OSHA Actions: Paint brush factory penalized $300,000+
December 1, 2000 less than 1 minute read
OSHA Actions
Paint brush factory penalized $300,000+
After a targeted inspection, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited American Brush Co., of Claremont, NH, for several very serious alleged violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and proposed penalties totaling $301,050 for those alleged violations.
According to David May, OSHA area director for New Hampshire, the citations are the result of both safety and health inspections of the company’s plant. May explained that the plant, which manufactures paint brushes, was selected for inspection because of its extremely high injury and illness rate under OSHA’s Site Specific Targeting Inspection Plan.
Employees exposed to dangers
"What our compliance officers found revealed the reasons for those high rates," May says. "We found employees being exposed to all sorts of hazardous, unguarded machinery. We found employees being required to perform maintenance work on machines that were not properly locked and tagged to prevent their accidental start up. Both the numerous instances of unguarded machinery and the lack of a lockout/tagout program have contributed to employees experiencing lost-time injuries."
May stressed that the company is being cited for several alleged willful violations. The plant has been inspected several times in the past, and the employer has been cited previously for a number of similar violations, he says.
"Consequently, as the employer has apparently decided to ignore those requirements, we are alleging that American Brush Company is willfully exposing its employees to numerous hazards we found there," May adds.
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