman.

Right, same thing for your auto metric.

You might want to go back in the next 60 days then and just say, you know, we tried again, whatever.

Because you're being given the opportunity to not meet the standard.

But to do so, you may be asked to prove that you did everything you could or did a reasonable, I won't say everything, but you've done a reasonable amount to attempt to provide.

Is medical surveillance.

So if they send somebody out, Alright.

They're going to see what are your good faith efforts.

And also where it's not possible, what have you done to protect your employees? And it might be, you know, OK, I could not do the pulmonary function, but I'm going to redo it and I'm still watching.

I trained them, told them if they have any problem breathing to it for me.

I couldn't bring them into the regular training, but I sat them down and had them showed them the video on fit field checks that is provided by OSHA.

All right.

And anything else I've evaluated our engineering controls, you know, I've retrained my employees in how to properly put on and take off their respirators.

All of this will be what will be assessed.

To provide you with that dispensation.

Please also remember that once you have established this good faith, again, I've added the red.

This is from OSHA, but I've added the red that as soon as possible after the reopening of the workplace or the ability to get those tests done that you've tried to get them scheduled, knowing that let's say if your medical surveillance group said, you know what, Martha, we're going to start doing pulmonary function tests on February 15th.

You know, and I know you're not gonna get all your people.

Everybody's gonna be doing to call them and say, alright, tell me when I can schedule put the onus on them to tell you when they will be available.

If you don't do that, you could be cited for all of the above.

They need to know.

Remember, it's a government bureaucracy.

They need to know that you have sufficient documentation.

Just to allow you to have this dispensation.

Please, again, these are OSHA's words.

In other words, notes on the effort the employer made to comply.

Letters or other documentation.

And they'll put that in your case.

They are being told that once the coronavirus is over, that those people who could not comply will be put into a pot, if you will, and there will be some sort of monitoring inspections on a random basis to see that you have in fact complied, and they will enter the code abatement deferred.

You will not be cited if you have met the above and you have made every effort.

To fulfill your requirements under the standard.

This is again from OSHA.

These are not our words.

These are Osho's words.

Here's an example from annual audiograms.

They were supposed to be in March, but we have on-site visitor restrictions.

Many of you are not allowing visitors in social distancing.

I know in my state of Pennsylvania you couldn't go into a plant in March unless you had an absolute reason.

And they cancel it, but again, you have to show good faith to reschedule the mobile facility as soon as possible.

Notice it doesn't say you have to go out and find a new provider.

Here's an example on respirator fit testing and training.

Again, OSHA's words.

The consultant couldn't come out because of travel restrictions, so the training wasn't done.

There were other interim training available.

Like I said, can you use a video? Can you do one by one or small group, whatever you can possibly do.

But remember the emphasis being first of all on new people, initial training and those in the highest exposure level.

OK.

Medical evaluations has been the trickiest thing, the trickiest thing for all of us.

If again, if you're required to, if you have respirators and a medical professional saying we're not doing pulmonary function testing, we've shown you, our society says don't do it.

OSHA will not cite you.

If you have alternate like showing good faith to reschedule the testing.

Will you be inspected? This has been a very interesting case because as I was chatting with Ryan before the webinar, we've had two formal complaints.

Filed with employees in the past week.

Actually 10 days now.

And in both cases.

OSHA, even though they were signed formal complaints, did not come into the facility.

Even in cases here they're giving you when you have fatalities or inpatient hospitalizations, please note it.

The AD, the area director, will determine whether to conduct an inspection because the concern here is the hazard so dire or can we resolve the issue without entering the facility.

So If you have had a worker hospitalization or fatality in the past, you are almost guaranteed that OSHA would be at your door.

Now, they may not.

If they do decide not to enter your facility, they will send you a letter or in some way a correspondent saying this is what we want from you.

Please be sure to respond to that correspondence quickly, fully.

All right, if you cannot provide all the information that they request, tell them I can't do it.

I will have it this.

Tell me why.

If you have, if you have any concerns about your response, please be sure to give us a call.

By the way, as Ryan will tell you, if it's a fatality or an issue with the hospitalization, you can always call my brother or myself 24/7.

We will try to get back to you.

The issue being that they are going to try to meet the requirements of your of the federal and the state and local programs to limit people coming into the workforce.

And the the compliance officers don't want to call me either.

We have had compliance officers coming in in certain places.

Again, it does vary from state to state and region to region, but for the most part, the federal government does not want to send their employees out to either spread a potential coronavirus infection or to have their employees exposed.

Most of the concern with the workplace, with the potential exposure is usually healthcare facilities.

But they, they, once they determine that there's a a hazard of exposure to the compliance officer, it basically gets kicked upstairs to Washington.

So the question then becomes, going back as a practical manner.

Must you enforce the wearing of face masks? Again, this is a quote from OSHA.

You are obligated to provide workers with PPE needed to keep them safe.

But remember, a face mask is not PPE.

So if you're a surgeon and you're wearing a surgical mask, it could be PPE.

But if you are a chap who works in the shipping department and you normally don't need to wear a respirator, face mask is not PPE.

But you might.

Be cited under a 5A1 if there is an outbreak of the coronavirus in your area and your state or local government says you must wear a face mask when in public, though you're not really in public in your workplace.

In our workplace.

Because we do not allow the public into our foundries.

OK, that's a big distinction.

You are not Walmart.

The general public cannot open your doors and walk into your plant.

Hopefully I can't think of one of you that allows that.

This is a private place of business.

But I'm just warning you that this guidance is a little vague here in determining what whether or not you're required to supply a face mask, which is just those paper type masks, but they are not PPE.

So again, You are allowed to require it.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said you can require them to wear a masks.

Uh, but if you have a person who's got a disability, or religious beliefs, that could be a problem.

The disability might be somebody who says they have a breathing obstruction.

Which is probably not typical in most of our foundries because it's of the labor that's required.

So this again is from Osha.

PPE standards don't apply, but the general duty clause says that you have to protect your employees from recognized hazards that are likely to cause death or hazardous harm, physical harm.

So if you feel that there is the potential.

Then one of the things to do is say, OK, we're going to wear face gloves.

I know a lot of people are required either local government, state governments, or their own corporate.

Decisions that all employees must have their temperature taken prior to entering.

Would that relieve you of this? Mm.

I'm not sure.

Again I have not seen one citation based upon.

An employer not providing face masks.

But I'm just warning you, this is, this is again from OSHA.

Your state may be different than Washington state.

I picked Washington State.

In Washington State, employers must ensure workers wear face coverings that work in almost all situations.

Now, what would those situations be? You don't want to wear a face mask when you're of that type when you're a welder or you're an air archer.

You should be wearing a much better respirator, obviously, and also some of those things you have to watch out the flammability.

In that state of Washington, you have, uh, you as the employer must provide the face coverage.

Which by the way, means that you're probably going to make them wear them.

You're required to make them wear them.

That's not an O shock.

Enforceable.

It's the state of Washington.

But not federal.

So To finish up Stay safe.

Try to be informed on your local regulations and give us a call if there's anything we can do to help you on this.

Here's Skip and Martha's contact information or email, and there's the member hotline number.

Like Martha said, give them a call or any questions regarding your written programs, just general compliance questions.

They're available for phone consultation as part of your membership with Steel Founders, and I would encourage you to use them.

February 24, 2022 EPA Air and OSHA Inspections

Well, good afternoon all.

You've got obviously Skip and I'm probably going to talk a little bit quick.

We have, as Ryan said, an awful lot to cover.

I'm certainly not going to try to hit all of the slides.

They'll be there as a reference, but hit the highlights instead.

Don't be afraid to ask a question, and we'll slow it down, but Starting right off, as I think all of you know, the EPA authorizes your state air agency to enforce the regulations of the 1990 Clean Air Act through a series of state implementation programs you'll often hear called SIPs.

The EPA actually pays the individual state agency, usually about 70% of their total operating budget, in order to take that responsibility.

The state must request SIP authority for each enforcement area, including these new area acted rules.

Some states elect not to do so in certain areas, and the EPA therefore must take that enforcement requirement under the federal mantle.

I can say that's a very infrequent situation in the United States.

There are a couple of areas, but not many.

Typically, the state implements its own regulation to enforce the federal air regulation.

The state's reg may be more restrictive than the federal reg, but cannot be less restrictive.

It often comes up with a lot more details, specific reporting venues, questions, deadlines, things like that.

Violations are usually the responsibility, therefore, of the state, and they will often reference both the federal and the state regulation when they issue an NOV or violation.

The EPA, the feds, do not, however, give up their enforcement capability when they approve a SIP for an individual state.

There have been a number of cases with foundries, particularly large ones, where they have been cited by both the state and the federal EPA for the same action and paid a penalty to both agencies who said there is no double jeopardy.

The EPA in the past has pretty much been willing to let the states carry the brunt.

They pay the bills, so they might as well let the states do the hard grunt work.

And the air inspections by the feds or the federal EPA were normally limited to what we like to call tag along inspections, where during the inspection by an air agency, typically your state air.

Agency, there was a Fed along and that Fed is actually grading the state in its performance, but at the same time, don't get lulled into complacency because they also can grade you and we have seen instances where the feds have issued notices of violation directly to the foundry as a result of one of these tag along inspections.

Inspections can also be conducted as part of one of the major emphasis programs such as uh the area Mac subparts.

They normally inspect large Title 5 permit facilities and in cases where substantial public interest has been shown, and there aren't many of those.

If you're a Title 5 or a large source or a smaller state only operating permit, it is important to remember that these permits are federally enforceable, and the reason they are is to give the Fed.

The federal EPA the ability to act independently to enforce the Clean Air Act and act as the hammer.

Most of you know the federal penalties are a whole lot bigger than most state penalties.

Some of the federal regulations are indeed entirely administered by the US EPA, such as the SERA 313, commonly called the R forms, and we won't cover those today.

Enforcement of the relatively new area mac rules has up till now been pretty lax, but it's picking up rapidly, and we've seen numerous notices of violation and penalties within the past 12 months, primarily coming from the state agencies who I think have found a new fee source, but in some cases directly from the feds.

Please remember that the EPA's announced major focus continues to center on the control of hazardous air pollutants or haps.

In foundries, these are lead, chrome, nickel, manganese, mercury, arsenic, beryllium, and cadmium.

The EPA typically doesn't inspect a smaller or non-major source, and the majority of their inspections of these sources comes along the line of the AMA rules which have to be revalidated every 5 years, and this mandates that the EPA be involved and conduct inspections to evaluate whether or not the rule is working or not.

The biggest thing for steel foundries has been, of course, the 5Z rule, and then we have the uh the motors, the 4Z rule, the boilers, and so forth.

One, I must mention is the, the 3U rule for thermal reclaimers.

This really is called cals signers.

The EPA has recently decided that Foundry thermal reclaimers, sand reclaimers are subject to the 3U rule.

It's a reasonably complex rule.

If you have a thermal reclaimer and it's not called out as a 3U reclaimer in your permit, give us a call and we'll, we'll pretty much try to help you hand walk through that.

It's a little too complex to try to cover today along with everything else.

Almost all federal EPA inspections are announced, more than 90% of them.

They typically send you a letter or an email, and they detail why they're coming in, the projected length of their visit, who is coming in, and they usually give you a list of things that they want you to have present for the inspectors when they walk in the door.

Remember, it's possible to get cited for the same violation by the state and the Fed.

What they're looking for normally when they send you the letter or email is they want you to have present things that specifically are required under your operating permit such as records of pressure differentials on dust collectors on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, production records, hours of operations, things like that.

Remember that they require you to have this available for the past 5 years, and they will normally ask for all of the records for 5 years.

In many of your cases, that'll be a stack of paper that may be 2345 inches thick.

They can ask for copies, and we'll talk a little bit about how to give them copies in the past.

Before we go into more detail, important to understand the type of air permits that exist out there for foundries and everybody else.

A major source is the so-called Title V5 source where you have the potential to emit 100 tons per year of any criteria pollutant.

Or more than 10 tons per year of a hap, or 25 tons per year of all combined haps.

Then we have the synthetic minor permit or TSOP in some states where you have the potential to emit above those trigger levels, but you voluntarily Agree to control something which is regulatable, such as tons of production, hours of operation, uh, pounds of something else to keep you below the trigger levels.

The natural minor permit, which we have a number of members that hold such permits, even if you ran 24/7 for 365 days a year, you wouldn't hit the trigger levels, and there's a final type of permit called an operating permit.

I don't think we have any steel founder members who have an operating permit that's below a natural miner.

It's not federally enforceable and it's a pretty small source, usually less than 8 to 10 tons a year in particular.

You really need to know your Title 5 or state-only operating permit.

Read through it, highlight it, and any time it talks about monitoring or record keeping, make a record for yourself of what you have to do.

Typically that's a report on malfunctions and violations.

Maybe a report on production, usually monthly, but it could be some other period of time.

Record of fuel burn, record of PM inspections.

Very importantly, record of major maintenance on control equipment.

This is what is major maintenance? Most states interpret that as things like new bags, a new fan, bearings, not routine maintenance, lubrication, and so forth.

Record of daily, weekly pressure drop on the bag filters and scrubbers, probably see more violations with penalties on this item than any other in the error domain.

Emission summaries.

Many of your permits require that you maintain an emissions summary on an annual, maybe a 12 month rolling total, or however else they want it.

Again, do it as required by your permit.

It's not always the same thing in the same state.

And we've got cases where a company operates 3 facilities in the same state, and they have 3 different types of reporting.

And then we have the specific requirements of the area mac rules.

They are normally, I say, often in the slides, detailed in the permit, but some states don't do that.

They simply accept the area, the federal area MAC subpart as part of their permit, and you have to go back and look at it in the federal register subpart.

If you need a copy of or to establish any part of your 5Z steel foundry area mac rule, the explanations, the templates, and so forth, you can get it from the steel wiki or give us a call.

Remember, the Clean Air Act mandates that all of your facilities have a single composite air permit that is federally enforceable.

That permit is your bible for error enforcement.

What's new is the thing that everybody is always interested in, and quite frankly, we don't expect much new in the way of federal air regulations that pertain to the steel foundry industry.

We all know that the current administration has announced they're going to be doing a great deal more with regard to the environment, but we don't see anything specifically affecting our industry.

We do see region by region enforcement variations with regions 3 and 5 probably being the most active in foundries.

And as Martha's going to talk about more than I, uh, COVID has had a huge impact on foundry inspections and forced the agencies to conduct fewer physical inspections and far more virtual inspections.

Recent EPA inspections have almost without exception come as a surprise to the foundry.

They don't appear to have been triggered by any incidents or violations.

They're almost always announced, and the request for um paperwork, as we've discussed before, is given in writing.

These are again a list of some of the things they've been asking for.

Remember to keep your records for a minimum of 5 years, have them available.

Question becomes, do I have to copy all this? The answer is no, only give them copies when they ask for them.

It's been my personal experience that they seldom ask for them unless there's a problem.

If you consider the request to be unreasonable, give us a call and we'll give you some substantiation and guidelines of where you can contest.

The inspection team is usually 2 EPA inspectors.

They never seem to go alone.

I think they're afraid to be left alone in the foundry.

In addition, they'll almost always be a state agency representative, and that is kind of to shepherd provide uh driving services for the feds and also to see what the feds are going to do.

Unlike a normal state inspection, most of the time will be spent in your office, not in the foundry.

In several cases, we've seen them conduct the inspection even when the facility was not operational.

The records review is usually for the full 3 to 5 year period.

They will take and pick 2 or 3 specific things that they're asking for, and they will indeed from our experience go through and check every single inspection report.

They can ask for copies, they will give you a verbal summary of their inspection as an outbriefing.

They'll normally give you a preliminary inspection report in 4 to 6 weeks.

And they say they will give you a final inspection report in about a year.

Frankly, the inspections are fairly new.

Most of them, we've never seen a final inspection report, and I doubt we will.

The state inspector is, as I said, primarily an observer, but if they're there as a suggestion, ask them to consider this inspection as your annual foundry inspection.

They'll usually go along with that, and it saves you wasting more time on a state inspection.

If the Feds issue an NOV, don't be surprised that the state also issues an NOV simply to protect themselves and show that they are trying to enforce the federal rule.

How do we prepare? Well, since we really haven't identified an exact trigger for inspections, it's kind of difficult to truly prepare other than the things we've talked about before.

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, and focus for sure on the 5Z rule.

If the feds come in, they will always look at the 50 rule, and this will include scrap inspections, having a written work practice program, training documents, stack tests if you're a large steel foundry.

To date, the inspectors have come up with no great findings, but missing Delta P readings, for instance, we had one last year that had, I believe it was 6 collectors for 5 years, daily readings.

They found 3 missing readings and they issued a rather large NOV.

Also, some of your permits have a An operating range on pressure drops.

If you're outside of the range, they will issue an NOV.

So if you rebag and for the first two weeks are low, make sure you put in your records why that is.

Please remember the federal inspectors undoubtedly know a lot less about the foundry than the state folks do.

Don't instruct them or teach them.

Don't volunteer anything, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, and if you're not certain of an answer, even though you may be the ESH director.

Tell them that you want to check the records and you want to check with your consultants or your management or whatnot, and we'll get back to them in a reasonable period of time with a written response, and make sure you schedule a normal production day for the inspection.

After the inspection is complete.

You know, let steel founders know.

Let Martha and I know, or Ryan and his team know.

We try to keep a running tally on these inspections, not what they found, but that they came in and why they came in so that we can notify fellow members in a region or whatnot of what's going on and allow you all to prepare.

It's usually going to be the paperwork that catches you on this type of inspection, so be prepared for that.

And we're over to Martha.

Anything, any questions at this point? No questions yet at this time, Skip, but thank you.

Very good.

OK, OSHA is really a bit different.

I'm going to start out with formal and informal complaints because we've been seeing a lot of these lately.

These are the letters that you get in the mail from your regional office or from your area office, and it's going to be a letter that outlines a complaint.

That's been made by an employee or an important personage, and they will not say the name, but they will give you an actual complaint if you get such a complaint letter, if you respond fully and completely, generally, OSHA will not come to your door, even with a formal complaint.

The difference is whether the person has given their name and signed it or not signed it.

Just today We've gotten a report from OSHA saying that based upon our written response they are closing the book on this complaint and will not come to the plant physically.

This is important.

How you respond to that letter is essential.

These are examples.

These are actual examples I have taken from current complaints that we have received.

Number one, employees are exposed to silica dust without being monitored.

That's a bad one because that one is a general response.

Please be sure to answer the specific.

Complaint.

It's about silica dust monitoring.

Don't go into anything else.

Don't go to medical evaluation.

They want to know, have you evaluated your facility for silica dust? If you're in the midst of it, that's fine, but that's, that's a tough one to answer, but stay to answering that question.

Employees are exposed to alcohol fumes.

Oh crap, you've probably never sampled for alcohol in any time you're dipping your courseware.

It's another one that's relatively easy to respond by doing a quick and dirty test air sample.

They will take it.

They will take your test results for something like that.

Employees are exposed to respirator hazards from uh silica.

This one's specific.

This one I'd much rather have than the first one because it says in the no baycor room.

Because you didn't enforce the use of respirators, so don't worry about the monitoring.

Don't worry about the medical exposure.

They are the employees required to wear respirators? And if so, were they wearing them properly and did they have a respirator program? This particular one, respirators were not required and employees were only using them on a voluntary basis.

So they accepted our answer.

Almost always you will get something like this in a standard statement.

It'll say we they'll start it.

They'll say, Well, we haven't determined whether they're hazards.

So this is where they're, if you can respond to the above completely, they will agree not to come in because they've determined that the hazard has either been addressed or does not exist.

In a different way, the 2 below, all right, this is about exposure to amputation hazards from grinders or lockout tag out.

These are slightly different problems below because in this case you don't have a record, for example, of air sampling in the past or doing medical surveillance or employees in a respirator program.

At that particular case when we responded to this one and enforcing the lockout tag out, we said, Hey, we have a lockout tag out program.

This is what our lockout tagout program is and most importantly, we said we reinstructed our supervisors in the importance of the lockout tagout program and we've retrained the affected employees.

OK, different point of view, can't go back and prove it, but they can't prove either that you didn't have a lockout program, so we respond to it in a different manner.

Very important thing in closing the book on these informal and formal complaints.

If you have any problems, please call us.

We answer these types of complaints all the time for various, various heavy industries.

Again, here there's one on standing water.

Oh, I hate the leaks.

OK, what is my roof had a leak.

Well, in this particular case, the roof always leaks.

It's a flat roof on an old facility.

Again, we can't worry about the past.

We said now we already took it.

We reinspected it.

We, we tested it, and we have an ongoing maintenance program, all right.

Tow motors again are number one that we always get about whether or not they have been trained and whether or not they're operating the tow motors properly.

The biggest problem there with responding to complaints is generally that the employees are permitted to use the tow motors even though they haven't been trained.

So you have to go back and say we want to make sure that we've instructed the employees and the supervisors that only trained certified employees may use the heavy equipment.

Oh, this is a new one, by the way.

The new one that we're seeing is fall hazards, all right? Employees climbing outside silos.

Just a real quickie on this one.

Most of your ladders going up your silos do have cages on them.

If you have a silo that is above 24 ft and it has cages as fall protection, the ladder and the cages were installed prior to, I think it's yeah, November 19th.

Of 2018, you do not need fall protection.

Any changes to those ladders or new ladders above 24 ft, cages are no longer acceptable.

You have to have some sort of a fall protection device.

On which would usually be a harness and a uh some type of a cable system.

Uh and I, and in the 30s, in 2030s, cages will not be acceptable at any height.

Have any problem.

Please give us a call.

Make sure you answer and keep to the complaint and in writing and in a timely manner.

If it says you have to have your answer within such and such day and you cannot meet that date, no problem.

Call them up, ask for an extension.

They will always give you a reasonable amount of time and especially if you're doing air sampling, you can always give them a preliminary result and then give them the final test results.

Do not send in photographs that might get you into more trouble than you think.

In other words, if you send in a photograph and all of a sudden the guy in the photograph isn't wearing the proper personal protective equipment, that's not good.

We had a guy who wanted to send in a photograph and I said, Oh my God, that grinder's not guarded.

Oh really? Oh, don't do that.

OK.

Oh, she sat the door.

OK, don't, I don't care what the inspection for is, but make sure there's 10 major issues that we're going to look at quickly.

First, do you have an entry policy? And please, if you are a member, please give us a call.

We handle OSHA inspections for so many folks for more decades than I care to count.

Call me on my cell.

Call my brother on his cell 24/7.

We will respond.

That's what your membership means.

We will be there to assist you in the background.

We can also be used as a resource as well during any time during that inspection.

But when you have that entry policy, if you, you must have an entry policy that your employees understand and follow, that you have to know who they is allowed to grant entry.

What's the basis of the visit and the entry rules and a record of the materials and the photographs that you've distributed.

You have to have some sort of a visitor's book or somehow have a method of allowing entry into the facility and people are signed in and signed out.

Remember, if Any of your employees grants entry to OSHA, that will be considered acceptable unless you have a policy that says that only the following persons may grant entry.

Please be sure that you know the name of the OSHA inspector and whether it's a safety or a health person or they're cross trained.

They will not allow you to make a copy, a photocopy of their credentials, but you can write down the name and you can certainly make a written copy, you know, a written notation.

Make sure that you look at those official credentials.

They will be perfectly happy to show them to you.

And you also want to know why they are there.

For example, if it's in a complaint, then you're going to keep the inspection to that complaint.

You must also say that only certain persons can grant entry and that they cannot enter without a company escort.

The only time That you cannot be present is if they are having a private conversation with an employee as a part of the inspection.

Every other time you have to have somebody there.

Here's a sample entry.

Policy.

I'm not saying you have to have this one, but something along this line basically says that this is your policy, and it says that this is our right, and they, you are granted these rights under the regulations and under the standard.

You can then list who is allowed permits entry.

It should be at least 2 people.

It can't be like your owner who lives in Switzerland, and you know, you may or may not be able to get a hold of them.

It has to be at least a reasonable list of folks.

It'll also tell you what to do if that person is not available.

I have had ocean inspectors threatened that if you don't get me immediate entry that we're going to go get a subpoena.

They never do.

If you say, look, I'm trying, sit here, you can listen to me.

I'm looking for this person.

But this is for the safety of all.

And this is out of their own compliance book which will basically state their limitation.

They can enter without delay and at reasonable time.

But it has to be doing reasonable working hours, reasonable limits, and a reasonable manner.

And it also means that, by the way, I have had one inspector who had two hour conversations with employees.

That is not acceptable.

And also if you have an important employee, you can limit the time or the when that conversation will take place.

I mean, you can't just pull your poss off the line when the inspector wishes it.

So remember, the business owner has the right to be present or designate a representative to be available during the inspection or at any time in that inspection.

If you waive your rights and you allow the compliance officer in without the owner's approval or under any other circumstances, it's very difficult to get anything that has happened up to that point in the inspection.

Changed.

It's like when the police officer says, Can I open up your trunk? And he opens up the trunk and there's your illegal stolen goods.

Well, you gave him permission to look.

Now if you, if you can stop the inspection at that point, but anything that he sees in the plain view doctrine can be used up to that point.

Please always be polite and courteous.

I know that all of you.

Understand this.

It can be very difficult at times because sometimes you feel very I'm gonna use the nice word and say annoyed, and some of the inspectors can be annoying, but courtesy and being polite goes a long way.

Let's say the guy's in your facility now.

Now what do we do or the woman or girl got to be careful nowadays.

Make sure your programs are up to date.

Being up to date, you know, you're supposed to be reviewing these.

The review can just be a cover sheet with your initials or whoever's initials and the date that it was reviewed if there's no changes.

But hopefully the names that are in there are somebody who's still working at the facility.

I've seen programs that were good programs, but the guy who's supposedly the safety director hasn't worked there for 2 years.

That doesn't.

Really go over really good.

Please keep your programs in separate files.

I have said so many times when the inspector says, I'm here to look at your hearing conservation program, and out comes the 3 inch binder, and it's got every safety program at your facility in one binder and then the inspector goes through them all.

If they want to see this noise.

And the hearing conservation program, show them that program.

Don't give them immediate access to all of your files.

If they want copies of things, they can have copies of your files, except if there's medical records.

If they want the person's name or Social Security number attached to it, you need to get written directive from the area office or from Washington to do so.

They can look at them at any time.

They can take notes.

But if the medical record has the person's name, you have to worry about your HIPAA requirements of a protection of somebody's privacy.

Always remember whatever you give them anything, as Skip said, make sure you keep a record, but also make sure that you state that you're giving them based upon your understanding of what is being requested.

Next, that's so that you know if you do make an error or an omission that you can say look I did what I thought was correct.

Let me let me uh update it.

I'm not going to go over all of these, but you know, to make sure your programs are periodically checked and your testing and reports and records are available.

As I said, only provide the programs that are requested.

Make a list of them.

If it's a big program, tell them, look, give me a list of what it is that you'd like, and I will provide it to you either in print or you can give it to them electronically.

If it's a PDF, please.

I would not give them a Word document.

And you can provide it to them at a certain time.

I've never had an inspector who did not get grant you time to go through the records to make sure that the records are complete and up to date.

Make sure you keep a copy of what you've given to them.

Too many times I said, Well, what did you give them? Well, I gave them my X Y Z.

Well, what do you mean? What what test records did you give them? So if you give them testing records, make sure you know what it is that you've given them and the revision or the date.

Of those records, OK? Also, you never give them originals because they must be kept on site.

They'll understand that.

Remember you won't have an employee privacy.

We've gone over this and other webinars, but make sure that you maintain your employees' privacy.

Do not give them records, medical records with names and or Social Security numbers.

I have had one case where OSHA has come in with a directive from Washington that they could make a copy of any and all medical records complete with names.

But that will come from Washington.

That will not come from your area office.

By the way, that's usually part of a major study that they're doing on, let's say the results of silica exposure in foundry workers.

When you are asked a question, Answer the question is asked.

If it's about the molding, you're jumping up the court room.

If it's about hex crum, don't talk about silica.

Make sure you understand the question.

And there's nothing wrong with asking for clarification.

Example, this is one I get all the time.

Do you do a daily check of your cranes and Hooks and you go, oh, I don't think so.

Well, yes, you do.

You don't need a written.

Record, but every day that man looks at that hook and makes sure that it is not cracked, it's not deformed.

It is usable, ready to be used.

That's why I'm saying make sure you understand the question.

This is one of the reasons that you want to be with the employees, because if he asks that question, you want to make sure that the employee response is full.

For example, they'll say, Did you check the slings every day? And the guy says, No, wait a minute.

You mean you don't look at those slings every day before you? Oh sure, absolutely.

Well, make sure that we understand that.

Right, one of the other things I've always laughingly said, if you go out into most plants and you ask employees, Were you paid last week? Oh, I don't know, 40% of them say, gee, boss, I don't remember getting paid last week.

Of course he was paid last week.

So if that answer is not correct, we want to be able to supply the adequate information before we get cited.

None actually have to fight a citation.

OK.

Make sure that you always say, I know I've said this before, but in writing or verbally that you are responding based upon your understanding of the question and your understanding of what is available to the person many times I've had somebody supply an answer and they'll say, you know what, we did do a test after that or we did have something in the past.

That's OK if you, we can always go back and Make sure that we provide any additional information, but we don't want to make an absolute program.

Did we ever test that? No, we never tested that.

Well, yeah, we did.

We might have done it 5 years ago, but 5 years ago is acceptable, OK? Nobody should enter your facility unless accompanied by an authorized person.

We're steel foundries.

Steel foundries are are places where there are known hazards.

So we don't allow people to walk through there.

They will not.

And by the way, if you have a training program, if you have a program where people don't go through the melt department without looking at a film or whatever or being tutored as to what the hazards are, make sure that that inspector goes through that same training program, establish beforehand who will accompany the agent.

I have to tell you, sometimes you don't want your supervisors to do it because supervisors will often Try to respond more fully than perhaps they should.

For example, they don't stick to the question.

All right.

And also what actions can be taken, what photos or videos or employee interviews are permitted? Some of you may be doing defense work and you don't allow photographs.

They will try to do photographs.

They don't do photos and videos nearly as much as they used to, but make sure they will do photos but not videos so much.

Make sure that you know that it is an acceptable what they're filming.

And What they're not allowed to film.

So also make sure that all the necessary protective equipment is worn.

If the chap goes into the pouring area and in your pouring area, he's supposed to be wearing a certain type of heat resistant clothing or whatever it may be.

Make sure that that Inspector is also wearing that clothing and oh please make sure that also management is wearing the same clothes.

I got a Wilful citation with a client one time, a client, the owner of the foundry, stood next to the poorer during the inspection and was not wearing the proper personal protective equipment.

And of course he got cited for not wearing his flame retardant clothing.

Because he knew the rules, he established the rules, but he wasn't following them, OK? If the inspection's a result of a complaint, you can restrict the inspection to the area of the complaint.

But if you walk through the facility, that's in plain sight again.

So if he says, Well, my complaint's in the courtroom, but you walk through the grinding area to get to the courtroom and he sees a violation in the grinding room, he's going to cite it.

Right there in plain sight if you can walk around the building or whatever sometimes they will come in.

On a complaint and then say, you know, you are up for a general inspection anyway, so we're going to expand it.

Sometimes we can fight those, sometimes we can't.

Sometimes it's not worth fighting, but generally a complaint should be an inspection on that complaint area.

Sometimes it's a targeted concern such as Hex chrome.

Lately the biggest thing's been noise, and it will be silicon.

And only those records and operations around Hex Chrome or silica should be inspected.

Remember those trade secrets.

If you have, like, if you're doing defense work, inform the area office just what areas and operations are trade secrets or are defense secrets.

They will respect them.

They will respect That will be all set up.

Generally, what happens is they will not do any photographs or they will have the photographs uh reviewed prior to being entered into the actual documentation of the case.

So you provide the parameters you establish the per the parameters.

If they want to interview an employee.

You can say no, you can say no.

I will not allow you to interview my employees on our company property, but if you do that, they will contact workers at home.

And most people prefer to keep their interviews at the workplace.

And again it should be a reasonable period of time.

I don't know, a half an hour.

I've seen them go to 1 hour.

Beyond that, what unless there's an issue, there should, it should not be gone and plus the fact if that employee is important, you can establish in a hand, look, I only have so many ports and I can only allow you to have access to this operator from this time to that time.

Also, if you have non-English speaking people, they should not.

Or they're not supposed to allow you to provide the interpreter.

If it is, for example, in some of our areas we have a heavy Spanish speaking population, they must bring in an official interpreter.

They will not allow you or not a fellow employee to do the interpreting.

They used to do that no more.

Again That that personal protective equipment, please make sure that everybody's wearing it, including you or management or supervisors that are in the area.

Very important.

Make sure you know what past violations are in your plant record.

Very easy to find out what they are.

Uh, make sure that any you don't want to get a repeat or a willful citation from the same citation.

You just don't want that.

You know what the past citations are.

If you don't know how to find out, go to the OSHA website, and there is at that website you can get your name, your establishment, and go back for at least 7 years to know what it is that you recited that you can figure out what it is that you need to accomplish.

Correct any violation and what agreement you may have.

Well, one of the things I have found is a lot of people have had citations in the past and they've come up with agreements and current management doesn't know what that agreement was.

Perfect example.

If I have an area that says, for example, in housekeeping that I will keep the area clean and neat, what does That mean if in a past citation you said that meant that once a day the employee will go through before the shift or after the shift and do this, that or the other thing, that's your agreement.

But if you don't know what that is and that inspector says, Well, I want you to clean that up twice a day and you don't have a record of what your agreement was.

You're, you've got a real problem.

You can be recited.

Another example in this is personal protective equipment, especially with like pours.

What pouring equipment uh uh protection have you? Agreed to in the past, they can come in and ask you to do more, but if you have especially a formal agreement that says you will wear A, B, C, and D, they can say you should be wearing G and H.

but it's pretty hard to do a penalty in a citation unless you don't have a record of that agreement.

That's why it was very important to respond to any citation in writing clearly.

Remember, once you get that citation, you have 15 working days to make a change to the citation or a formal letter of contact must be filed.

It must be filed 15 working days.

That's it.

That's working days.

That's no weekends.

Saturdays and Sundays don't count, and neither do holidays, of course.

What can you do in that time period? You can.

Change anything.

You can change the abatement date.

You can have the the item removed from the citation.

You can have items grouped so that instead of 3 items you only have one, which reduces the penalties and the problems, and you can also reduce it from, let's say, a serious to a non-serious or a repeat to a serious, whatever it may be.

But you've got 15 days to do that unless you file a letter of contest.

If the citation is forgotten on somebody's desk or somebody's been.

On holiday they don't care.

They don't care.

It's an absolute.

How do you write a letter of contest? Letter of contests are very simple.

Here's a sample.

You just fill it in, send it to the area director or your state.

Uh, what the citation is, the citation number and the items, uh, usually wanna do all the citations and the inspection number.

And if there were 2 inspections on the same days, make sure you read your citations because there may be a safety inspection and a health inspection.

You want to make sure that you get both inspection numbers because if you only list one, the other one will stand as written.

OK.

And in it, Generally, we say we, when you're gonna contest something, you can test everything.

You can test all of the the descriptions, the penalties, and the abatement dates.

We generally recommend that you say we file this contest because it's a short time period.

We only have 15 working days and we haven't been able to complete our informal discussions with the area offices, especially during the pandemic.

We haven't been able to see people face to face, and the contest period came and went quickly, so we often had to file a letter of contest simply to get.

Enough time With the area office to uh make any modifications to the citation.

And make sure you know what it means.

The penalty, you know, it may not be a lot.

I mean, I had people who accepted combustible boss citations.

Oh, it was only $7000.

They accepted the citation and then they found out that, you know, coming up with air pollution control devices to meet the combustible dust standards would cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Like, oh dear, for example, again, if you have a housekeeping issue, what does It means to come into compliance.

Certain things are very simple.

Put the guard back on.

OK, put the guard back on.

But what does it mean to keep the aisleways clear? What does it mean to keep your lunchroom clean? OK, make sure you understand what it is that you're going to agree to.

Make sure that you know what it is and what the potentials are.

So with silica, remember, one of the things there is that, OK, with silica, I, I, I'm got an abatement date.

My abatement date's gonna be a year from now.

But you know what, in a year from now I'm planning on changing my cleaning and finishing department.

I want to do a whole change.

I'm not going to put in a dust control system for one year, no.

Make sure that you they understand right up front that this is going to be a longer period of time because I'm planning on making major changes to my facility.

So you have to have a plan going into your base, your negotiation.

You, you know that you're going to have to pay some sort of a penalty if The citations have any validity to them all.

What is it that you're willing to accept? Be realistic.

What time are you gonna really need? what can, how can you negotiate? Can you combine citations? Can you eliminate citations? How are you going to correct those citations if you don't have a plan of attack before you go into the negotiations? I guarantee you you're going to have major issues down the road in determining what it is that's going to constitute abatement.

Make sure your abatement dates.

are acceptable.

Don't accept an abatement date just because it seems OK.

If you know you're going to have to, if you think you're going to need 30 days, ask for 60.

It is very easy to change an abatement date.

In the informal settlement area once that informal settlement is completed and you have accepted the citation, you can change the abatement date, but it requires a petition for modification of abatement date, which is really basically simple.

It's actually harder for OSHA.

To go through the process than it is for us.

We have to write a letter, we can help you write that letter.

It's relatively simple.

You have to say what you're gonna do and why you need that time, but it's so much easier to do it.

Ahead Of the final agreement.

You will generally not get more than 1 year nowadays for an engineering program, even knowing it's going to take more than 2.

You can go into it and say, Well, we're probably going to do it.

We'll have to give you information as to why we need more than a year at the end of that date.

The reason being the area director can only give you 1 year.

He has to go to the regional office for more than that.

And that'll change from administration to administration.

Some administrations it's easy to get time.

They've gotten 5 years.

Some administrations, it's not.

Right now it's not that easy.

To get extended time periods.

Remember in the compliance state, you have the resources and time for training.

We've had people say, oh yeah, I can do that training in 15 days, really? How about the people who aren't there, that are missed, that are out, they make sure you have enough time.

Do you have enough equipment.

If you, if you're installing an air pollution control device, at least in a lot of our states, it'll take you 6 months to a year to get a permit to install from your state.

And are you planning changes to the facility? Like I said, if you're planning on reworking that whole department.

C I'm not going to put the money in now when I'm going to put it into a total change to that facility, and can you afford it? Yes, money does count, but if you're going to claim lack of money, you have to be able to prove it.

Now some of the things are just not feasible.

That's not the same thing.

As you know, we have a whole uh section on state of the art for the steel foundry in coming into compliance with silica, but it's different.

That's also on our wiki page.

So please seek help sooner rather than later.

It's a lot easier to avoid the citation rather than to respond to it once written.

So if we can show the area office that we are in compliance, or even if there is a problem and if they put into the citation that it was abated during inspection, you will get a much lower fine and a lot of goodwill toward any future inspection.

All right.

So if you need us, give us a call.

Email us if you want um get a hold of one of us if you have a.

Like I said, call me on my cell phone.

I sleep with my cell phone by the bed.

So I get calls on spills and, and accidents and inspections.

We're here as part of your membership to respond to any of your concerns.

Great, thanks Martha.

I don't have any questions this time.

I appreciate everybody hanging the whole hour, great webinar.

Just want to say real quickly that we will post this on the wiki and along those lines and thinking about compliance dates and everything.

We did post up last month the EHS e-calendar that Skip and Martha put together and so that's out on the wiki as well or the environmental health and safety section.

I would encourage you to take a look at that.

It's a really easy way to import import all the important compliance dates and reminders to keep your programs current and all that into your calendar, and there are some dates that are fixed, some dates that you can move around.

There's a guidance document there on the site to help you through that.

So if you haven't seen that, we put something in the recent cast the reporter.

I'd encourage you to go check that out as well.

June 29, 2023 EHS Update

November 14, 2023 OSHA’s Revised Electronic Reporting Rule

OK, this is the changes to the OSHA's rule on record keeping, and of course they've couched this as it's to improve tracking of workplace injuries and illnesses, and it will go into effect on January the first, this upcoming January the first, all right.

It was published right back in July, but everybody knew it was coming, and it's not considered to be a major change, but it could affect your facility, but we want to make sure that you understand what's included and who is actually affected.

OK, by the way, please remember that not only will we have this available, the slides, but we will also make available a copy of the docket, you see that from the Federal Register, which includes not only the changes to the regulation but also all of the background information as well as an OSHA, you know, cheat sheet, a two page sheet outlining the changes.

OK, the summary, this is from OSHA.

When I show you things like this from OSHA, all of the emphasis is added by us, including the red, because we think that it's important.

But basically the major changes are to employees with 100 or more persons in their employment.

We are in the designated industries so that from now on in you will not only have to On the website, do your 300A, but also your 300 report and the 301.

What is the difference? The 300A is merely the summary.

It gives you the total summary.

300 report gives you a.

Incident by incident report, what type of accident it was, how many days off, in which of your departments, and of course the 301 is your investigation into The accident and we know that is a big change for some of you who might have to report because in the past OSHA did not require that you do a 301.

You could do your own insurance company or an internal investigation report, but in this case online you will have to fill out their 301 form.

Not difficult.

Please notice that they will not collect the employee names or addresses or any of your doctors or nurses.

Or the hospital where somebody was treated.

So that's very important.

They're not, you're not to give out employee names or addresses.

But of course employees, excuse me, establishments companies that have 20 to 249 and above will still have to file the 300A.

In other words, so if you have more than 20 or more employees who still have to file your 3000A, but if you're 100 or more, you have to do the 300 and 301.

This does not eliminate the requirement that employers post the 300 report in the excuse me, that's the summary report in the facility by February 1st.

That's in addition.

Through the online so you have two types of reports you have to uh post the 3000A as everybody who has to keep uh a report.

Remember that's employee people are more than 10 or more employees and then the online is going to be the addition for people who have 20 or more employees.

You have to keep these records for at least 5 years.

And that posting the 300A.

It's kept up February 1st to April 30th.

You can't take it down.

You have to put it in a place where employees can have access to it.

It could be the lunchroom, it could be your time clock, whatever.

OK, uh, let me see, I see a question 300 day online under 30 under 100 only the 300A.

OK Only the 300A as of this time.

The important thing that you have to understand though is what is an establishment.

This is very important for those of you who might have different locations.

And when I tell you it's a location, we're talking about a physical location.

This is out of OSHA from part 1904.

This is the OSHA regulation.

It is at a single physical location.

Where business is conducted.

But If you have, I don't know if you were, let's say a construction company or sanitary, that's going to be different.

It's the establishment, main branch offices and the supervisory.

All right, but that's not us.

So let's say, what does this mean? This is very important to you.

If you have your foundry, all right, located um on uh uh.

Whoops, uh, oh dear me, Avenue A or Main Street, OK.

But then you have your machine shop or your warehouse on South Street.

Those are two separate locations or establishments.

If they are side by side on Main Street, That's one location.

I know it's could be different buildings.

But they're side by side on the same location that's one location if they're across the street, probably one location.

If you have any questions we'll talk about it.

Martha, we do have a question on the board.

Sorry to interrupt.

Um, the question is.

The question regarding employee count.

The question reads as follows.

How is the employee count figured? Our company floats between 95 and 105 employees throughout the year.

I'm coming to that, OK? All right, so we're going to count employees on that establishment.

So that if I have 75 employees in the foundry on Main Street.

And I have 45 employees in the machine shop on South Street.

That's not 100 employees.

Because they're counted by establishment.

But if I have 75 employees in my foundry and next to it contiguous on the same property, you know, in Is on South Street next door, I have 45 employees, then I, I am over my 100.

That makes sense, Martha, but for companies that are variable.

And, OK, we're gonna come to that next.

All right, let me just, let me just finish this section up, but yes, it's very important.

Can you, let's say you have those two places.

Can you come on? Yeah, you can if.

They run the business under common management.

Let's say the same people run the foundry and and they run the machine shop and maybe it's like, OK, it's a caddy corner or it's right around the corner.

Then you can have, you can count it as one establishment and you have to keep one set of business records for both of the facilities.

Right, here's the example.

I don't know why you'd want to do this, but some people do.

Any questions on this? Just give us a call, OK? To work it through now.

Very important question.

What is an employee to OSHA? Please.

Most of this is in red.

It's very important because the EPA and OSHA count employees totally differently.

I don't want to go through it because I don't want to confuse you, but the EPA counts hours.

They determine the number of employees based upon the number of hours that people work.

OSHA does not.

The definitions of an employee fall under the record keeping.

1904, which again is actually part of the regs themselves.

It includes, and I did it in red, all employees, labor, executive, hourly, salary, part-time, seasonal, and migrant.

That includes temporaries.

Have to include recordable injuries.

You count them that occur to employees who are not on your payroll.

If you supervise them, you have a temp service.

They provide the bodies, you supervise them, you have to count them.

Who would you not include in that? For example, you hire an outside contractor, an electrical contractor, to lay down the electrical service to your new molding line.

And you just give him the job.

You do not supervise his workers.

You make sure he's doing the work, that's it.

That's not an employee.

Because you do not supervise them.

If you hire an electrician through a temporary service, but you tell him what to do and you supervise them, then you have to count it.

Right.

Self-employed persons are not included.

So it's everybody.

That's what's counting up to your 100, right? The other thing is And this is just a little outline of who is if it's supervision, if you have any questions on this, give us a call because there's a lot of misunderstanding on hiring temporary persons.

By the way, if that temporary person is hurt, you have to include that injury on your OSHA 100 log.

That can get very, very difficult because many times the temporary service provides the health insurance and therefore you have to be able to coordinate with that agency so that you can record the numbers of days off and the results of that injury.

We had a major issue with that in that a temporary employee suffered a fatality and we didn't even know for days.

Of course we were supposed to report it.

Within 8 hours and we had, we were not informed, right? Those are the temporarries are counted.

So this is just a quick listing for your purpose here they are.

All of these and employees if you've supervised them, they are not on your payroll.

But But very important.

That these are employees on the day you do not.

Add them together.

It's not a summary.

Let's say over the year 2023 you hired, they came and they went.

I mean, you have employees who don't, uh, you know, we all know that we have a problem sometimes keeping new employees.

We might hire two and keep one.

It's not a summary of all of the employees.

It's the number of employees on one day on the highest number of days in that year.

Am I being clear? Do you, it's the number of employees on the day, the highest number of days.

So, Martha, just to be super crystal clear here in response to our question, if I'm a foundry and I operate at 95 employees all year, but I hired 6.

Part-time guys in July.

I ran 101 in the month of July.

I have a duty to report electronically 100.

And overemployee organization.

Is that what you're saying? Yes.

Yes, but if I hired 140 over the year, But I never had more than 60.

Working on a given day, I don't.

I mean you guys have very fluid.

I'm, I'm assuming we're all in the same boat there very fluid number of employees, but you must make sure that you can keep those records.

Clear Your county.

Many of you won't ever get close to it, but if you're close, you need, you need to do that.

So this is That this is, do you want to keep this confirmation for your records that's coming from your society.

OK, I've again, this is from OSHA.

I've added the red.

I've added the emphasis if your establishment had 100 or more employees at any time during the previous calendar year.

It's not a summary.

It's that flash that instant.

So you might want to keep that in mind.

If you hit that 100 then coming this coming um year you will have to file online in March.

All right.

Just to be clear, if we were a 95 man foundry and we uh had some question about whether or not we broke that 100 man threshold, we could file those reports digitally, even if we're not obligated, and that doesn't present a hazard or risk to me as a foundry.

Is that correct? Well, it doesn't to you as a founder.

I'd like to see it for the industry because, you know, I mean, and I, I I'm unfortunately of one of those people that I prefer to do what is required, uh, and sometimes.

Filing I don't like to see a foundry's name on any list if not required, because what we're going to see later on is OSHA is going to make some of this material available.

They haven't told us what.

I don't know if it's going to be available by number of injuries.

Probably they're already doing that by SIC code, but I mean, I don't want to see that the steel foundries um.

In um Ohio are having a problem.

Somebody's asking about the appendix and we're going to get to that, OK? We're sending you all of the appendices and all of the information with these slides.

And Let's just keep going.

Um A very timely question, David.

Appendix B is the new designation.

It includes foundries.

Machine shops I picked out what I thought was important to us.

Coating, engraving, heating, treating, and allied activities.

And again, remember, it's not by SIC code or NICS code.

It's by it's by establishment.

So if you run a foundry and you have a machine shop next to you, you know, it's a part of the facility, you have to count all of those people.

Just like when you do your R form reports, you may put your 3315 as your first and your 3322 as your secondary, but you have to report on one report, both the foundries and the machine.

Now is that machine shop, is it a different location? No, I don't have to.

That's a separate establishment.

Coating, engraving, heat treating, and allied activities.

A number of you do have a large heat treats.

Coding facilities.

They're these are on that list we we're giving you a full listing um.

This is the listing that is the simple listing that we started with.

It says everybody on this listing has 20 or more or more employees, and you'll notice here it was all encompassing manufacturing 31 to 33.

Everybody in 31 to 33 has to report.

It's everybody who's in, you know, uh, any of the middle, primary middle or secondary metal working.

Those are the people who have to file online, the 300A, the one.

These are the companies that have to do the 300 and the 301.

So we're lucky.

We hit the jackpot on both lists.

So it has to be done by March 2nd.

I don't know why they take the second, but they do instead of the 1st.

Remember this is the online you have to put it in up on your bulletin board or your time clock by February the first for your employees.

This is the thing that bothers Martha.

When they say that they're going to publish some of the data collected on its website.

Because it says here to use information about a company's workplace safety and health records, not an industry.

We already have the industry statistics that are available on the OSHA.

They're terrible, by the way, some of them are awful.

They they're not even close to reality.

But once you're telling me a company's workplace safety and health record, that makes me You know, pick up and prick up my ears and pay attention.

Which means that from this point forward I hope you will be very careful in how you fill out those 300 and 301 reports because I have had people who said, let's say I'm gonna use his name because he put it down there uh uh George Washington.

fainted in the court room from overexposure to core fumes.

Holy crap.

How do you know that? George Washington lost consciousness in the courtroom.

I don't know.

He could have had a heart attack, could have had a stroke, could have been out drinking the night before and was dehydrated.

Uh, you might have been smoking weed, I don't know.

Please be careful.

How you write these things up and you might say, oh, we would never do that.

You have no idea the things that I find on 300 logs.

It's, it's like sort of if you remember if any of you are old enough to remember Dragnet and.

Just the facts.

Just the facts, ma'am.

That's all you want on there is just the facts.

That's very important also because of the ergonomics issue, you know, if you have for example strains, you might want to say a left wrist versus right wrist versus shoulder because it will not therefore be cumulative.

If you say arm strain and you have 5 of them, that will be considered a potentially serious situation.

If you say the guy's strained his left wrist and this guy's strained his right elbow, they are not accumulative.

I don't think any of you are in this, but not all employers even have to keep a 300A.

If you have 10 or few employees at all times during the year, you don't have to maintain a 300A or a record keeping for OSHA.

You might say that's a little, well, I don't know if you have that separate warehouse.

Across town, you may only have 6 or 7 employees there.

I've got very small non-fair shops who have fewer than 10 people, but remember, employees include management.

But that is an exemption, so we go 10, you know, 10 or fewer, you don't have to keep the reports when we hit 20, now we have to.

For them online.

Three types of reports.

Do you have 300, which is the log that tells you the name and the department and what happened, how many days off, what kind of an injury it was the 301, which is the report of the injury or accident, very, very careful, very, very careful how you write that up, please, and then the 3000A, which is just a summary.

How many over the year, how many people you had, how many hours you worked, and what type of injuries there were.

Right, I see a question and I can't see the full question.

Can you help me with the question, Jared? Martha, the question is, some injuries happen multiple times and the description might be pretty similar.

Will it be considered an employer negligence if these details are published? That's what we're worried about.

That's exactly what we're worried about.

Um What would be the number one for most founders? Eye injuries.

I don't know what to tell you about eye injuries because we are working, every founder I know is working very, very hard to cut down eye injuries.

The next one we get is strains, but there's a big difference between like a strain.

Uh, you know, of the leg, the groin, or the arm.

Very, very different.

Backs, I don't know, you guys have been a good job, mostly on backstra, but again, how you write them up will be important.

And accurate.

I don't know if you've seen how they keep those records.

They will do it by targeted area of the body.

How many injuries to the left? Uh, wrist, how many left digit finger injuries, how many right shoulder injuries, how many this, it, it becomes very, very specific.

So yes, Your question, it does concern me.

A problems with new employees.

Absolutely, absolutely an issue, especially nowadays, and I hate to tell you, but you know what OSHA's response is going to be to this.

It is your, this is not from Martha or the society.

This is what OSHA will say to you.

It is your responsibility to provide adequate training to those new employees prior to allowing them to be exposed.

A heat stress is going to be an issue probably last year, you know, we did get more um.

The next thing that also is going to be important, this is the first one I've had, it struck me right between the eyes.

We had a chap who was involved in an injury.

He came back to work the next day, so we didn't even have a lost work day.

And then he had a day off.

It was a holiday weekend and he reported in on Tuesday that he had post-traumatic stress.

He had stress related injury and he needed 6 days off.

That's a new one but that's a problem.

Martha, we do have 2 additional questions on the board if we may.

Uh, the first is how do we trust OSHA to not disclose personal, I HIPAA-related information with a 300 submitting intentionally or through an IT breach? Any thoughts? Yes, because when you file it, you will not use a person's name.

You will not file the person's name.

Those of you who have smaller shops have another issue.

One of the things with HIPAA is that let's say you have a shop and you only have one man who runs the, I'm making this up, swing grinder, one man who jet arcs.

You have, you may have to in some way.

A cloak his job if you feel that giving you his job will be an indication of what he does.

You might say he's a cleaning room employee.

He's a, you know, if you have more than 3, he's a grinder, he's a cutoff man, he's a grinder.

You may call it a cut off, but it's a grinder.

Yes, it absolutely is an issue.

A terrible problem.

So, you know, they've told us, oh, we won't, we won't, but your and if somebody gets asked that, I would hope that you will let us know.

I will tell you for the very first time this year because you know, OSHA doesn't come out that much.

I got a letter to a small facility and asked them for their health records, and God bless my client.

He sent them the health records, including the guy's name and the doctor's and I said no.

No, you can't do that.

Well, you know, it's the government and they asked me for it.

You can't do that.

They can come into your shop and copy it, but you cannot let them take out, nor can you, you as the ABC Foundry, supply to them those records with that person's name on it.

But I'm going to tell you they are asking.

I don't know if they're asking it because they're being nefarious or they're young guys and they're ignorant, but it's happening.

Thank you.

The other question on the board is maybe just a clarifying point on a, on a point that you made earlier.

Uh, the question reads, on the 300A firm, it asked the annual average number of employees.

Are they gonna change this? It's confusing.

No, no, what you will do is they tell you what you do is you take the quarters.

And you, if you, if you want there there's even a um a formula for it but you're supposed to take the the peak and then by the quarters or and then uh average it that way.

All right, I believe that answered the questions that are open.

If not, we'll have him ask a follow-up and we can proceed.

Just wanted to give you um this is where you're going to go to find if I'm sure you've already been on it.

It's, oh, I think it's like one of the world's worst websites.

It crashed the first time they put it up there and they had to extend it, but this is the um the website.

It's called, you know.

So it's, it's, it's for the injury tracking, right? And there's your website.

I don't wanna waste too much time on this, but that's what it looks like it's slightly different.

Um, it, it, you just go to it.

You can't uh it, it, it, and there's are those interactive, uh.

Yes, that is an interactive link.

So you can if you get this, it will take you right to this website right? and it gives you a lot of questions and answers.

I think most of them are useless, but that's just from my point of view partially it's not their fault after all they're they're doing everybody from.

You know, the dollar stores, which they're always highly, highly exciting to, you know, steel mills and people like us and railroads and everybody else, right? But this is what this site looks like and I will say that if you go on there, they do have a little video.

If you click on that, it'll take you to the video.

I don't think it's very good, but at least it will give you at least some of uh the information on, on the lingo if nothing else, and then also it will click if you need an account it'll take you to how to uh do an account we had an old webinar on how to do it, but frankly.

It's, it's just follow their steps.

And if you get into trouble, just give us a call, but it, it's not that difficult.

It's just cumbersome to say the least.

And the problem is you can.

Sorry to interrupt you.

I would just add in if, if you are a foundry who's new to doing the uh ITA reporting.

We don't wait until 2 days before the reports are due to try and register up and file for this.

Among other things, you're gonna need to set up a government login.gov two-factor authentication account to get logged into the account.

So that takes some time to set up, so I'm just offering a word of caution here.

Don't wait until the last second.

If you have an obligation to report electronically.

I'd recommend you get logged in and make sure you got all your credentialing done well ahead of your submission deadline.

Sorry to interrupt.

Good point, Jared, because you're actually setting up two things.

You're setting up the account for the facility, but then you also miss set up the account for the person who's going to be submitting the data, OK? And you'll see here we've given you just they they're giving you some instructions.

You can do it online, in other words, you can.

Fill out their form online or you can submit it through other data means, you know, for a larger facility you can do it therefore they really prefer you to fill it on their own, but the bigger companies will actually download their own systems, OK? And this is how you would do it if you're gonna manually add in your accidents and your injuries, and I don't want to beat a dead horse on this one.

Big point No matter what they say.

I have a question.

This is what the society is for to protect you and present it as the society and the industry, not just as you, the ABC Foundry.

You do not input employee names, Social Security numbers, or other personal identification information.

Some people have given most of you have worker numbers, worker ID numbers.

I don't even know if that's going to be acceptable because if there's a means for them to link that number to the person, do not do it.

If you have an issue with this, you call us.

There is one way they can get you to give you all the employee names.

There is a it would have to come from the national office from Washington DC, and then you will get a specific letter from the national office, and it will tell you what information you want to give them and in what form.

If you do not have that.

Then you do not give them anything else.

Like I said, they have the right to come in and look at it, and unfortunately they can come in and even photocopy it or take a photo with their phone.

But you don't do it.

You do not provide you can make it accessible, but you do not give them a paper or an electronic copy.

I don't know how to do that bigger red.

Well, it, it just is not to be done.

And this is just if you're one of those bigger companies and you want to use uh you know the um.

separated values that system that then you can follow this format and if you are you're probably already doing it.

If you want to edit it, what a pain in the neck it is to edit your 300A.

If you want to make a change and you've already submitted it, well then you've got to resubmit it basically.

So um you're gonna go back and you're going to resubmit it again and not such a big deal.

How would that be important? OK, when would you edit your 300A summary? Well, a guy gets hurt.

Hertz is back in December, and you've estimated his days away from work are gonna be 25.

Well, it flows into.

Following year 2024 and it turns out it was only 20, so you're gonna have to go in and change your summary data.

One thing I want to point out this, these, these numbers can get very tricky.

Had another similar issue.

The thing about reporting injuries and illnesses is it's, it's sort of like a tax system.

There's all these little exceptions and specialty pieces of knowledge.

For example, A guy squashes his finger.

OK.

And he's gone to the doctor.

And it looks like it's healing.

But a week later, the doctor says, man, it's not healing.

This is not going to work.

We need to amputate the tip of your finger.

You have to report that to OSHA, call them up within 24 hours and then report them? No.

Do not.

It's within 24 hours of the incident if the guy.

is amputated within 24 hours.

Of the incident then you have to call them up.

But if it's more than if it's days later you don't have to still have to put it on the OSHA 300 report and the 308, but you don't have to make a phone call.

Right.

There's also up on that website a little bit of things and these are just how-tos you know they're trying, I mean.

Gonna be a little bit of stumbling your way through it, but it, it's, it, it does happen.

Also, one other point, it's another little thing.

If you have a guy who gets hurt in the 202023, but it flows into 24, now you only report that in 2023.

In addition to this, let's say a guy sprains his ankle in 2023 and he goes back to work, but you know what, it just doesn't heal and he twists and he aggravates that strain.

So now we need to stay away from work in 2024.

It's the same injury.

You do not report it twice.

your numbers right.

This is why I'm saying in the past we didn't worry so much.

All of this is now going to be available.

You didn't have it all.

Remember, OSHA never saw your 300 report unless they walked into your site, and generally they only asked for at the most 3 years.

But now your years and your injuries are going to be available to them from this point forward.

That's why I'm emphasizing it's very important what you report and how you report it.

They make sure that you know what's first aid, what do you have to report, you know, the thing with the eye injuries, if you can irrigate it out, you don't have to put it on the 300.

You have to have any sort of uh removal from penetration, then you do.

Well, what is being contracted at work if a guy's out, uh, like we know that, uh, a, a UPS driver and he slips on my driveway, you know, getting a package to my front door, that's reportable even though it's not happened to our house.

Mental stress recordable, yeah, unfortunately, yes, this is gonna be a new big deal.

I'm not going to give you more details on it because so far the direction's just been that the physician says it's mental stress that is a result of workplace injury or work, then it is recorded.

How about problems that may affect employees based on medical surveillance with no details.

This is a big issue.

Like with silica.

You send the guy because he's got an exposure to silica.

And the physician says, oh, he's not allowed to work in the silica area.

Uh, is that an injury? Is that an illness? I don't know.

Well it may not be.

I could have tuberculosis.

I could have damage from childhood pneumonia.

I mean, there is a section for silicosis, but you won't know it because unless the employee gives the physician.

to share that information with you, you have no idea.

Only thing is you can look at the report and he'll say it's occupationally associated.

be a real problem because I don't know, you know, this is going to be one of those issues that, uh, so far it hasn't because the, the employees have shared that information with the employer, but problems that we look at.

Martha, can I ask a question here? Maybe this is a refresher for everyone on your previous slide, you had mentioned um diseases that may have been uh Contracted at work.

Can you just talk about COVID-19 and the duty to report and how do we know if that transmission was within the workplace or or within? Well, we, we, we did a webinar on that and, and basically you have to decide whether it was community oriented or employer oriented and then you, you as the employer can come up with that methodology.

In other words, if the guy came in and he had COVID-19 and nobody else in the facility, um, Then, uh, you know, you don't have to report it.

If he's working next to a guy who's coughing and hacking and hewing, yes, there's a question about stress.

I, I couldn't read it because I was so busy talking, Jared.

No, I, I, I, that, that was, that was great.

There is another question on the board though, and it reads, if the employee had some form of preexisting anxiety and it got aggravated after an incident, not injury at work.

How to deal with the situation.

It's a very, very good question, and it's one that we're really going to have to work our way through, and I think as a society it's very important that we keep our eyes and our ears open on this one because we know with workers' compensation if you aggravate an existing condition, it is still your responsibility, but I'm not sure how that works with mental stress.

This is going to be a really tough one.

And one that I think all of us In heavy industries, steel mills, foundries, machine shops, everybody who does heavy industry are going to have because otherwise.

Uh, I, I can see this is a real problem.

I don't know about you folks, but I can see this potentially as a real problem.

I mean we've had problems in the past where, and I can understand this somewhat uh terrible.

Bernis accident and a guy sees another guy basically fried, uh, how do you treat that? How do you treat that? Reverse is the guy who says, oh, the stress, I just don't like it, you know, all the noise, all the dirt, it's, it's, it's making me crazy.

be an issue.

Thank you.

Keep your, keep your eyes on this space.

Uh yeah, you know, you can always keep a third party can do it for you, but, but it's still you can hire them, but it's still your responsibility to maintain those records.

I can't come on there.

Now with this, I want to wrap this up.

With this, we will be sending you the final rule from the Federal Register.

Remember it starts out with the background information.

Much of it is very interesting.

It's how they came up with the final rule, and we're going to send you also this little basic OSHA fact sheet.

Hopefully it will be of interest to you.

Unfortunately it doesn't cover a lot of the details that we've gone over.

Any other questions? If you do, all of you just give us a call.

December 19, 2023 Navigating Foundry Incidents

Welcome to today's webinar.

My name is Jerrod Weaver.

I'm with the Non Ferris Founder Society.

And on our webinar today, we have Ryan Moore with the Steel Founders Society of America.

And always popular Martha Guymond.

The topic of foundry accident investigation response and compliance is an interesting topic given the spate of accidents that we've seen in this industry.

We've seen not only facility explosions, we've seen a rash of hand injuries, amputations, eye injuries, burns, all those things that are potential hazard within our industry.

So we thought that today's webinar was a good opportunity to go back.

And discuss the proper ways to actually investigate an accident that's already occurred, how to properly document what the response steps are, and then how to ensure compliance in terms of reporting for fatalities and injuries off to OSHA.

So we're going to bundle all that together in today's webinar.

And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Martha Gaiman, and we'll get started.

Martha.

Yes, and what I also ask that those of you who have unfortunately had to go through this process, if you have anything that you would like to share with us with your experience, we'd really like to hear from you as well.

All right, so let's just get started here.

Remember, serious injuries are never expected and they're always unwanted.

But no matter it seems what we do to train, to guard, to engineer, to work ourselves to avoid accidents, it does seem that it happens.

And it's very important that we are prepared to respond to any such occurrence, and it's that preparation that we hopefully will address today.

Hopefully you'll never need it, but you will have it available.

Most of you will use 911 to respond to a major accident or injury.

If not, you may have your own internal first aid.

Whatever your process is, make sure that employees on the floor, supervisors, etc.

know who to call in case of a medical or emergency assistance.

Once the call is made, then it's very important that you have a list of who to contact in management or supervision to inform them of the incident.

Most of you have such a list, for example, for spills or anything you have to report to your EPA, your state or federal EPA.

But you should also have such a program or a list of persons available and known for an emergency such as a medical or a fatality.

Very important.

Of course, the whole thing is when it happens, if it happens, the first thing you want to do is make sure that the equipment is locked out, turned off, made safe, because we want to protect employees.

Those are the first two things.

And then, of course, #3, we want to preserve the scene.

But most important, that first thing is to make sure that we've locked out the equipment or protected the employees, and remember that protection may be also from the bloodborne pathogens or any of the other possibilities that could result from the accident.

So you're going to immediately lock out the equipment.

You're going to block unauthorized persons from the area until the scene is released upon completion of the investigation.

And that is human nature.

People will come over.

You want to make sure that only the affected people or the important people are involved.

You want to protect employees from those hazards, flipping.

It could be hot metal.

As well as blood or blood burn pathogens, and we want to also record any information or data that may be affected by the passage of time.

This is an issue that we're going to look at very carefully here because remember that time is going to affect people's understanding or recollection of what happened when.

This is a little background.

We have discussed this recently, but we know that if you have a fatality.

That you have to report that fatality to OSHA within 8 hours of the incident unless You know, the employee passed away more than 30 days from the time of the incident.

You have to report an amputation, an admission to the hospital within 24 hours.

But again, if the amputation occurs more than 24 hours after the incident, you do not have to report.

That to OSHA.

You have to put it on your logs.

You have to put it on your OSHA 300 report, but you don't have to make that call to OSHA.

And remember, the admission to the hospital requires treatment, not just observation.

OSHA says that you must complete a 301 report on any injury, but it also says you should do a more complete investigation of serious injuries, near misses and fatalities, and I want to emphasize that it's very important when you look at this near misses can be an issue with many of you if you lump all of your accidents in one pile.

A near miss may make your facility open to a repeat or a willful citation.

Be careful when you write up your investigations that the individuality of that incident is clearly made on paper and in your report.

There's no required format for these investigations.

The 301 report, which we're going to show you, has a format, and it's what your larger facilities have to fill out.

Online, but it's very vague, but a full report is not.

Got a required format.

That's what we're going to show you today what OSHA recommends that you use for a format and give you some guidance on, for example, the National Safety Council who has worked with OSHA in providing a format or an outline or what an investigation should include.

Remember that report has got to be in writing.

Many times in an accident, especially if it's made it into the local newspaper, OSHA may send you a formal or an informal complaint or request for information.

It could be made prior to them showing up at your site or in place of their doing an on-site investigation.

We have had incidences of amputations and hospitalizations that OSHA has been satisfied with a full and a complete investigative report and has not sent anybody to the site.

Fatalities, they will show up, but again, If you have your full report and you have your information and your data together, you will have control of the incident and the response rather than giving up that control or that response to the agency.

There are 4 items that we're going to say are documents that are major and actually most important, most vital resources for this.

The first is OSHA's little guidance on incident investigations.

By the way, you notice they call it an incident, not an accident.

And it's also the National Safety Council and OSHA's.

Much briefer but very good how to conduct an incident investigation guidance.

The fact sheet on root causes and we'll look at what a root cause is and why it's important.

And then of course the much simpler but absolutely required OSHA 300 and 301.

This is the OSHA 301 report.

The forms that we will be sending to you are in Excel.

And they include both the 300 and the 301 and the 301A forms.

You can also get these as a PDF as an acrobat document if you need it.

Let us know.

But uh with the Excel sheets also include the instructions on how to fill it out.

You can see, by the way, this is a very simple form.

back to it for just a second.

It, it just basically going to say what happened, what was the injury, you know, what was a direct harm for the employee.

Very simple.

By the way, when you fill those out, there are keywords, they are important.

Please, you stick to the facts and only the facts.

Not what you think happened or even what people said happened, but what you know has happened.

So you want to know, sitting out on this, you want to know who's going to be responsible for the investigation.

You don't want everybody involved.

You want to have either an individual or a team who's responsible and have clearly defined responsibilities.

You want to know how the investigation will be conducted.

In other words, are there going to be, if there are going to be interviews, who will do the interview, what will be included in the interview, where will the interviews be held, and what is the purpose and the essential elements of the investigation that those elements are basically going to be.

What happened, how it happened, and how are we going to make sure it doesn't happen again.

One of the important things to understand in all of these documents and very much emphasized in the OSHA guidance is that the investigation is not a blame finding.

Document.

We are not looking to lay blame, but we are looking to find the root cause of the accident and how to prevent or repeat the accident.

Incident Right One of the things when we talk about not assigning blame and sometimes we have to remind not only ourselves but outsiders such as the agency that not finding blame works in all directions, not only not blaming the individual, not blaming the workers who work near him, not blaming the supervisor, but not blaming management as well, not at this stage, not a blame game.

And I have quoted this from the OSHA guidance.

I think it's very important.

They're basically saying they're worried about finding the root cause.

It, it, if it, if you look at finding fault, it will always stop short of discovery of the root causes.

If you start laying blame, people will start protecting themselves.

They will never find out what happened or why.

If you're looking for someone to blame.

Both sides management and labor, will be reluctant to participate, and this we know is a fact it's very, very hard to avoid this, but it's essential that we remind ourselves and any outside agent that we are not looking to find blame.

So what does OSHA say are the steps in an investigation? Really very simple.

You need the people and any of the tools.

You need to secure that area, and that means you want to tape it off.

You want to secure the work area.

I know this is a problem for many of you because it may shut down a line.

But before you open up that production line, you must be sure that you have gathered all the data that you need to get the answers to our investigation, the data for our investigation, and to ensure that the workplace is now a safe one.

You need to know what witnesses and you have to do your interviews.

Document with photos or videos.

Be careful with your photos and videos and make sure they're photographing exactly what happened, where we don't want to change.

For example, we don't want to photograph an incident after people have changed.

the equipment or moved equipment and not make that uh part of the record of that photograph.

Uh, one case, for example, we had, uh, the particular, it was a grinder was no longer available.

It happened to be because the police took it.

You, you can't just take another grinder and put it there and say, oh, that's where the grinder was, all right.

You want to complete the report, determine you should end up with knowing what caused the incident and what corrective actions are needed, and the results should therefore have a follow up on completion after you've made those decisions on what needed to be corrected.

That's a full investigation.

Martha, maybe I can interject a comment here.

If we can go back to slide, we're talking about executing corrective actions, and I know many of the foundries on our webinar today have an ISO 9000 based quality management system, and a big part of that system is a formal corrective action system.

And even though it's not an OSHA requirement, I, I think it's a nice strategy to consider for our foundry members.

To implement the required corrective actions through their corrective action system, and the question is why is because you always have a follow-up audit by your internal audit system to verify that the corrective action was properly implemented, and that actually resolved the problem.

So just the best practices here, if you use your ISO corrective action system to force change to your safety policies and procedures, you get good documentation and you get a follow-up audit by your internal audit team, both which can validate the corrective action was effective and that the solution actually works.

So.

Thank you.

The other thing is, be careful here.

You know you can make recommendations at this phase.

That you don't have to say this was the cause of the incident.

You can also just make as a part of our investigation we determined that the following procedures or practices would improve the production or whatever the issue is.

So there are ways of saying that you're going to make those changes that do not reflect back again on blame or fault.

Here's just their recommended items.

I just included this, but I think it's important.

Remember when a fatality or serious injury occurs, that sometimes there is not, we do not have the tools that we need immediately available.

So again, number one is knowing what to do in that case.

A who to call, B who will run the investigation, who is.

And see do we have these tools that are they're pretty common.

I'm sure you folks have them at your facility, but you might just want to have this as a list.

You might be a box somewhere or just know where to get them.

The most important things of care here, of course, will be your tape or your first aid, your response in bloodborne pathogens and personal protective equipment.

One thing there is flashlights, that can be an issue, believe me, that's been an issue in the past.

Now OSHA got together with the National Safety Council and they did come up, I think, with some very good guidance on this as well.

And again, this is good because it's very practical, but B, it's not only National Safety Council, but OSHA has put their two cents in there, and they basically said these are the types of information that needed to be corrected.

The worker characteristics, we think that's pretty obvious, but it really, it's a good list age, gender.

Job title experience training records, full time, part time.

What kind of employee is involved? The injury characteristics obviously in the narrative description of the events.

And again this is important location of the event sequence of events leading up to the injury are near miss.

The objects or materials that are involved in the event, the conditions, how the injury occurred, and Whether a preventive measure had been put in place or what happened after, I will say that it is often very difficult to establish what happened in the time leading up to and during the accident.

I don't know if any of you know there's a lot of famous movies made about point of view of an occurrence.

If you ask three people what happened, you will get 3 points of view on what happened, and they most often will not.

If the same sequence or order events or even the actions.

Had a fatality recently in a ferris foundry.

And Nobody, unquote, saw the accident.

Everybody gave witness to what they thought happened.

Nobody actually observed the accent, but everybody was sure they knew what happened.

Very careful when you take down these things that you establish the difference between opinion.

Understanding.

And conjecture.

They have to report it, but it's not necessarily reporting it as fact.

more of the things that of course should be included and when you're doing your report, you want to run down maybe a list such as this to make sure that you've checked it all off, the characteristics of the equipment.

One of the things here is the condition of the equipment.

One was it last maintained, etc.

the characteristics of the tech time factors.

Supervision information.

Uh what caused it, if you know, if you do not know.

You do not give conjecture.

This is a fact-finding report.

It is not, I think, in my opinion, or it could have, this might have what happened or didn't happen.

You might say, but then it's, it, it's not complete.

Um, we one time had a terrible furnace.

It was another ferris founder, a terrible furnace fatality, and this happened 10 years ago between OSHA, the furnace manufacturer, the insurance company, and us, we never determined.

What caused the explosion.

To this day.

Sometimes there's no answer, but you can record the facts of what you believe happened and the effort that you made to determine.

Those facts Obviously if you do know what happened.

It's a lot easier to write your report.

easier to come up with a Response on how to ensure it never recurs.

This is OSHA's incident investigation form.

When they would prefer that you complete and if you've ever been involved in such a concurrence, they will sometimes send this to you.

It does not mean you must follow this form, but you should have all of the information that's in this form in your report, and you can go beyond it.

First section, as you can see is just straightforward concerning the employee and This is the important part.

I've cut out, by the way, the lines so it would fit into the slide.

The detailed description of the incident.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's what happened.

I think happened, but what you know.

It says that the information should be provided by the injured employee.

If you're including that, you need to report it that the Mr.

Smith, Mr.

Jones, Ms.

Brown reported that.

The employee's report is important, but it should not be reported as fact of this is what happened.

This is what the employee reported happened.

Again, I'm not laying fault.

I'm not laying blame, but to get to fact, you need to report this is the perception of this person of what happened.

And I have to tell you with major accidents, people don't always even remember what they did or how they did it.

And fortunately in fatalities, they may not be available.

To make that report or even if they're badly injured, have an eyewitness, the eyewitness can give the report.

But again, they're pointing this out very much, including the name of the person and their job titles and the time and date of the interview.

It's very important.

Again, this is what Mr.

or Ms.

Brown says that or believes occurred or reports occurred, and it happened.

If that interview was 3 weeks later, I assure you it will be different from what they reported the next day or even the day of.

It's important to include it, but it's also make sure that you get the facts that this is as reported by so and so.

You might want to include other people, who would this be? I know you're a person who runs the maintenance or the supervisor who didn't see it, but has some data that you believe would be important in Good assessment of the incident.

The most important thing here is they're talking about identifying the root cause.

This is what the whole point of an OSHA investigation is to determine the root cause.

It's the underlying reason the incident occurred.

Of course it could be a problem with the equipment, faulty equipment, maintenance, the employee action, a safety device failed.

Why did it fail? These are the root causes, so they're going to say it's going to be in the equipment.

Procedures, training, lack of training environment, you'll notice never do they include employee misconduct in this.

Employee misconduct does occur.

Employees have been known to be trained, have been known to be supervised, and still do something.

which may cause the injury or the accident.

And report that.

Let's, let's also add to the conversation here.

For those of you who have some experience in incident investigation, uh, even in quality related circles, right? When we try to determine root causes for an error or an incident, training is very rarely ever the root cause.

Training can be symptomatic, uh, it can be an example of something that went wrong, but normally it's not a training issue.

Normally it's bad documentation, maybe it's employees um are disregarding it to accelerate production, but experience will show that most oftentimes, training is not.

Direct cause.

It's easy to mark down training on our incident investigation forms, right? And we'll, we'll see that oftentimes, but I would caution you each to really challenge and ask those why, what, and how questions, especially if somebody comes back with the root cause, identification of training.

And just one more thought here, if you really do think it's training, I think your corrective action has to include a review of your training programs, a revamp of the training provision and the training materials, and training records to show that the training actually took place and that it was actually effective.

So if you think training is the easy answer to an investigative response, it's not the corrective action is more often times gonna be much more complicated if you attribute it to training.

So if it's training, it's training, and that's fair, but don't be lazy and don't use that as an excuse to really get at the root cause of why something happened.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, I think you will find Jared, that in many cases, the OSHA inspector will rely upon training as the root cause.

We all provide training, right? But it, a lot of times I think that it's not that we didn't train her that the training was ineffective, but the, the safety requirements either weren't being uh enforced by management, that there were other conditions going on that forced them to deviate from their training.

So I'm not saying it can't happen.

I'm just saying that it's in, in my experience in other areas, training is an easy fallback.

position to take for a corrective action and invariably it's almost always something else.

So I'll just leave that as a comment for consideration.

One of the areas to also be concerned about here is enforcement of safety rules, which they're not adding here, which is again, if you can show that you have enforced your safety rules in the area, it will assist you in determining whether or not your safety procedures are just on the wall as a list of rules are actually are being enforced by supervision.

People do.

I mean, unfortunately, I, I've had to investigate some pretty sad cases where folks have done some pretty foolish things and paid for it with their lives and you look at it too many times and you say, how could you have done anything like that? But it happens These are questions that OSHA has come up for identifying root causes.

And I think if you look at them, just take a quick look, you'll agree with them, you know, were there written or established procedures? Did they actually those procedures, did they produce a safe work condition? Were there other environmental conditions around the guy? We've had guys who've been horribly burned, not from them, but the ladle went by and there was an accident.

He's badly burned even though he was only a neighboring worker.

The employees understand those conditions? What actions have we taken to eliminate them in the past or even now in the present? Training there is of course sufficient space, yeah, that, that can be an issue with some foundries, I can't say, but that's not generally a foundry problem.

Adequate lighting, again.

Generally not a foundry issue, although we have had two cases where that was considered an issue.

In the foundry, mostly in the movement of materials and the storage and stacking of materials.

I think whether employees are familiar with the job procedure is sort of a training issue, but OK.

Here's where you're talking about employees following them.

We were there any deviation? Did the employee follow? Proper job procedures.

Mental or physical conditions that prevent the employees from properly performing their jobs, that gets to be very, very dicey.

Did you put an employee who was let's say on light duty that shouldn't been in that job, the mental conditions, that's going to be something that would be an awfully more difficult path to follow in my humble opinion, OK.

There's a case here of is the employee capable of doing the strenuous activity? There, did you allow him sufficient time? Was he capable of doing it? Is it a woman of my size and build who's expected to be able to pick up and carry a 70 pound casting, it ain't going to happen, folks, you know, so that would be an issue.

And again, personal protective equipment.

Again we go back to training with that person.

Now you're all aware of it.

I do not want to beat a dead horse, but when you have your training programs, please make sure that of course you have everybody's name that they have signed off, and lately I have asked people and I'm when I'm doing our training to make sure that you give people handouts.

That outline either the content of the training or include important documents.

I use, for example, OSHA quick cards, I've used OSHA sheets, I've used industry handouts.

Whatever it is, give them a piece of paper or a booklet that will outline what you've covered and of course most of the stuff is also available in Spanish if you need it.

And then with your training record, make sure you keep a copy of that handout material as well.

And OSHA does respond to this.

I had a case where We used the OSHA Quick card for lead in construction, and the OSHA got all upset with me and I said, Well, have you ever read the general industry Quick card on lead versus the one for construction? The one for construction is much better.

The one for general in industry is about don't take your clothes home to your kids.

00, you're, you're right, you're right.

So I said, you know, They do read it, they do take care, and they do, you know, it gives somebody something to look at.

Probably most of them will throw it in the trash can, but maybe.

We'll get through to some of our folks.

More of their questions, obviously ones did they use their PPE.

Abuse of equipment.

That's important.

Is there any misuse or abuse of equipment on the, on the work site? Again, you record all of that.

Please make sure that Section 24 and 25, supervisors detect anticipated report an unsafe or hazardous condition.

Also emphasizing not finding fault, looking for root causes.

Reporting an unsafe condition, what are we going to do to get the people to work safely, not how are we going to use the whip in order to, you know, force them to follow the rules.

Very difficult.

They understand Are supervisors made aware of their responsibilities and are they trained? So much of this falls back on our supervisors, but they really, of course, are so important, especially in this.

And finally, this is a very important thing again, I have seen willful and repeat citations because people have done.

Near miss or accident reports and then a second one basically using the template of the first accident report, which makes it look like it's a repeat issue.

If it is, it is.

If not, make sure that um To differentiate between accents.

I see there's a question there, Jad.

Sorry, the question on the board is, is it a good idea for a company to loan money to an accident victim to help them while they're out of work? Any thoughts? That's a laboring, uh, question.

That's not a, an OSHA question.

I mean, I don't know what you mean by a good idea.

You need to have a company policy on that.

You have to be careful that you don't, you don't look like you're trying to bribe or coerce them.

Yeah, and obviously there's a link into your worker comp policy here in your insurance carriers.

I think that would be a question that um you should direct to management and maybe off to your carriers and how that interfaces with your comp payments.

Of course, when we're talking about this investigation, we all know that if it's a major issue, your insurance carrier will probably have an investigation as well.

You may want to work with those folks as well.

It depends.

There's an answer.

We had feedback from another attendee that said, I would say no, your carrier should be covering them.

So again, it's a, it's a good idea or not a good idea versus a requirement.

There's no statement or requirement on that, but again, for questions relating to your work or, uh, uh, it's outside of scope today.

I'd say refer to your carrier or call us directly here at the society and we'll be happy to talk it through with you.

One of the points that is very important at this point, and I'm, I'm sure you're aware of this, is that you as the employer have a very different Level of exposure.

The civil action than does the manufacture of the equipment that was involved in the accident so that oftentimes people will say to me, I can't believe how OSHA didn't clobber us with these huge fines, and I'll say, well, they're not going to because If the employer is found to be negligent in any way, it could affect any civil action that the family or the person takes against them.

Manufacturer of the equipment involved.

So if you use ABC grinders.

Your employee will only be able to collect what's under workers' compensation.

But the ABC Grinder Company will be the third party and the family or the worker can therefore take action against ABC.

If ABC can say you were negligent or did not follow the rules, it could affect any judgment against that company.

It's very complicated.

It's all about money at the end.

Terrible.

Interviews are always an issue.

OSHA says, and we all know this, you should do your interviews as quickly as possible.

Because the longer things go between the time of the incident and the interview, the more people, they're not lying.

It just changes in their memory, especially if people talk to each other.

They can affect everybody knows that in a police report that will happen.

If you and I talk to each other and you say to me, gee, you know, did you see that blue car? And then I'll like, yeah, it was a blue car, wasn't it? Oh yeah, it was a blue car.

But if you can look at get it as quickly as possible and try to get to the facts.

That is the most important.

Interviews should be done again without looking for blame or fault and should be done in private.

So they say, oh, the other thing is it should be done in the language.

This can be an issue.

Most of us have, uh, many of us have Spanish speaking employees.

You want to be careful who you use as your interpreter, please? Always make sure that we emphasize that it is a fact finding interview, not false finding.

And we're looking for that root cause and how to prevent a future accident.

If you're looking for cooperation, we're trying to find out what happened so that we can make sure that it never happens.

Obviously if you have a union, they may have a representative with them if they so desire.

Don't interrupt them when they're giving you the interview.

Don't feed them what you want them to say.

Don't lead.

Interview into saying what you want them.

Make sure you take notes or you record it.

If you are recording, remember they have to have.

Permission given to make that reporting, recording, OK.

If you don't understand something or you want to fill on something, ask.

If you know that something is in fact incorrect, they have the right wrong date, they have the wrong time, they have the wrong names.

You want to repeat that and make sure that you correct it.

It's always important to ask their opinion on what you think could correct the problem, although remembering these are all opinions.

fact So the important thing here is looking for this root cause.

Always saying, why did it happen? Why did it happen? By the way, you'll notice this is all, this is from OSHA.

This is not from us.

That you know, they're looking at guarding, they're looking at training, etc.

Main goal is always to decide how and why.

Accident happened and how to It doesn't happen again.

We're not looking for blame.

Statements of OSHA We want to make sure that we come up with a good program of action to make sure that the accident does not.

Again.

As I said to you, there are going to be cases where we do not have a clear understanding of what happened.

We can only do what we think will work to ensure that it does not occur again.

I give you the example of an explosion in a furnace.

All of these things, I think most of us are very fully aware of, but you might want to keep this as a listing to go down your list to make sure that you have that good investigative report to supply the information to outside agencies or your insurance company.

This is just a little simple chart from the National Safety Council and OSHA on an incident investigation.

I keep saying accident, but it's an incident investigation, and I think it's a very good little outline of what we just covered.

OK, and here is this is from OSHA.

I don't know whether you're aware of this or not, but OSHA has a firm policy on to inform an employee who has passed away family of The concern that the agency has, they actually are required to send these letters.

OK, here's the first letter.

This is a condolence letter that the area director must send.

Not only does he.

Area director sent a letter.

The assistant secretary.

Of labor sends a letter.

And Finally, They will also inform them of the investigation and that they will inform them of what happens as a result of that investigation.

So they take it quite seriously if you need any of this further background information, we can there's a case this is the letter that they use to inform them of the results of their investigation and their citation.

They also give us a very good little checklist here.

I don't know if this sort of checklist is useful to most of you, but it certainly is to us to go down and just make sure that we've answered all the questions.

That are on this OSHA and National Safety Council checklist on an accident.

So in summary, First response, of course, is to get help to the employee.

Secondly, make sure you've secured the scene.

One of the issues we've had again, sometimes in some cases you might even get some police action involved.

They do have the right to confiscate or take anything, but try to get a photograph or at least some understanding of where it is, what has happened.

For example, we had a piece of equipment that was confiscated by the police, taken into custody.

And OSHA had to go to the police station to look at it.

Make sure you insure your insurance company.

You gather your data and your insurance as soon as possible, looking for those root causes, and you want to make sure that you that everybody understands this is not just company policy.

This is what the government.

Everybody's concerned looking for the root cause and not blame.

Sure you respond to OSHA if you need to have that plan.

If you don't like this plan, at least have some sort of a written plan of action of response.

Call us with any questions.

If you need any assistance, we'll be happy to respond.

Do we have any questions, any comments? Martha, I don't see any questions on the board, uh, for our attendees.

If you have any remaining questions, please enter them into the chatter Q&A window now.

But Martha, we've got about 10 minutes left in our webinar, so maybe we can just talk a little bit about this.

For example, can you speak to when an investigative process needs to be opened, right? Do we need to do that for every minor laceration? What about a small burn? What about a medium sized bird? Is there any correlation to like entries on the OSHA 300 log? Like, where do you draw that line when you have to do an investigation and when you don't? Well, you need to do a 301 for everything, every injury that's on your, uh, 300 report, right? So that every report, many of you will do a 301, many of you did a report, similar report for your uh insurance company.

Yes, and it doesn't have to be as complete as what we did above.

You may want to, you know, cut it down, but every accident needs at least a 301.

OK.

You want to go beyond that when you start seeing a pattern.

You look at your OSHA 300 report, and you see, oh my gosh, well, burns are a perfect example.

Eye injuries are another.

Now we're looking right back there for those root causes.

What is the root cause of why we have so many eye injuries? So many strains, so many burns, and what can we do about it? Those will not only help.

The employees will help the company.

Thank you.

We do have another question on the board, and the question is, does security footage count as a firsthand account of an incident compared to eyewitnesses? You have some thoughts here? Yes.

Yes, if you have a video of what has happened, it will always be considered to be the number one report because It is, it will not be colored by emotion or Point of view, it's there it is.

This is what happened.

It may not, however, be completely helpful in the root cause.

It will tell us what happened, but it may not be as useful in telling us why it happened.

And what we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Some of our equipment, I mean, we are so accustomed in our world to working around what basically To the outside world are very dangerous conditions, you know, we're talking about big heavy equipment that moves rapidly, can cut, burn.

Pinch, crush, and we're also talking about hot metal.

That can burn, can explode, so.

We need to be able to not only see that yes, we have that as a potential, but what can we do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Great, thank you.

With no additional questions on the board, I think we can conclude today's session.

Martha Gimmon, any last comments from you? As I said, this this is basically trying to give you guys an assistance on how to prepare.

I hope that you guys will also in the future, maybe it would be very nice if you have any questions or if you have any contributions.

Really, we would appreciate it if you would share them with us.

January 9, 2024 A look ahead at 2024 compliance

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to our joint webinar provided by the Non Ferris Founders Society and the Steelle Founders Society of America.

Joining us is Martha Giman representing Joseph A.

Giman and Associates.

More importantly, they're really the smartest people available to our industry on regulatory compliance, OSHA compliance, EPA compliance issues with many, many years of practical implant experience.

So we're very honored and lucky to have Martha here to speak with us.

Collectively, we're gonna be taking a look ahead at 2024 and the top regulatory compliance issues that need to be on your radar, uh, to ensure that they're properly addressed during the course of the coming year.

Martha Gaiman, would you start, please? I just want to start out by reminding everybody that the early requirements.

Make sure you post your OSHA 300 summary report in the plant February 1.

And online March 1st and we just did a webinar on whether you have to do a 300 or A or full 300 and 301s.

If you're not sure, go back to that webinar or give us a call.

And this is the year that those of you who produce hazardous waste must report the uh to the EPA, which really will be through your state for your hazardous waste.

As of March the first.

That's a kind of a drop dead date please for you folks.

OK.

I don't know if you're aware of it, but across the country, while there was a little bit of a lull in inspections.

Because of COVID and the fact that a lot of our agents were working from home, it appears that both safety and health and environmental agencies are again resuming foundry inspections, and we've had them across the country for both safety and health and the EPA on, of course, the federal side for OSHA and the state side for the environment.

Many of the agents who were working from home are going back and you're seeing new faces as a result.

Some of them are not very experienced in heavy industry, let alone foundries.

They honestly wouldn't know a steel foundry from an aluminum foundry.

And that's one of the things that we now see the movement away from using experienced agents who are knowledgeable of your operations to what I call the checklist.

Approach to compliance.

In other words, the inspectors are coming in with a checklist of what they believe is required for you, your facility, so that for example, we just had in my own state of Pennsylvania, the inspectors are coming in with a list of questions that they are required to answer based upon your permit.

And they are literally going down your permit and saying, Have you done this? Yes or no.

Can you verify this? Yes or no? In addition, we are seeing inspections of general inspections and inspections on the basis of complaints or targeted inspections from national emphasis programs on every portion of the standard.

Literally, I have gotten a citation in a brass foundry because there was soap on the sink for washing hands and face, but there was not sufficient soap in the shower room.

To provide cleansing of the body during the required shower.

That would be you hex chrome people too.

I've also now had a citation that for example in our respirator program for dust type respirators with cartridges that we do not have a written schedule of change of the filters, the reason for the change of the filters and the training of employees and when filters must be changed.

I mean, I've been doing this for a long, I don't count it in years.

I count it in decades, and I'm now facing these types of citations.

I realize that these citations are not earth shattering in that they're not costing you a great deal of money.

In providing dust control, for example, for your facilities, but they do paint for the public because all of this is, you know, online, but they do paint a certain attitude of the agency and the public towards your facility.

Most of these things can be countered, and by the way, if you get this type of a citation, I'd really like to hear about it because we want to be able to either a reply to them as being not required or other than serious or that we can also provide some protection for our other clients and other members against such citations, so.

The other problem we have.

Is that a lot of our response to our agencies is through the internet.

We no longer have face to face interaction.

With the agencies or most importantly with the supervisors.

The agent comes out and you might see him, but you really, they don't want you to come into the office anymore.

They don't want to sit down.

It is very difficult for someone like me to make a valid argument without being able to present our argument in person and show the supervisor the material that we have available to counter it.

But this is the way of the world.

We're all becoming more internet oriented and more electronic oriented, so we're going to try to move forward.

In providing you with assistance in this approach and also helping you to develop programs in your plant to avoid problems in the future.

OK? So with that in mind, let's get going here.

Let's talk a little bit about hazardous waste because we've been, we've been seeing a lot of activity from the state and I warn you with the feds on hazardous waste.

And this is similar to what we've just talked about.

When they walk in here now, they're gonna want to see.

Proof of weekly inspections of your hazardous waste storage areas.

And, um, It means very much that they want it for the past few years.

They want to see written reports.

You must keep these inspections.

I've had a citation because over a five year period, a foundry, this is an iron foundry actually.

Not have 3 weekly inspections, and that was because the facility was closed for vacation and the inspector said, Well, was there a waste on site? And the guy said, Yes.

He said, Well, there's a waste on site.

Then you have to have the inspection.

There's no waste on site, then you say, not required.

Uh, the other thing is a description of all duties for all persons involved with hazardous waste.

That means the secretary who files the reports, the General manager, if he has to sign the report.

And the proof of the training of the above.

A lot of the new inspectors are not sure, and you may not be sure on the difference of proof of proper labels for satellite or storage containments.

Satellite is when you have the container below your dust collector, it doesn't go into storage until you pull it away from the dust collector, but it does require a label while it's under that dust collector.

One of the things I'm going to drop down to is number 7.

Proof of the land ban notification.

Land ban notifications only need to be done once, but you need to be able to prove that you have a copy of the land ban notification that you sent to whoever is accepting your waste.

And the other important thing is that you have to have proof, and this goes for OSHA too, of your tracking and your manifest on site.

A number of you will have it if you're owned by a larger corporation, maybe off site has to be on site.

And also you have to have hazardous universal waste programs.

Again, we have a very good webinar on universal waste.

If you have any problems, get a hold of Ryan or Jared.

That land ban notification you might say, I don't even know what the heck you're talking about.

If we did it, we did it so long ago.

I guarantee you have a land ban notification somewhere because your off-site site will not accept it without having gotten that notification.

If you can't find it, you can always resubmit it.

And I'm just giving you a little bit of background.

I don't want to spend too much time on it, what the land ban is and who's required to have it and anybody.

And here's an example.

This happens to be from a particular company.

If not, you can come up with a similar thing.

It just, it's just to be a letter.

Most facilities will require you to use their format.

And basically it'll say what is in the waste that that makes it a hazardous waste.

March, of course, your tier twos are done and that's always collected by the state.

One of the issues that I am seeing with tier twos is please be careful when you do your tier twos, many of you are just saying same as last year, every year, same as last year, same as last year, same as last year.

Some of you bigger companies, be aware, like you steal guys or your larger non-ferrous guys that watch the chemicals that are in your no bake chemicals because a number of those chemicals are reportable under TRI Our form requirements.

If you're reporting that you have more than 10,000 pounds of that chemical on site at any time.

It's going to be very hard for you to prove to them that you didn't use 10,000 pounds over the year.

Because of course if it's a chemical in them.

Of core making or in no bake.

It's not going to be part of the The article that you're producing, the casting, so it's going to have a 10,000 pound annual limit.

Those are the things watch out for your tier twos.

What we're seeing is again, remember that we're looking now at people looking at the paperwork at the electronic submissions.

So that if you're submitting a number under one part of the of the uh EPA requirements to make sure that they're not going to look at that and say, well, if you're doing this, then how come you're not reporting it over here? Just A heads up on that one.

Remember you steel and aluminum guys.

You have to review that if you have any lead content, any, that there is no de minimis for lead.

There's no 0.1%.

Any amount of lead in your material must be evaluated to determine if you are processing.

That material So that you are processing 100 pounds or more.

You might say, Well, how will I know? Well, we know we ran into trouble with an aluminum shop and if you look at the aluminum SDSs now, they will mention that there is lead.

It's in like 0.001 parts per million up to 0.01 parts whatever it is, it must be considered.

If you have lead in your waste stream and you ferris guys almost all have lead in your waste stream, you have lead in your process.

If that lead is at 100 pounds, we know that you're there for processing at least 100 pounds of lead.

OK.

Even if it's an unwanted trace, it has to be considered.

There is A major exemption for two types of metal alloys.

The first are copper alloys.

Do not have a 100 pound.

They only have They have a 25,000 pound limit.

See, you brass guys get one good thing on your side.

Stainless steel is the other exemption.

If you pour stainless steel, it's a 25,000 pound exemption.

What does that mean? OK, so steel, guys, if I pour carbon steel, And my carbon steel is it's it's 80 pounds.

And my stainless steel is 200 pounds.

I just made that up.

I still don't have to report because they're not, you do not have to add them together.

But I warn you, I warn you There's another problem with this.

If you manufacture, which means produce.

Lead compounds, which is what you do off of the melting or uh welding or jet arching, burning steel, even if it's stainless, then you have a 100 pound reporting for those compounds.

So those are the issues, and yes, they are looking at that sort of thing.

We've just spent a great deal of money with a couple of clients trying to fight.

Any questions on that? A number of good webinars on this or again, give us a call.

A lot of you have air emissions requirements that are an annual air emission audit, mostly for larger facilities.

Don't forget them this year.

Again, those are going to normally now be online submissions just like your stormwater.

Waste water.

Most stormwater sampling and inspection reports are now online reports.

They're very easy for them to follow up with whether you have or have not.

Done your required sampling and inspections.

The inspections are so simple.

They're generally very simple.

If you have any questions, again, give us a call.

There's no reason not to do the inspection.

And not to properly report them.

By the way, the stormwater sampling, as we have reported in the past few years, become more and more stringent.

The EPA has passed out sampling requirements that they would like to see every state to follow and for primary metal companies, and we're all in the primary metal categories, it would require twice a year sampling of stormwater outlets.

Every facility.

Those outlets would generally be based on requiring sampling for total suspended all of its oil and grease.

Chemical oxygen demand and oftentimes a group of metals, sometimes aluminum, copper, lead, chrome, the standard bag guys and zinc, copper too.

You'll find that most of these inspections are now going to be, as we said, very much based upon your permit literally will go down.

One of the things that that means, and we're going to talk about this next is whoever meets with these inspectors could be knowledgeable not only of the facility but of the permits and the requirements of that permit.

been a real problem with when Harry, who knows the permit, Harry, who knows the environment requirements for the facility is not available, so George takes the inspector around and says, oh, I don't know that.

I don't know that.

That's when we get into major, major issues.

So while agents may have little or no knowledge of your industry, they will now going forward be equipped with detailed information on the standards that apply to your company and the permits and by the way, past inspections that apply to your facility as well.

OSHA, that's going to be not only the permits, it's also going to be the problems associated with your industry because as you know, OSHA will track a lot of injuries and reports, fatalities based upon the standard industrial codes that apply to us.

In other words, hands.

Brush So be sure when you're having this inspection from this point forward, who is requesting who and we'll see, we mean who the agency.

What, who is the agent? What agent? What does he want? What is he there for? If he's a stormwater inspector, if he's a waste inspector, usually waste inspectors will be either hazardous or non-hazardous, although they'll sometimes cross over and as you know, OSHA will be there for a purpose.

OSHA cannot enter your facility.

Unless they have a reason to do so.

Why are they coming in? The environmental people will come probably based upon a permit.

Or a complaint.

OSHA can only come in on the basis of a complaint.

A national or local emphasis program.

A follow up on a previous citation.

Or if you are on the dangerous industry list.

But they're not just going to walk in and say, Oh, I walked by your plant, and I said, Boy, that place looks like a foundry.

I think I'll walk in there.

So you need to know all of these issues before you can properly respond and determine how you are going to.

documentation and also response to the.

So We've told it, we've talked this and we've talked this.

I have to tell you it's still large facilities and small.

We're having issues with entry policy.

Entry policies for your facility have to be in writing and understood by anybody.

Who can allow entry.

Remember, if you have a guy who's standing by the door and The ocean inspector walks up and says, Hi, I'm John Doe and I'm here from Ocean.

I'm here to do an inspection on noise.

That guy says, Yeah, come on in.

That is considered to be allowable entrance.

Everybody who enter to your facility should be going through a gate, a doorway, signing in.

Making sure that they wear the proper protective equipment and they have been trained in the hazards at your site.

I realized that's a problem for you big guys with a truck and gates and you smaller guys with just people, but you have to have an entry policy if not.

I've had, I've had people giving tours of facilities that are very scary.

Remember that you want to know that you've got to not only know the purpose of the visit, but you want to control your records and programs.

So one of the things that we mean by controlling your records and programs if they ask you for a copy of your program, obviously you're going to give it to them, but the best way to probably do it is say, you know, I don't want to do this haphazardly.

I would like to make a list of what you need to see, and I will provide it to you if they just want to look at it.

At your facility, that's fine.

You sit down, you give it to them again.

I've said this so many times.

You do not have a giant 3 inch, 3 ring binder or there's your programs against the wall where they can read the spines.

Let them ask for the individual program.

Give it to them.

Don't let them just go willy-nilly through your program.

Watch your playing tours, who will accompany them, and that they have the proper PPE.

And remember, in responding to questions, be sure you control your records and employees sensitive records.

We have seen now I've had 3 instances where OSHA has requested electronically that the employer supply.

Medical records to the OSHA office with the employee's name attached.

Now there are some instances where that may be acceptable.

But in general it is not.

If you have that problem, let me know.

It's a very dicey issue.

You must get, even if you think that they have that right, you must ensure that the request has come from the area director and that he is what he's by the way, they can only keep those records if they dispose of them, destroy them after their use.

There are times when they can remand certain electronic.

employee records, but then they must get a letter from the the regional office or the national office, and that's only when there's a purpose for it.

Uh, an example would be when they wanted to drop the blood leads from 40.

40.

They started asking for electronic records.

And they also ask for people's names, but in general they won't back off on that.

It puts you as the employer between the devil and the deep blue sea.

if you're providing names with those records.

I know I wouldn't want my records available.

Here's an example for a sample uh entry policy, a very simple one.

And You know, basically, it's telling you, you know, what we're going to do and, you know, that they are, we do have a policy, but you want to make sure that you have in red.

These are the people who are going to allow permits.

Permit excuse me, entry.

And if you're a big facility, you may have 4 people on this list or small one, maybe 1 person.

If that person is not there, you can request a delay until they can be located.

And in general, if they see that you are attempting to allow entry, there won't be an issue.

I mean you can't make an entry, you know, last 3 to 4 days, but people generally wait till the next.

Problem with that Again, give us a call.

Because it's in their own Directives that they must allow the employer sufficient time to get the proper person to allow entry.

too big on that case to really make too much of a fuss over this.

Yes, that does include even foundries, any of us who are in the day.

Now if you have something that is immediately dangerous to life and health, well, you probably don't let them in because you want to know about it, but that's not what this is.

I mean, you're a founder, you're not going to change things overnight.

You're not going to change your records overnight.

That's for sure.

All right, if you have an it's Again, once the, once the officer is admitted, anything he sees in in plain view is allowed to be.

So You can if it's a complaint, as we've discussed many times.

If it's a complaint about something that's in your finishing room, take the guy around and get him through the door that's closest to the finishing room.

If he has to walk by you pouring and somebody's not wearing protective equipment, that's in plain view.

It's like the cop can't open up the trunk to your car to find the loaded shotgun, but He's um Uh, he can, if you mention it, if it's in the backseat of your car and you can see it through the window.

What you want then is a lot of times what they will say to you is, well, I'm here for noise.

Well, noise is really a problem across the facility.

You don't have much wiggle room.

If he's here because he wants to check the guard on your Pedestal grinders and then you can limit that type.

Martha, while, while we're stepping through this, we do have a question going back to a previous comment about dangerous industry lists versus high hazard industries.

Do you have any comment? Do you believe those to be the same equivalent terminology or are they different lists? I, you know, I'm not going to answer that because we're on everybody's list.

I mean, um.

Uh, in general, what you want to do is go down the national emphasis Poly and that if you, if we want to go through that, I can go back and do research on that, but you're going to find that basically they are not going to enter your facility unless you're on the high hazard.

I don't know what you're talking about dangerous.

I that one I'm not really familiar with.

If somebody wants to let us know, I'd be very happy to hear about that.

Great, thank you.

Unfortunately, all of us are on the noise, lot.

Most of us are on silica, so that we basically um we're targeted and come summer we're going to be on heat stress.

Be interesting.

Is it just a little comment about what happens if the owner's not there.

Here's another example.

I am not, I'm going backwards.

There we go.

I seem to be repeating, I apologize for that.

OK.

Let's talk about written programs.

The emphasis on written programs.

It is important because it in your program, if you have a written program, you're going to provide them a list of what it says that you're going to do.

So if it's in your written program, let's make sure That you can go down your written program and state that you've done everything that's on that program.

Most of you have written programs.

If you don't have these written programs, Ryan and Jerry will direct you to where we have sample programs that have basically been Reviewed by OSHA offices and have been accepted.

Some of them were even written under OSHA grant to the Hayward grant.

So, OK, so make sure that they're up to date.

One of the most devastating things is you pull out the program which has 1 inch of dust on it, and the guy who's responsible for it hasn't worked there for 3 years.

You can also just initial or mark or somehow show that you have reviewed them on an annual basis.

Just listed common problems that we've had.

For the past year Personal protective equipment that do not have a certification of hazard assessments.

And an evaluation of hazards for all applicable occupations for operations.

OK, in other words, There's a certification.

You actually have, we'll give you a sample certification.

They will ask you.

You have to do that.

Where's your certification? It's just a one page thing.

All you have to do is sign it and could be good if I could spell evaluation, and the evaluation again, it's a form.

If you have a confined space, do you have a decision tree for that confined space? How did you determine whether the confined space is a non-permit required or permit required confined space? By the way, we have that in Word, which is very hard to find otherwise.

If you have them for your confined spaces, makes most of them will again go back to your lockout tag a program, but at least you can say I have evaluated all of my confined spaces.

Make sure you have that annual certification of lockout tag out procedures.

Of course, you can group your lockout takeout procedures, but you need to annually certify them.

Silicon exposure control plants.

A lot of you think that you need a written silica program like you do for lead or Exxavalent chromium.

You do not.

You have to follow the silica standard, but the one thing other than medical evaluation that you need in writing is the silica exposure control plan.

If you have silica in your facility, you must have such a plan for every occupation or operation that could potentially.

Be exposed to silica above the action level and potential means it's got dust collectors and fans, general ventilation, but the electricity goes down and you're still running or you've lost your dust control, but you're still running the facility and you could be over the action level.

You still have to have a silica exposure control.

Really a simple again, we have one of those in Word.

So you have one for every one of those.

Operations.

This year, of course, you know, we've had a fatality in our industry on an exploding grinder, on a handheld grinder.

Make sure you have ring testing.

We've given you something you could hang on the wall, ring test training for everybody who mounts a grinding wheel.

It's very simple, and I have to tell you.

You walk into almost any CNF department and ask a supervisor and say, Do you ring test your grinding wheels? And I know that most of them will turn around and say to you, What the hell's a ring test? I don't know what you're talking about.

And you sure don't want to say that to an ocean inspector.

It's a ring test.

They may not know anything about grinders, but they do know that a ring test is required.

Arthur, just to expand on that comment for a moment, you made, you made the point, but I want to emphasize it because it's important that the ring test doesn't just apply to our bench grinders, right? It also applies to those grinding wheels on your handheld grinders, and I think that's where we're seeing the citations is in the handheld grinders.

Is that correct? More than 4 inches in diameter.

And and it does not refer to cone grinders, you know, the cone grinder that you use for the internal, but if it's a wheel and it's more than 4 inches in diameter, you must ring test it.

And also watch your noise control evaluation for feasible engineering controls.

Noise was a big deal.

It's still a big deal.

And believe me, inspectors do not know how to control noise, and there's very, very little that you can do to truly reduce noise, especially in a highly automated facility, especially you ferris guys, much noisier than our aluminum guys.

We do have a feasibility guide for noise control.

Again, this is one thing.

I think the last really knowledgeable person they had in OSHA on noise control was Dr.

John Barry.

Jeez, I think John Barry's been retired for at least 15 years, maybe more.

They don't know any more, believe me, than they did 15 years ago.

So you know it's, it's an easy one for those of us who've been around the counter, but believe it or not, they will go to a book.

We've had them in a area want a foundry to install on the roof the foam type icicle noise control.

And I said, Are you kidding me? Are you, are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how flammable that stuff is? They don't.

OK.

Here's an example.

I, I want you to be aware of the things that we've mentioned.

We have resources for everything we've talked about.

So for example, here's your certification.

This is all that's required.

For that certification.

Now, obviously, if you've changed your operation, or if you've changed your required PPA, you may want to, you know, recertify.

But here's your example of the certification.

Here's an example of your certification that lockout tag out has been done annually.

Very simple.

Here it is just the name of the people, what they do check.

The 4 boxes of lockout if they used it, if they followed the procedures, and were they adequate.

By the way, remember you can group those if you have.

14 kinds of pedestal grinders and they're all pedestal grinders and they're all locked out the same way.

You can use one.

Here's an example of a silic exposure control.

And it basically goes over, you know, or how the silica is there, what we're doing to control it, what the regulated areas, by the way, that's another thing, regulated areas.

I've had at least 3 citations in 2023 that you did not put signs up outlining the silica control exposure areas where silica was at or above the permissible exposure limit.

Guys with lead usually put them on the door.

With noise, you put them on the door.

Text chrome, it's simple.

You put it outside your burners booth.

But silicon could be more difficult.

It may be an area or a region, and remember with silica.

As with these others, But silica, especially since it's not toxic, for example, lead air regulated area remains a lead regulated area as long as there's lead or hexavalent chromium on the work surfaces, right? But silica is not a poison.

It's not a toxic.

It's only going to attack your lungs.

So in silica, your regulated areas can change.

For example, it can be a regulated area, but if I'm not doing that operation.

It can be not a regulated here, so the signs can be removed.

Right There should be something like this for every one of those areas.

and cranes.

This is an example of the material that we have available.

We have charts like this covering most foundry requirements, and this is just a single section.

This is on slings and cranes.

We have another section on.

Lead, another section on silica that you can follow.

We know I have to honestly say that I have not had a major crane inspection in years.

I'm not sure that OSHA agents are any longer qualified to determine if your cranes are operating correctly, but they sure will ask to see your monthly crane inspections and your annual crane inspections that are generally done by an outside.

Sorry One more thing, um, tags, again, it used to be a big deal.

I haven't seen a whole lot, but tags are awfully hard to keep on.

One of the things that people are looking at is the daily sling checklist, daily sling checklists do not have to be in writing, but the employee must be trained in looking at it, and I've had so many times where the ocean specter goes up and says.

You check your chain slings on a daily basis, and the guy looks at me and goes, Oh, I don't.

And I go, uh, do you look at it every time you use it? Oh yeah.

Do you check that it's cracked or deformed? Oh yeah.

Do you check that the hook is not, oh yeah.

That's, that is a daily inspection.

One of the other things that's so easy.

This goes every time you see the word lead, you can fill in your steel for hexavalent chromium.

clothing.

Have you informed outside? Cleaning services or uniform services that your uniforms that are used are contaminated.

This is a big deal.

That particular warning is an OSHA warning.

It is not your warning.

It is required by you to provide to the outside, and this is really important to me because remember all of your employees are protected or you are protected by workers' compensation.

If an outside employee who works for that company, and we've had this happen with lead.

Claims that that that he or she has been um contaminated or has a high blood level or has a problem from Hexchrome because of your dirty clothing.

You want to make sure that you have informed the employer of One of the things we have been developing and we've talked about it is to come up with a chart or a program, a gap type chart to help you folks in going down the requirements.

Determine what is required in this particular case, we're just showing here for iron and steel here under the max standard, and we have written programs, record keeping, training.

What's required, when it needs to be done, who is responsible for it, and if there's anything, this is a big deal for a lot of you because sometimes in certain programs the responsibilities are spread between more than one person.

We want to make sure that not only that everybody knows what needs to be done, but that it is done.

Is there a questionnaire about lockout tag before we leave? The question on the board is regarding the annual certification of your lockout tag out procedures.

Can you group annual certification of similar procedures for a group of machines if each machine has a specific unique written lockout tag out procedure? if the procedure is unique.

If the procedure is so similar as to be the same, and when I say so similar as to be the same, it can't be the same if the the lockout is a different box, electrical control box, but the procedure is the same.

The example that OSHA gives.

Is that um If, in fact, you have, for example, uh, all right, here, you have um Woodworking equipment in your pattern shop.

So you're still making wooden patterns, right? And there's all these different types of woodworking machinery and it's got saws and it's got routers and it's got sanders.

But they're all locked out the same way.

You go over to the box on the wall, you pull the lever, you put the locks.

You only have to certify one of those procedures, but they recommend that as you go from year to year that you don't do the same equipment.

Like one year you do the grind the sander, the next year you do the saw.

If I have 5 pedestal grinders in a row, and they're different sizes, right? Different wheel diameters.

But I lock them out the same way.

I only have to do one lockout procedure.

For example, if I have 3.

No bake mixers, and they're all the same mixers or they can even be a different capacity.

I'll give you a different capacity 500, but they're all locked out the same way.

They only have to lock out one.

But if the procedure is different.

Then I have to Do more than one.

OK.

I warn you though, in certain pieces of equipment, I'm thinking of.

You in it guys, if you run a bailer.

Right.

If you run a bailer, you may have a different lockout procedure for maintenance on that bailer versus Clearing the baylor Because you've had, you know, a problem.

Take a look at if it's the same procedure you can group them.

Great.

Thank you, Martha.

Uh, just a follow-up question, as long as we're taking a break here in the content, there's a question on the board regarding S hooks.

The question reads, are Foundry S hooks required to have X-rays done on them yearly or ever after being put into use? Not a requirement But if they're not going to be passed by your company that does your annual inspection, you're going to have to follow them.

It's kind of like your medical surveillance, you know what I'm saying? You, you say I have to go to the physician in order to to clear the guy, uh, to, to wear a respirator.

The doctor says, well, he's going to have to have this kind of a test or that kind of, you're gonna have to do it.

So in other words, we are not considered to be experts in that field.

We have to pass it off to somebody else, but then once we do so, then if If there's not a way to counter that recommendation, you're going to have an issue.

OK, I know that's not a very happy answer, but OK, here's another section we're going to be working on all of these areas once we get them out to people, of course, these are living documents and we want.

Also, as we prepare these to be make sure that they meet your requirements for your facility.

So that's one of the things when you're looking for the IT people to help us, that you can put in your requirements for your facility.

These, by the way, are available now.

Uh, we've also prepared a just a simple overall, here's what you need to do, very simple, very quick, may apply to you, may not apply to you for the year.

Again.

Just kind of going down the list here.

Remember, a lot of this was prepared for non-ferrous people wherever it says, hexavalent.

Some of you will also have cadmium.

Here's another type of requirement checklist that we have prepared for all other aspects of OSHA and some EPA requirements that are available to you from both.

founders and the non.

These are things that we will also be putting into those gap.

One of the things that are most difficult for us and we want to work on as we develop them are at the bottom and put them in bold.

We have a lot of EPA requirements that are passed off to the state, and each of you may have different requirements for your environmental issues based upon the state in which your facility is located.

For example, my particular state.

While you have a biennial hazardous waste report on the year, you do not have to report on your hazardous waste.

We have a residual waste report.

Stormwater reports.

Question of July 1st or Osho I'm sorry.

I don't know which July we're talking about this section 313R forms.

Are on OSHA requirements.

he's referring to, he's referring to the slide here and you post your OS 300 report to the OSHA website and he's questioning the July 1 date there.

I don't know where that one came from.

I apologize on that one.

That should be, of course, March 1.

Yeah, that and get that before we send it out, please.

Yes, I will, I will edit the slides and get that corrected before we distribute.

I don't know where that one came from.

That's thank you for you saw that, that big thank you.

Now we have written programs.

sheets.

The most important thing we also have for both of you groups is the standards of care for engineering controls for noise and airborne contaminants and training programs.

Why do we think it's so important if you are using the standard of care for your industry, that should achieve compliance.

They can't say you should they cannot state that you need to go above the standard of care.

For your industry.

worked very, very hard on these, and OSHA has accepted, I mean across the board, partially because they don't have the technical or engineering knowledge to even counter them.

They're all available and I'm going to pass this over to Jared and Ryan.

When I'm done here.

On exactly how to access this stuff.

Oh, here's one of the things that people have often asked us, I should have this is a sample.

Here's a sample letter waiving medical testing.

All available from you folks.

And one more thing in red, if you have a machine shop, please consider the pounds process and any potential releases from these operations as well as from your foundry operations.

There's the posting requirements.

Yeah, we would just point out that Martha, I think it's appropriate here to just point out that the OSHA record keeping and reporting rule changed in 2023.

And so for foundries that are between what is it, 211 and 249 employees are required to post their forms online by March 2nd.

Right, and we just did it or not.

We just did a webinar on that.

If you need that, we just did, yeah.

OK.

Here's a sample to your laundry.

Again, if you need to do the hexavalent chromium if you need to.

This is a very important, very important notice.

OSHA requires actually it's under 1910.20 or 1910.

1020.

Access to employee exposure.

You have got to inform your employees on an annual basis of the right to see their medical records and environmental monitoring.

It is not required that that training be in person.

OSHA has accepted the fact that if you post this notice on your bulletin board, you will have fulfilled your training requirements.

Really, I should put this in red and put a gold frame around it.

Please make sure you've posted that.

Here's another just list.

These are all lists that are available.

They're also in our calendar.

Again, we're talking about sample.

Again, just materials that are available.

Watch your recordable hearing shifts.

And what to do this again, I think we've really basically these are just kind of a repeat of what we've already done.

These are just examples of What's available, OK.

I'm gonna pass it over to you, Jerry.

Great, thank you.

Um, so we're gonna, we're just gonna scroll back down and first of all, I want to say thank you to you for just years of really solid advice to our member foundries to help us comply with OSHA.

We all know the regulations are very complicated and can be very nuanced, and so hopefully everybody finds these webinars as useful as as the society staff does.

I think one of the things that we need to consider is how do you find access to the different documents and information that Martha has been speaking to you.

So we understand that we have both non-feris Founders Society and Steel Founder members.

So speaking specifically to my non-feris Founder Society members, we do have a complete directory of resources available on our website.

When you receive copies of these uh webinar slides later this afternoon, these are all active hyperlinks.

They'll take you to the appropriate directories within our website, but I just want to mention a couple of things that we have real quick, in addition to all the training and the the uh documentation templates and the record sets.

Um, the first is our air sampling equipment program.

Many of you need to do environmental air sampling for hazards in your foundry.

Some of you will hire industrial hygienists to do this, and some of you will like to do your own air sampling.

At least for members of our society, we do have air sampling pumps available to you at no cost.

We also have a discount program negotiated with the nation's leading analytical lab that provides X-ray diffraction for silica sampling specifically.

We can get you 15% discount on.

Sampling and analytical services.

So if you're intending to do your own implant air sampling, and I personally think that this is a very good idea for most of our members anyway, please contact us so we can get you fitted up with instructions on how to conduct your own sampling and conduct your own exposure levels based on the analytical results.

The second one I want to mention is our safety audit program, right? It's, it's great to have access to professionals and resources through the society, but sometimes it's just not as good as having a prol come through your plant and walk through and look at things with an educated viewpoint, make specific recommendation guidances, and that's what our safety audit program does.

Uh, we'll bring Martha out to your plant, we'll walk through your foundry, and we'll conduct.

A high-level mock OSHA safety on it, right? It's not gonna be the exact way that OSHA does it, but I would suggest it's almost more effective because we understand boundaries, and we know where boundaries tend to hide the stuff that they don't want other people to see, right? So we do have this implant safety audit program available to you.

If you'd like to discuss, uh, please contact us here at the society.

Beyond that, we've got compliance templates that were built up underneath our Harwood grant programs that we did through the society.

And as always, just like for steel founders, we have a regulatory compliance hotline.

But I believe each of my members with this thought that um while we do have all this information available on our website, we as a society staff are always here to assist you.

If you're looking for something specific, you can't find it on the website, you're not sure if you're finding the right thing.

As always, please contact us here at the society and allow us to help, help you.

That's, that's what we do and we enjoy doing that.

Ryan, do you want to speak to steel founders and your available resources? My members are familiar with our steel wiki.

When you log in on the right hand column or resources, there's environmental health and safety, and similar to a lot of materials and nonferi, that's where all the items from Skip and Martha that we have, we have over 30 webinars and a company slides recorded and available there for download, um.

A myriad of compliance materials on the written programs, policies, procedures, many of which Martha touched on, Mission factor guides, things like that, and then all of our standard of care and silica programs that we have available.

Martha mentioned it earlier and I would say it again that again.

If there's something on the wiki you're looking for and you don't see it available, please contact me or contact Martha or Skip directly to get that.

So chances are if it's not there we have it, and if we are missing something, we'll certainly get it posted up there, but uh it's a wealth of information there and, and again, having Skip and Martha available to you is also helpful as well.

Right.

One last comment, and our apologies for going a couple of minutes long.

This is kind of a big topic, and there's a lot going through here.

One of the things that we do for our members is we publish the NIF's regulatory compliance calendar.

It's filled with 12 months full of topic specific calendar headers and important reminders for filing dates and submission requirements uh to help founders manage their EPA and ultra regulatory compliance programs.

Ryan and I have been working together on webinars for about 3 months in a row now, and so we have agreed to make copies of our NIFS regulatory compliance calendar available for free to steal Founders Society members through the end of January.

You can use the hyperlink showing on the screen here.

Use SFSA calendar offer promo for free checkout.

We'll hit you for 250 on on the shipping cost, uh, but the publication itself will be free.

This is among one of our At least our NIFS members most valuable resources according to our membership um surveys.

So if you'd like a copy of this publication, please reach out to us on the website, use the calendar offer, and we'll be happy to mail you copies of this for your future.

And if I can real quick, Jerry, just to tag on to that, um, yeah, I agree, you know, um that's been a great benefit for NIFS members.

We've talked about doing it for Steel Founders members, so I would encourage my members to request a copy of the calendar, and if you like it, it's something to use that you think we should do, we'd be happy to look at doing that.

We talked about it a number of years ago.

Uh, we did put one out.

It didn't get a lot of traction, but happy to revisit that.

Um, for the dates.

That Martha discussed today, like the required dates and your annual year, you know, semiannual monthly checkup um training dates, those are downloadable into your calendar platform off of the wiki underneath the environmental health and safety section.

So that's available there too.

But thanks Jared again for extending that to our members.

Our pleasure.

Um, you know, we've, we've got a lot of resources.

The whole point is to contact Ryan if you're steel founders or myself, if you're a NIFS member, and if you belong to either organization, you can always reach out directly to Martha.

For direct assistance via the regulatory compliance hotline.

So true to my word, I still have one remaining question on the chat.

This does conclude our webinar on the OSHA, uh, webinar, but I'm gonna address Mr.

Emery's question regarding the OSHA worker walk around designation rule, right? So for those of you, uh, you may or may not be aware, but OSHA announced a proposed regulation in 2023 that uh that Slightly modifies their existing policy regarding the rights of workers to appoint a worker representative to walk around your facility with an OSHA inspector during an OSHA inspection if it's determined that that um representative is vital to helping OSHA do an effective audit within your plan.

So there's a lot of words there.

Let's unpack what that means.

What OSHA is saying is that Workers have a right to request an assistant walk around with the ocean inspector in your plant, and it doesn't have to be an employee of your plant.

And so if we role play and think this through logically just a little bit, it could be a union representative, it could be a competitor, it could be somebody completely unfamiliar.

They still have to make the case that they contribute knowledge to the safety and health compliance officers inspection.

But you can rationalize a lot of things.

So obviously this is problematic, and I think that another aspect of this is earlier this year, we saw that OSHA and the National Labor Relations Board signed a memorandum of understanding where those two agencies will work together to help promote the same goal, which is to increase unionization within the manufacturing industry and to better represent um safety and health.

Regulations when NLRB staff are walking through union plants.

So, OSHA is promising to work with NLRB.

NLRB is promising to work with OSHA.

They've committed to share information back and forth.

Realistically, that means if you've got an NLRB designated rep in your facility and they see a potential OSHA violation, they may go ahead and report that over to OSHA.

You may see an OSHA inspector knocking on your door.

It could be the same way that OSHA um comes in and does an inspection in your plan and maybe they find an.

But it's outside the statute of limitations or it's been addressed, um, so they're not going to cite you for it, but they may certainly refer that information back over to the NLRB and let them use that as a genesis point on why they should be promoting unionization in your plan.

So I think the takeaway here on this rule is that the cooperative agreement between the NLRB and OSHA is problematic at best.

And the OSHA worker walk around rule and what they are proposing causes significant And real concerns on behalf of our industry and our membership, right? So our society has entered written formal comments on regulations.gov in response to the proposed regulation.

I have copies of that available on my website.

If you'd like to see what, um, you know, the letter defending our industry's interests looks like to OS on this proposed regulation, I'm happy to share that with you.

Uh, I know Ryan and his team have been tracking that at some level as well, and we know that, um, other Industry associations have similar concerns, uh, so we'll see what happens.

The comment period was extended to see out to November 13th, so the comment period has been closed.

The next step is to wait for OSHA to actually come out with a proposed regulation, right? We were operating under an AMPRM advance notice of proposed rulemaking.

We filed comments on that.

So now we'll see what OSHA is going to do.

They'll come back with a proposed regulation.

And at that time, we'll have a better idea of what the specific regulation is gonna look like, and we can be much more granular in our comments.

Um, if you'd like to discuss more on the OSHA worker walk around rule on the NLB, uh, pardon me, NLRB slash OSHA memorandum of understanding, or any other government affairs related issues that affect occupational safety, health, and environmental compliance, please contact me here at the Society.

We run government affairs committee meetings every month and we track many of these issues through that.

And with that, I think I've said enough.

Um, any last thoughts, Martha Gaiman? No, I mean, this is, this is going to be a bigger issue than even what you're thinking about.

For example, before you allow anybody outside like that, are you going to have to train them? Are you going to, if they're going to be exposed, you know, do they, do they have, have they had respirator training? Have they had fit testing? Have they? There's a lot of issues involved with our particular operations, which I don't think OSHA has even thought about.

Yeah, and, and again, we've got comments here, but I think one of the things that we have to be concerned about is liability and safety concerns, right? A third party walking through with OSHA in my plan.

If that guy trips over something in my plant, am I liable for him? Why in God's earth would I allow somebody into my plant that I'm liable for like that? That just doesn't make sense.

And that's not even the most important part of it.

Ryan Moore, last departing comments before we end.

No, I appreciate everything.

uh, great presentation, Martha, and thanks again, Jared for coordinating and hosting this and um a lot of good information and I appreciate it.

Thank you and thanks for everyone's attention today.

I wish everybody a prosperous and safe.

Any, any suggestions for new topics, please let Ryan or Jared know.

Outstanding.

Well, on behalf of Ryan Moore and Martha Gyon, I'm Jared, and I want to thank you all for spending an hour of your day with us today.

Have a very good afternoon.

Thank you.

Thanks all.

March 12, 2024 Noise: How to Evaluate Exposure and Your Obligations under OSHA

Welcome to everybody once again and let's get started with our review on the ocean noise regulations, Martha.

OK, I don't mean to sound like a high school physics teacher, but it's very important that we understand the mechanics of noise.

If you do not understand the mechanics of noise and how it is measured, you cannot.

Meet the requirements of the OSHA standard, and also you can't select the proper protective equipment nor the proper methodology of attempting to reduce the noise levels as far as is possible.

We noted that noise is measured in decibels.

You can always remember it because it's named after Alexander Graham Bell.

The problem with the decibel is it is a logarithmic scale.

So, every time you increase the noise levels by 3 decibels, you're actually doubling the noise intensity.

That's an issue so that you understand that reducing noise levels is not necessarily easy or simple because you have to reduce that much energy to get that much of a deduction, OK, in the noise levels.

So it's very, very important.

The other thing is that the typical um or the noise scales that OSHA uses.

It is not just measuring the energy or the force in the noise.

It is trying to follow the response of the human ear.

The human ear has different.

Reactions to different types of noise so that for example we don't mind low.

Frequency noise, but we don't like high frequency noise.

So there are basically three scales that we use A, B, and C.

OSHA measures everything on the A scale.

Then the A scale.

Basically looks at those um Frequencies that are within normal human hearing.

It will Discriminate against low frequency noises, OK? And so the standard says that you can have an 8-hour time limited average of 90 decibels for 8 hours.

And you can have that is for all requirements of the standard.

If you hit 85 decibels, you don't have to have engineering controls, but you have to have personal protective equipment, hearing protection, OK? And you also have to do the audiometric hearing tests on an annual basis.

You cannot have exposure to noise over 115 decibels for any period of time.

All right, so that's the standard.

As we said, you're going to discriminate against low frequency noises.

You steel foundries, know this very well.

If you take a noise reading by your arc furnaces, you'll say, Boy, that doesn't sound very low because a lot of the noise is in the 60 cycles per second range, and that is discriminated against.

By OSHA, your highest noise levels, of course, are going to be probably in your cleaning and finishing room, and whenever there's air releases.

Another high level is any time you get the banging or the clanging of castings against casting or casting against.

Uh, uh, any metal conveying system.

The the, the testing material that we use, the instruments that we use are built with these various scales.

Built into them.

The other important thing to remember is that this is what we call a 5 decibel exchange standard.

I remind people that and that way you'll know how important it is, so each single decibel is, you're allowed.

8 hours of noise exposure at 90 decibels.

If we go up 5 decibels to 95 decibels, we cut the exposure in half to 4 hours.

100 decibels at 2 hours, 105, 1, and you can see down to 115 unless you can have 15 minutes or a quarter of an hour.

These are all time weighted averages.

In other words, if you have a chap who is at 95 decibels for 3 hours, but he's at 100 decibels for 3 hours, he's going to be well over the standard.

OK, so it's it's it's additive by the base, by the weight of the.

Time and the noise level.

If, however, an employee is exposed to 85 decibels are greater.

There's no way to do this one by a 5 decibel exchange.

Then he is in the standard, but he does not have to wear hearing protection, but you have to do or have engineering controls, but you have to continue to test his hearing on an annual basis.

This is just an advice.

It is not a requirement.

If the chap is between 85 and 90, why wouldn't you require hearing protection? Most of us, of course, require hearing protection throughout the facility for the very reasons it's very difficult to say to a chap, OK, you can wear hearing protection in this area, but if you cross over to the following department or walk through it, you don't.

It's too hard.

It's just too difficult to impose.

The two ways we generally sample hearing or test for hearing is through the sound level meter or the dosimeter, and they are very different.

The sound level meter will tell you the noise level at.

The exact period of time that you are testing.

This is very important to us because if we need to know where the noise is coming from, we don't want the average.

We want to know how high is it when he's chipping, how high is it when he's grinding, how high is it when he has the air release, when he's running the hunter, whatever it may be.

So in that particular case, if we may have to determine what the noise levels are during the various periods.

That a person is sampled.

This will give us then a type of sound level mapping which will tell us what the noise levels are throughout the day with background noises even considered.

A dosimeter is like a sound level meter except it's going to store all of that noise into it and then average it out for an 8 hour day.

Now you can get dosimeters that will read out and tell you, give you a chart that will tell you what the noise levels were throughout the day.

The problem with that for all of us is that if you do not know what the person was doing during those noise levels, that chart may be useless, so that you need to basically be there to say, ah, at this time during the dosimeter reading.

He was doing whatever he was doing, you know, he might have been where I don't, is that the reclaimer.

He was at the shakeout, whatever it might be.

The issue here is that OSHA uses dosimeters.

They do not care where the noise came from or how long the exposure was at any particular noise level.

They're gonna just say you had an 8 hour time rated average which was above the 90 or it was above the 85.

That does not necessarily help us if we're trying to determine how to reduce noise levels or make Sure that the um selection of noise reducing materials that we select are going to be.

Valid or effective for that noise level, so.

If you're going to do this type of thing, we, for example, those of us in engineering almost always use a sound level meter versus a dosimeter because we want to know where the noise is coming from and what is causing it.

If you do use a noise level meter, you must make sure or the dosimeter that you place it correctly on the person.

It should be near.

As close as you can to his ear, if you're going to take a sound level reading again, it should be as close as possible to the ear.

If you take it, for example, if you're doing a grinder and you take it at the grinder, that's not what we want.

I don't care what the, well, I might care from an engineering point of view, but for an exposure point of view, I want to know what the chap is hearing, not what the The equipment is generating for OSHA similar to like if you're doing.

Uh sampling for dust.

You want to know what the person is breathing, not necessarily what the equipment is, because hopefully we're going to have dust control there to reduce it.

Noise can be continuous, variable, or intermittent.

Most manufacturing noise is variable or intermittent.

We continuous noise is stable over a time period.

Think about the noise for let's say an engine that's running at one level at your air compressor most of the time.

Even your furnaces are going to vary greatly in their noise levels based upon what part of the cycle in your heat cycle it's at.

Very different.

So most engine manufacturing noise is variable or intermittent, and that's one of our issues that where we need to understand.

OSHA doesn't, they don't care, remember, but we need to understand where that noise is generated and how long it is.

Impact noise, it's a very short period of noise.

We get a lot of impact noise clang, bang.

Gunfire, chipping hammers are, they're hardest to evaluate because they're a short period of time.

I will say that OSHA says that when you do your testing, Your meter should be at what they call a slow response.

If you, if you know anything about noise meters, you look at them and the meter will jump all around and it's very hard to read it if OSHA says do it and a slow response it will average out the reading and actually that's not invalid because that's what our ears do as well.

I've just given you some samples of sound level meters that you can purchase.

Uh, these were 2021.

These are not purchase costs.

These are weekly costs.

I basically recommend that if you We are not going to do a lot of noise sampling or noise measurement.

rent one.

They're difficult to maintain.

They're difficult to calibrate.

You can buy a very cheap noise meter.

It's not a very good one, but you can use your phone as a noise meter.

But a good sound level meter is a type 2.

That's what OSHA would want you to use, and they're inexpensive to rent for a week.

Just giving you an example here for a router.

This is a router operation.

I tried to pick, by the way, in this particular case, non-foundry examples because I didn't want to point fingers at our industry.

So here's a router.

He, we set our router at 98 decibels on the A scale when it's in use, and there's a second router in the background.

But it's 100 decibels when there's a song in the background.

This is the difference between an ambient noise and a non-ambient noise.

It's very difficult to control um noise from the person who's doing the operation.

And his ear, but it's a lot easier to try to get rid of that background noise.

But remember, every 3 decibels is cutting the energy by half.

When we look at this one, we say, oh, if it's a 98 hour time limited average.

And he's at 98 decibels.

He can work at that router for 2.6 hours, but he can only work there for 2 hours at 100 decibels.

The 100 decibel level is extremely important because in the OSHA field manual it says that in.

Heavy industries such as ours that in general they will not require you to use engineering controls to reduce noise levels that are below 100 decibels on the A scale on an 8 hour time weighted average.

I've had one case where they tried to tell me that, oh, I had to.

And we won that one, OK.

They admit that I don't think we've seen anything new in noise engineering controls in the last 25 years.

And by the way, since John Barry, Dr.

Barry retired, I don't think they have anybody who's expert in noise control engineering on staff.

So this is why this sort of thing is extremely important to us in our industry to get to know what that average is for the 8 hours.

So what we've got to do is we know now to meet the 85 decibels and most of us aren't gonna meet the 85 decibels.

But if you want to meet the 8 hour decibels, you know that your exposure is going to be about 4 to 4.5 hours.

So we need to the um.

One of the things here that it says this is basically it says that the time of the equipment uses vary.

So if you are going to know that the time of your equipment uses varied, basically what we should do is probably use the worst case scenario to determine what the person's noise exposure will be on a day to day basis.

Really want to be careful about those um standard threshold shifts in hearing.

Alrighty, so we want to know, do you want to rotate the people? Most foundries do not find it.

Advisable to rotate people for noise control engineering.

Here's a typical example.

OSHA requires you to evaluate your workplace and determine exposure levels.

There's different ways of doing it.

Here's a map of sound level averages.

For 8 hours.

In general, then they would say if you're going to do it by the area, you should take the highest numbers.

So if people work in the area down to the bottom to the left, you're going to say that it's 109.

If you're going to say above that.

97.

This is a perfectly valid way to determine what noise levels are.

The issue with this is that then you put everybody who works in that area in the same noise exposure category.

A more sophisticated way of doing it is this type of a drawing which you'll see some of the noise engineering people will give you.

But again, you're going to have to select the work area and then you have to say if these people have evaluated or cut the areas that people work into 8 sections.

You've got to determine what the noise levels are usually you pick the highest noise level and then put that noise level for.

Engineering and personal protective equipment and so here's another way to do it with colors.

Here's an example of the old fashioned wired dosimeters.

They're relatively inexpensive to rent or even to purchase.

We don't like them in our industry because they are delicate.

We don't like the wires and we don't like our chips to destroy the meters.

Here's the newer ones.

These are the dosimeters that are no wires.

And you just clip it on to a person's.

Holler or as close as you can to the ear, leave it on for 8 hours and then plug it in at the end and it'll read out.

Noise dosage.

They're relatively expensive each and again they're hard to keep calibrated, but they're also easy to rent on a weekly basis.

I'm just giving you an example.

All of I picked up all this on the internet.

How often do you have to evaluate your monitor your noise levels? Well, you don't have to do them on a basis like we do for dust, for lead or hexachrome on a schedule.

We have to do it once and then whenever there are changes in the machine or production process.

I think a lot of people haven't re-monitored their site in a long time.

Please remember that in some ways our more modern facilities in many cases are noisier in that the automation may have eliminated people from the exposure, but it also has increased the clanging of metal against metal or the rapidity at which jobs are done.

I like to just show you for this one.

It'll it'll this is out of the ocean field operations manual.

It's about the same.

This is from they don't change this too much, but it basically says that employ employers can rely upon personal protective equipment.

As we said, when there's no technology available to reduce the noise below the exposure limit of dining.

One of the things we're gonna show you in this webinar are items that are acceptable technology.

We would warn you that people who try to sell you magic mushroom wands, magic methodologies to reduce noise levels take it very, very much with a grain of salt because there's very, very little that is currently available to reduce noise levels in our type of industry.

They've given you again item 3 very important for you.

One of the reasons we'd like to have these webinars and remind you is as a resource is that devotion.

It basically says when the noise exposures are less than 100 decibels, you don't have uh you and um.

but the, uh, we do need an ongoing hearing conservation program, but the whole point is, can you rely on an effective hearing conservation program and is there any other Engineering controls that are technically and economically feasible.

This is basically backing that up.

If you run into these issues and you need our assistance, please give us a call.

We will respond to you as a society, which of course is important in handling the agency.

Please also recall that this material was also part of the Harwood OSHA grant.

Most important thing that you'll find in going over this is that you did have a good hearing conservation program that that included the proper selection of hearing protection and as we'll see that it's essential.

One of the reasons you have to do the.

The noise evaluation is you cannot select.

Hearing protection unless you know what the noise levels are at that particular workstation.

Also, we can show you certain easy ways to reduce noise levels.

There's just typical noise levels.

I've seen chippers well above 115.

Probably the loudest I've ever heard was a swedging operation on a stainless steel.

Tubing for a nuclear operation, it, it was incredible.

It's like about 124.

Remember Every time you increase 10 decibels, we're going to have a 10 10-fold increase in sound intensity, which is just the equivalent.

Remember we said everything is logarithmic.

So basically what we're saying is just remember when you read those meter readings and you say, oh, I only had a noise of that's down by 3 decimals, you've actually Really decrease the amount of energy greatly.

These are some of the things that OSHA agents do not always understand.

Is an example.

Remember, these are decibels as the decibels, not on the A scale.

In other words, not discriminating against high frequency noise.

So what can we do in the foundry? We can eliminate the noise at the source.

Well, change equipment.

And, oh, you know what we can also do? We can take the person out of there.

Or We can enclose or entrap the equipment.

Enclosure can work.

I've seen a lot of people who could enclose things like, uh, we've even had shake up that are totally enclosed.

And or it can be absorbed.

And we can also minimize the noise.

Minimizing is moving people around.

Can you move the person away from the noise source? Do you have the room to do so? Can you locate your noisy equipment in a department away from the majority of the people? Remember, one of the things is you're not only reducing the noise, you want to reduce the number of people who are exposed to the noise.

Maintenance and repair is a big deal, yes sir.

Uh, just, just to interject here, this is a little different than some other OSHA standards, right? And that we can affirmatively move employees out of a high noise area into a low noise area for a partial shift and, and that's, you know, maybe not under some other regulations, so.

Yeah, we can.

The problem with that is.

That's going to reduce the chap's exposure, but who's going to do the job at the high noise level? OK.

This is all a real problem, so that you basically have the problem here of neighboring noise.

How can we reduce the noise exposure of people within departments and there, you know, it can be from distance.

Here we're gonna say absorbing material.

Can you absorb the material and uh can you dampen the material? Can you enclose it or isolate it and we're gonna look at these different approaches.

So let's just take a quick, this is the basic things that we can do, right? So The one of the ways to do it is to use a barrier.

If I have a noise source coming in from the left and I have a barrier, some of it's probably going to get through, but a lot of it will reflect back.

The problem is if I have guys who are stationed on the left hand side, I'm really going to help them.

But if I can enclose a piece of equipment.

That is not.

Requiring people in the area.

For example, a lot of you have your compressors in a separate room and they can go banging away.

It doesn't matter.

You'll notice with the compression one thing will go through the barriers and will be that gray line to the right and that's the low frequency noise, the boom boom boom boom boom, OK, because what we're gonna see later on is that.

It's very easy to stop high frequency noise in comparison to stopping low frequency noise because high frequency noise can be stopped generally easily.

It's a short wave.

It can be stopped by a solid barrier by.

Honeycomb type barrier, whereas low frequency noise tends to go into vibration.

And we'll go through the floors.

That's your problem, of course, with your arc furnaces if you've got a steel foundry.

Regular maintenance and repair of equipment sounds like it's obvious, but it really does make a difference.

We did a lot of, um, I used to do an awful lot of big punch presses and The maintenance guys for punch presses would literally go around with sound level meters because they would know when there was a need for maintenance or repair just by reading their noise level meters.

And if you know anything about punch presses, you sure don't want to have to do any major work on them.

They need to keep continuous operation, so they would use it as a preventive maintenance.

You all know this.

You listen to your automobile when you turn it on, you listen to the motor and you listen and say, man, uh, something's wrong here.

So one of the things we also look at is tightening parts or panels.

That's pretty obvious again, uh, grounding, dampening things, uh, if you again know of any big heavy, heavy equipment.

Punch presses, a lot of things like that.

They are not ever bolted to the floor.

There is always some sort of a material beneath them, really heavy duty punch presses like the big, big tonnage are literally on floating islands.

I remember one.

Operation.

The guy said, Lady, if we didn't have those on those floating islands of concrete, they would bring down these walls like the walls of Jericho.

One of the things we'll look at, this is one thing that we can do impacts of casting on a hard surface.

One of the easiest things to do there is covered directly or din directly with a sandwich of a rubbery material.

If you drop a casting on a steel.

Surface, it's going to make a noise even if it's aluminum.

Definitely if it's steel.

If you drop it on a rubbery material, it will of course not make that noise.

Problem is that you're going to dig up that rubbery material pretty fast, but if you sandwich it what you put.

Your steel, you, you can use old belting material, belt and then a piece of steel on top, you will get a much reduced moist level.

It will also save wear and tear.

We use this on a lot of shoots where we're taking like smaller castings from a bin down to, let's say a guy who's working on it for grinding or in any other finishing operation.

Uh, this doesn't work when you're using a vibrating conveyor to move your castings down the line.

I know that one.

Got a lot of people mad at me about that one once.

Different types of mechanical noises and aerodynamic noises, silencers in docks, sharp edges in Airstream, mufflers.

I will tell you this much mufflers in many foundry operations do not last long.

We did a really big study in a big company one time and showed that the mufflers on a big automated molding line did not last.

More than 3 weeks.

What you can do though, uh, you can, so if you do have an air jet, you can use a muffler.

You can also in some cases pipe that noise level away from air, but again that's difficult.

It's still going to come out somewhere and there's going to be a noise release.

That's a perfect case of can you put it into a room where nobody is working.

We know that air guns, we're not going to use 90 PSI for most of our air guns anyway, so that is going to reduce the air velocity, and we can very well argue that that reduction also reduces the noise.

You can make an acoustic enclosure.

That enclosure.

Either be the barrier like we talked about, or it can be lined with something which will absorb the noise.

When you absorb the noise, it's going to actually reduce the noise on the inside versus the outside.

You can use pure tones.

That's basically going to be much more sophisticated than most of us can do in the foundry.

But you can find pure tone works on some of your larger fans, and again it's going to be, you know that because your fan is going to shake itself apart if it's not properly balanced.

And we're going to take a look at moving the source away or the treatment.

Let's take a look here.

There's an example.

I had a guy working on a chipping hammer on the floor.

He's in an enclosure.

You'll notice in the enclosure we've tried to show that this is an acoustical material that is going to absorb A B S O R D absorb the noise.

The panel that's around it will probably partially stop the noise.

The major problem with this particular enclosure is it does not reduce the noise levels between the source of the sound, which is him chipping, and his ear.

It does actually reduce some noise because he's not going to get bounce back.

But if he was in the open, he wouldn't anyway, and if he's like working outside on the, on a sidewalk or on the street.

But the big advantage to this is he's not going to Transmit that noise at a higher level to his neighbors.

Usually keep it open because a we want him to be able to get out and he's going to reduce his exposure to whatever it is in air that he's Working The important thing here is that the type of acoustical barrier.

is going to be dependent upon where the noise is.

Here it says the first thing is to get the direct noise.

Remember, we couldn't stop the direct noise from that chipping hammer.

There was no way to put a barrier between the chipping hammer and the guy's ear.

But if I had a piece of equipment in a room, I can enclose the piece of equipment because there's nobody inside it, and then I can put, if I can't fully enclose it, maybe needs air, I don't know what reason I can then look at absorbing the area around it.

But first we're going to try.

See what we can do directly.

Then here we go.

The second step is, by the way, this type of baffle does not work in most foundries.

If somebody starts telling you to put this in your foundry.

There you can call us for the reasons why it won't work.

Most of the material that is absorbing will pick up dirt very, very quickly and therefore not be effective.

Much of it is flammable or combustible, and we don't want that.

And see, we do not generally, most of you have very sophisticated air pollution control systems.

Do not want something like this.

That will disturb or could disturb your air pollution control systems and potentially expose your people to higher levels of silica.

whatever it is that you have in your facility.

Well, we had one chap who wanted us to use this in an area that was high humidity, and I said, gee, I can't wait to see all the water coming down off of it, you know, it just, uh, the other one is they'll use, they'll say, oh, the conical foam material, it doesn't work.

Here's a perfect example of a very nice closure.

It generally will not work, and in fact we do not have this type of an operation that we can enclose it, we don't, we would have people working inside that enclosure.

And I've I've designed things like this for certain types of operations, but generally in boundaries, they are not effective.

Problems again of access, maintenance, dirt, heat, humidity, sparks, and molten materials.

This type of material.

It's just about useless in a foundry.

It does have a metal skin on the inside, but it is foam.

If that skin in any way, shape, or form is damaged, the foam picks up.

The atmospheric contaminants very quickly gets clogged, and the other thing is It is obviously combustible.

Use it in other areas.

This type of material.

This is a totally different type of material.

This is a compressed.

High density fiberglass.

We have used it very successfully in absorbing noise levels in the foundry.

It is cheap.

It is easy to work with because it is rigid.

You can cut it very easily.

Be careful when you cut it.

It is fiberglass.

You can install it like between your grinders.

When it gets rotten or dirty or you don't like the looks of it, you can, you know, unfold it, take it down and replace it.

It is rigid enough we have used it to actually like a board create a small enclosure.

If you'll notice at the top, it will select this material based upon its thickness and its density, and it will give you up there how effective it is at the different frequencies.

The number, the more effective it is.

It's the noise reducting coefficient, OK? So that here we know, let's say we're gonna look at 2000 cycles per second.

We know that really if anything that we pick that's at least 1 inch.

Or more is going to be effective, but we also know we don't want to waste our money at 1.5 inches.

At 6 pounds per cubic foot because it's not going to be as effective as the 1 inch.

Material above it.

This is why it's very important that not only you need to know the cycles.

Remember, the sound of a meter may not give you.

You're going to have to use an octave band analysis for that.

But if you know the difference between A, B, and C scale, it'll basically tell you where your noise levels are falling.

Please notice how ineffective, how not effective at all this material is at the low frequencies.

At 125.

It is more effective as the frequency levels go up, but that's not a big deal because we hear mostly at that 100, between 500 and 400,000.

Those are the Frequencies we are interested in.

Um, By the way, I have neither society nor I have any monies involved in the sale of this material.

I've just used an awful lot of it very effective.

That number, that NRC, the noise reduction coefficient is very important.

Because if we go back, you can see that it's going to tell you how effective it is at each one of those levels.

By the way, that particular material used to be, I don't know today, but it used to be widely used in reducing noise levels in automobiles.

The important thing for us is it's fiberglass.

As in er You can hit it with your sparks.

You can hit it with your hot metal.

You might damage it, but you're not going.

Bernie.

Dampening material or dampening noise, reducing the noise by dampening, as we said, is another effective way of reducing noise.

So if you are moving, casting against casting, I can't stop the clang of one casting against the other, but we can reduce the noise level from the casting against a shoot or a bin or any other metal surface.

Right, that's important.

Not only that, the distance of the metal falls, the impact, it will actually increase the life span of your shoots and your bins if you use noise dampening, and it's cheap.

I'll have old conveyor belts.

Conveyor belts are dense.

They're heavy.

They're rubber.

They're excellent noise absorbing material.

So you can line it with a resilient, you can buy expensive stuff.

You can buy PVCs and nylons and very, very, you know, you can even use a phone.

But The the durability of the material in air operations.

Very important and PVC nylon foams will not last.

We do see some other industries using very fancy plastics for this purpose.

Please make sure you have a good hearing conservation program.

You all have it.

Have you looked at it in the last 5 years? Please make sure that you have it up to date.

Both of our societies have sample.

If you have any questions about the above, please let us know.

Have any new information on the above we're really interested in it.

Do you have any que? No, no question.

You know, Martha, I think that's just testament to how thorough your slides and your commentaries are.

I would just remind everybody on the these are all, these are all state of the art.

These are, you know, uh, state of the engineering state of the art.

We, oh she's not going to come up with something new and different.

That's a very good point, Martha.

I would just remind everybody that, you know, part of our, our roles as societies and associations is to help uh interface between industry and OSHA inspectors, right? So, If you have an OSHA inspection, heaven forbid, if you ever see a noise citation, please, I would encourage you to contact us here either at the Steel Founder Society or at the nonferrous Society and discuss with us your response back to the agency prior to responding to that citation.

Right? The reason we, we raise that is sometimes we can cause more damage than good by responding.

To the agency one way when the industry's consistently been approaching it another.

So, um, you know, one of the, one of the reasons we speak this way is because, you know, in this case you are not alone.

You're speaking as a society.

Absolutely correct.

Just to remind people, we're here for you.

Please reach out to us before you respond to the agency, uh, in response to any citations or on-site inspections.

That's always good advice no matter the topic.

Martha, I have no other final questions here.

Ryan Moore, do you have any final comments? No, nothing to add other than great job, Martha as usual, always an informative webinar and look forward to uh posting it to our site and so other members who you know wanted to have uh be available today but weren't can have access to it and certainly follow up.

Can I just add something here.

Can I just add something to you, and I, I, um, I don't know if this has been made clear, but remember we talked about this.

One of the important things that perhaps I didn't hit as much as I should have in this is remember we said you cannot select personal protective hearing without knowing what that noise level is.

We did another webinar on hearing protection, which is really outside of this one, but remember.

You cannot have a hearing conservation program unless you know what the noise levels are because every piece of personal protective equipment for noise has a noise reduction coefficient.

And if that noise reduction coefficient is let's say I'm making this 20, OSHA says you have to reduce that by 5% because people don't wear things properly, so it's only going to reduce the chap's exposure by 10 decibels.

So you see, you can't just say, well, I went out, I bought the best noise reduction that I can buy.

And usually it's about 32.

By the way, it's foam type plugs.

That means you only get a noise reduction of 16.

Which means that you only have the leeway of 100, uh, in exposure of a time-rated average has to be less than 106.

If you don't achieve that, then you have to go to noise reduction.

Engineering control, OK? So that's why it's so important to know, understand the noise levels in your facility because otherwise literally.

Well, no matter all the good that you do, if you haven't gotten those noise levels, they will say that you have not properly selected your hearing protection.

And that's what we've been getting clobbered on a lot.

Mhm.

And maybe as a parting thought here, I would challenge each of our webinar attendees to go and lay your hands on a copy of your, your written noise program and take a look and make sure that you can find your latest noise sampling results and make sure you have, have them on file or you know where to access them.

Uh, it's a pretty fundamental concept, but many of you are not retesting all that frequently.

And by the way, Martha, what's the requirement for retesting again? Is that when you make a material change? Only when you make a change, you make a change.

There you go.

So now the biggest problems I see is, is like, I mean, we're chatting now here, but the biggest problem I see is those of you who do, well, all of you who do job shops.

I mean, uh, you know, um, working on a large bell-shaped casting is very different from working on a flat.

Heavy walled piece.

Aluminum guys, you don't have so much of that, but, uh, ferris and brass guys, as we know, that's why they call it a bell.

It can, it makes a big difference.

Slides in pdf format

Silica

Overall Engineering Program

Developing a Silica Engineering Controls Program R1

Individual Abatement Guidance Documents

Reference Documents

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Sample Plan

Respiratory Protection Program

SFSA Respiratory Protection Program

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Contents

SFSA Environmental, Health & Safety Information

EHS Compliance Materials

November 21, 2016 Baghouse / Dust Collector Webinar

December 15, 2016 Key EHS Topics and Compliance Resources Webinar

January 24, 2017 Entry Policies for Your Foundry

February 23, 2017 New OSHA Requirements Important to Your Foundry!

March 17, 2017 Determining Feasibility of Compliance with OSHA

April 20, 2017 The ABCs of Form R

June 22, 2017 SFSA EHS Webinar - Responsibilities and Liabilities with HAZCOM

July 26, 2017 SFSA EHS Webinar - Auditing your Safety & Health Program

August 24, 2017 SFSA EHS Webinar - Important Interpretations or Exemptions that Affect Steel Foundries

October 26, 2017 SFSA EHS Webinar - How to File Your OSHA 300 Log Online

January 18, 2018 SFSA EHS Webinar - EHS Guidance for 2018

February 27, 2018 SFSA EHS Webinar - Silica Air Sampling using Parallel Particle Impactor (PPI) Samplers

March 27, 2018 SFSA EHS Webinar - Developing a Written Silica Control Program

April 26, 2018 SFSA EHS Webinar - Stormwater Management & Sampling

June 26, 2018 SFSA EHS Webinar - Silica Deadline is Here

August 22, 2018 SFSA EHS Webinar - California Proposition 65

September 26, 2018 SFSA EHS Webinar - Steel Foundry Compliance with REACH and RoHS

November 28, 2018 SFSA EHS Webinar - Lockout-Tagout

December 13, 2018 SFSA EHS Webinar - Developing Your Own Compliance Calendar

January 24, 2019 SFSA EHS Webinar - Hexavalent Chromium Compliance

February 21, 2019 SFSA EHS Webinar - OSHA Silica Regulation FAQs

July 21, 2019 SFSA EHS Webinar - Heat Stress Prevention

November 4, 2019 SFSA EHS Webinar - OSHA Enforcement Update

March 31, 2020 What Metalcasters Need to Know About COVID-19 and OSHA Compliance

April 3, 2020 Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFRCA)

December 22, 2020 Covid-19 and Your Respirator Program

February 24, 2022 EPA Air and OSHA Inspections

June 29, 2023 EHS Update

November 14, 2023 OSHA’s Revised Electronic Reporting Rule

December 19, 2023 Navigating Foundry Incidents

January 9, 2024 A look ahead at 2024 compliance

March 12, 2024 Noise: How to Evaluate Exposure and Your Obligations under OSHA

Silica

Overall Engineering Program

Individual Abatement Guidance Documents

Reference Documents

Program Schedule

Sample Plan

Respiratory Protection Program

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