Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/1332064
36 PalletCentral • January-February 2021 palletcentral.com Adele L. Abrams is an attorney and safety professional who represents companies in litigation with OSHA and also provides safety training and consultation. The Law Office of Adele L. Abrams PC has three offices: Beltsville, MD; Denver, CO; and Charleston, WV. She may be reached at www.safety-law.com or 301-595-3520. Wholesale and retail customers can also be alerted to the potential hazards and liability considerations and discourage abandonment of pallets in a publicly accessible location. Recycling of pallets should be encouraged with broken parts sold to recyclers, returned to their owner (if supplied by a large pallet rental company), or disposed of properly per local regulation. When conducting workplace inspections for STF hazard prevention, use of checklists may be helpful to make sure nothing gets overlooked, and to document that there is a procedure to be followed for internal review and OSHA enforcement defense. In summary, OSHA's WWS rule requires employers to: (1) inspect and provide working conditions that are free of known fall dangers; (2) keep floors in work areas in a clean and, so far as possible, a dry condition; (3) select and provide needed personal protective equipment at no cost to workers; (4) utilize guardrail or other permissible systems to engineer out fall hazards where possible, but otherwise effectively use PFAS, train workers on use of PPE, maintain and inspect equipment such as ladders and manlifts; and (5) provide appropriate ladders or other manlifts to allow workers to safely access work areas (and train them on the use of this equipment in a language and vocabulary that they understand). Make it your mission this winter to eliminate falls and slip into a safer 2021! Workers must be trained on hazard recognition and mitigation, and work areas must be regularly inspected for slip, trip and fall hazards. OSHA penalties for violation of these rules can reach $134,937 per affected worker in instances of repeat or willful citations.