Spooky Safety and Killer Causes

Inattentive blindness, complacency, and the OSHA’s Fatality Inspection Data.  What could make a Halloween episode more scary? On today’s Fractional Safety episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast killer causes and how to avoid them are the topic of discussion. 00;00;04;03 - 00;00;28;20 Pete Koch Hello out there in podcast land. You're listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. I'm your host, Peter Koch. Workplace safety can be scary or it can be when its principles, practices and policies aren't followed or ignored. While any time is a good time to review workplace hazards, Halloween provides an interesting backdrop to examine some of the more frightening ones.   00;00;29;19 - 00;01;00;14 Pete Koch Did you know that there were around 116 fatal workplace injuries reported to OSHA between January and August of this year 2022? If you are great, hopefully you've taken a look at them. But if you haven't. Let me tell you, the list reads like a bad horror novel. But instead of the killer hiding somewhere with an ax or a chainsaw and the victim makes bad choices, well, the victims are all regular people, and the killers are.   00;01;00;26 - 00;01;34;16 Pete Koch Well, they're more common than you think. The victims in these reports are all normal, everyday working men and women who came to work and never made it back home to their friends, their parents, children, partners or spouses. And they left a hole in the lives of those who are around them. The killers aren't crazy or extraordinary either. You're not going to see one of them crashing into your life like a marvel villain or smashing his ax through the door, like in The Shining or some supernatural force that you never saw coming.   00;01;34;27 - 00;02;01;23 Pete Koch They are, or at least most are hiding in plain sight. And if you pay attention, not even very carefully, but with an eye for potential, and not through the lens of experience or repetition, you can see them everywhere. And I guarantee one of you listeners has encountered one or more of these already today. And if you haven't yet, I expect you will.   00;02;02;25 - 00;02;22;24 Pete Koch So from the list, if you read the list that OSHA has got out there, by far the most common killer cause is, well, of course, falling and usually falls from height or some sort of height, but it can be a fall on the same level. So take, for example, a fatal fall that occurred back in January. Well, not that far away.   00;02;22;25 - 00;02;45;21 Pete Koch January of 2022, according to the OSHA investigation, a worker was unrolling a power washer hose on a roof when they fell through a skylight 30 feet to the floor and died from blunt force trauma injuries. I bet you you can relate if you've ever had that feeling of one moment, there's solid ground under your feet, in the next you're falling.   00;02;46;07 - 00;03;07;18 Pete Koch Maybe that feeling has come when you've taken the one inch mile fall. You know that one. I bet you were. You step down in the surface is just a little lower than what you expect. There's that split second feeling like you're falling a rush of adrenaline, a sizable contraction of every muscle while you try to regain your balance.   00;03;07;18 - 00;03;32;14 Pete Koch Then your foot, finally, after it seems an eternity, finds the lower level. And once you catch your breath, all is good in the world again. Those are bad enough. Well, stretch that first split second into almost two, which is an eternity in an unintended freefall. Increase your speed to almost 30 miles an hour and then break your fall.   00;03;32;15 - 00;03;56;20 Pete Koch Well, with whatever part of your body hits first, because that's not something that you can plan. Falling toward the earth at 30 miles an hour and then all is definitely not right with the world again. After that happens. And so where do I get that information? Well, if you do the math, you start thinking about how far or how fast am I going to be going if I fall 30 feet to the floor?   00;03;56;20 - 00;04;25;21 Pete Koch And how long does it take? Well, that 30 foot freefall takes about 2 seconds, just a little less than 2 seconds, and you'll increase velocity from zero to almost 30 miles an hour before you hit the ground. That's like getting hit with a mack truck standing still on the highway. And even if you're lucky enough to survive the landing, because people have when we've had falls that I've had to investigate, where we've had a six foot freefall and the individual did not make it.   00;04;25;27 - 00;04;48;22 Pete Koch We've also had some where they've fallen lot farther than 30 feet and they have made it. But if you're lucky enough to survive the trauma that you're almost guaranteed to sustain, that trauma was never intended to be absorbed by your body. Things on the inside break. Other things in the inside get moved to places that they shouldn't be.   00;04;49;08 - 00;05;10;17 Pete Koch The recovery will be long and painful, and the overall results will be less than desired and won't be 100% ever, ever again. Prevention here may not be as clear cut as one would think, and maybe you do. Maybe you look at it and go, Well, of course they should have done something with the skylight or he have been up there in the first place.   00;05;10;26 - 00;05;38;08 Pete Koch Well, whose responsibility is the skylight? Usually it's the property owner. They have the responsibility for the hazards on the premises. Well, if they didn't take care of it and the worker was working for a contractor, then who's responsible for it? Is it the property owner or should the worker, the contractor, have identified the hazard and provided the appropriate protections?   00;05;38;28 - 00;06;10;05 Pete Koch Well, we can go back to an OCA standard to give us guidance there. So OSHA states in 19 10.20 982 that the employers must and then again must not. It should but must provide and install all fall protection systems and following object protection. This subpart requires and comply with the other requirements in this subpart before any any employee begins work that necessitates fall or falling object protection.   00;06;10;28 - 00;06;48;06 Pete Koch So taking that there is a requirement there that an employer should be identifying those things first and protecting those employees from that. So even if they were a contractor, the employer, their employer should have done something with that too, if they're doing it from a construction standpoint, not general industry. OSHA requires that each employee on walking working surfaces shall be protected from falling through holes, including skylights more than six feet above lower levels by personal follow up systems, covers or guardrail systems erected around such holes.   00;06;48;10 - 00;07;14;03 Pete Koch And that comes from 1926. 501b41. Yeah. That killer skylight should have been identified and covered by the contractor before the work began. Or the building owner should have taken actions before the worker went up on the roof. Well, from a practical standpoint, it should be like the voice in your head when you watch a thriller or horror movie like that.   00;07;14;12 - 00;07;31;07 Pete Koch Right. So if you're going up there on the roof and you see that skylight, it's kind of like watching the horror movie, right? You sit there watching the movie and you think, well, don't, don't do it. Don't go in. Don't go in there. Don't, don't do it. There's the thing is in there. Don't go. And then they go.   00;07;32;06 - 00;07;56;10 Pete Koch You see the hazard. You should just run the other way. But we don't because we don't see the hazard for what it is. Take, for instance, this next fatality reported to OSHA in January of 2002. So little later on in in the month, and I'm going to take a little bit of creative license here, not with the incident, but with imagining what might have happened before the incident.   00;07;56;18 - 00;08;17;28 Pete Koch So it's two days after Christmas and the worker got up in the morning, made coffee or maybe held off until the drive to work. So it's a daily habit. I get up, I make my coffee or I do something showered, got dressed in the clothes that they were going to wear, that they wear every day. So they get it in their work clothes, a long sleeve, work shirt, jeans and maybe boots.   00;08;17;28 - 00;08;37;15 Pete Koch They grabbed a jacket and headed off to work and they maybe even carpooled with others. Again, all good habits that we can rely on. Those are the things that are comfortable to us, the things that keep us going every day, especially when it gets tough, whether it be whether tough or just life tough. Some of those habits really helped to get us by him.   00;08;38;21 - 00;09;07;25 Pete Koch Then he arrived at work. He checked in with the supervisors and went out to the factory floor. Again, habits. Right. But their everything went from normal to wrong without anyone ever even noticing. So remember those habits? The OSHA incident description states the employee was feeding a one and a half inch bar, stuck into a strainer on his glove or shirt sleeve, was caught on the rotating bar stock.   00;09;08;04 - 00;09;36;10 Pete Koch The employee was pulled on to the rotating bar stock, causing him to flip forward while his clothing continued to be wrapped around the rotating bar, crushing the employee and causing fatal injuries. A coworker found the employee entrapped on the bar by his clothing, stopped the machine and called a supervisor. Medical help was contacted and first responders arrived, began treatment but could find no signs of life.   00;09;37;10 - 00;10;00;28 Pete Koch The local police department and the coroner's office were called after that terrible tragedy when anything like that happens and just kind of put yourself in the position of while one the the the deceased in that moment when they realized that they something's going horribly wrong, that they got caught in this machine and that they don't really know what's going to happen next.   00;10;01;01 - 00;10;21;18 Pete Koch So that just terror that's going to hit their head and then put yourself in the footsteps of the coworker that found that individual. Like what's going to happen with them? They're never going to see the world in the same way again after that. Well, how do you prevent it? In the right mindset, you might have seen it coming.   00;10;22;00 - 00;10;45;21 Pete Koch So the loose shirt or an unbuttoned shirt sleeve rotating parts could have been missing guards. If you go back and look at the OSHA incident description in the report, there are some citations in there and they go back to the machine guarding or the OSHA standards on machines and machine guarding, but those in themselves, they're all different hazards in one way or another.   00;10;45;21 - 00;11;20;23 Pete Koch So the unbuttoned shirt sleeve rotating parts, a loose shirt, missing guards. So they're all hazards in one form or another. And they're going to exist out there. And one of those by themselves really isn't a big deal. But when they all come together, it's like everyone's watching the movie and they know what's about to happen. But just like in those eighties and nineties serial killer movies, when the disposable actor finally recognizes that the killer's in the house with them and had been there all the time by that time, it's too late.   00;11;21;13 - 00;11;51;12 Pete Koch So if you go back to those OSHA standards on machines and machine guarding, it states one or more methods of machine guarding shall be provided to protect the operator and other employees in the machine area from hazards such as those created by point of operation and in going nip points, rotating parts, flying chips and sparks. And that's from 1910 to 12, a one it's a pretty plain in-your-face standard.   00;11;51;19 - 00;12;10;23 Pete Koch You know, if you want to distill that into one sentence, if it turns or rotates and you can touch it, then guard it. Well, then how come workers at risk don't make the connection? It would seem pretty simple. OSHA has got a standard. If it turns and rotates and I can touch it, then I guard it because I know that machines don't stop.   00;12;10;28 - 00;12;35;06 Pete Koch They're certainly not going to stop for my clothing and they're not going to stop for my person. Well, over the last, I don't know, 25 years or so as a safety person investigating injuries for both Mimic and my previous employers. I'm going to chalk it up to what I believe is the most common killer cause, and that is complacency.   00;12;36;09 - 00;12;58;18 Pete Koch So interestingly enough, a few weeks ago, I was speaking to a master electrician who had retired after spending 40 years in a local mill. He started talking about the last few years before he retired and then why he chose to retired, because he really loved his work. He, and especially towards the end of his career, really enjoyed training the new people that were coming on.   00;12;59;11 - 00;13;29;11 Pete Koch However, as we got talking, he explained that he started to recognize that the safety practices and some of the other tasks he was teaching the new maintenance staff or apprentices. He was finding that he himself was not following that. So there is a difference. He began to notice between what he was teaching in class and with people on the job and the shortcuts he was taking himself when he was by himself.   00;13;29;15 - 00;13;52;06 Pete Koch Or unfortunately, he told me of a couple of times too, when he showed those shortcuts to some of the people that he was teaching. He told me that he felt that he could be careful enough and he knew the extent of the risks he was taking on. And at some point he was comfortable with that. But what really happened there was he recognized that there was a challenge.   00;13;52;25 - 00;14;20;20 Pete Koch He had 40 years of experience and that 40 years gave him a lot of practice and familiarity. But it only takes one moment of inattention when you're exposed to the hazard to end it all. He had this wonderful or maybe scary realization, his light bulb moment that his own complacency with the hazards that he worked around every day was the problem.   00;14;20;27 - 00;14;40;24 Pete Koch And that was his savior because he didn't get hurt when he was there. He kind of got out while the getting was good, I guess you could say. He saw the clown with the hatchet. If we want to take this back to the horror movie example, he saw the clown with the hatchet at the end of the hall, and he turned and he walked the other way or closed the door.   00;14;41;07 - 00;15;10;27 Pete Koch There are plenty of other examples from OSHA's 2022 fatality list that are a lot less graphic, but they're just as deadly, and they still take a person away from their world. It takes them away from their family and friends. They're not there anymore. And it's important it's important for us to to understand that the majority of these all of these could have been prevented in one way or another, just like this one from January.   00;15;10;27 - 00;15;37;13 Pete Koch Again, the OSHA investigation description states an employee and coworker began to repair light fixtures at the worksite that were broken. A short time later, the coworker yelled out to the employee to get their attention, but they got no response. The coworker found the employee, the other employee that they were working with laying in a ceiling crawl space and they tapped on the employee's foot.   00;15;38;02 - 00;16;16;14 Pete Koch And again, no response. The coworker had nearby bystanders call for an emergency response team and then went to go shut the power off to the lights. The fire department arrived, pulled the employee from the crawlspace, attempts at resuscitation were ineffective and it was deemed the employee was killed by electrocution. So if you're a safety professional listening to this, just stop for a moment and try to count the number of times that you've argued with another electrician about de energizing of a circuit, especially when it's a 15 or 20 amp circuit.   00;16;16;26 - 00;16;39;04 Pete Koch It's almost always too much trouble to go find turn off and lock the circuit out before working on it or replacing or installing fixtures. I know when I have the opportunity to to teach one of the OSHA outreach classes and we do the electrical section, it's interesting to talk to all the individuals and ask them about their experience.   00;16;39;04 - 00;17;00;23 Pete Koch And when we get to the electrical part, we ask them, So who here has had a little bite before? And most of the people there will raise their hands, especially if they've worked in the maintenance departments before or in construction before, or probably have done some work on the side or in their own homes before. They've all had a little bit nip of electricity and survived.   00;17;00;29 - 00;17;28;01 Pete Koch And the next question I'll ask them is, well, how come you didn't die? And everybody will have different answers about that. But honestly, it's really just luck that they weren't more tasty to the electricity than the wire and the rest of the stuff that was around them. They had more resistance than the copper wire, but honestly, it's complacency in this last section that was the killer again.   00;17;28;25 - 00;18;00;23 Pete Koch And unfortunately, the list just keeps going on and on. If you want to read more about Killer causes, because honestly, these are tragic, but they are good fodder for your safety meetings because lots of times people will never think that it'll happen to them. And these are all descriptions about things that happen to people just like them. So you can read through the descriptions and then talk about what did they think happened, how what could we do to prevent it?   00;18;00;24 - 00;18;33;12 Pete Koch Could this even happen here? So if you're interested to it, then go to OSHA dot gov. If you haven't been to the website before, it's actually got a lot of good information on it. So go to ocean dot gov and type in fatality inspection data in that search OSHA bar in the upper right. And it's going to come up with all this information you can sort by year, you can sort by state, you can sort by the type or the cause, and you'll find lots of different items that you can use for your own safety meetings.   00;18;33;12 - 00;18;59;08 Pete Koch It's good, and it helps people step away from complacency because complacency really is the killer. Cause here. And it lurks in the places that we frequent, where we work sometimes, where we play. Most of the time it comes disguised as something. So normal that we don't even see them. Never mind, expect them. They won't seem dangerous until it's too late.   00;18;59;17 - 00;19;24;19 Pete Koch And sometimes we won't see them unless we look at our world from a different perspective, especially our safety world from a different perspective. And I'm not talking about rose colored glasses, but here we often think of hazards that can kill as obvious or easy to spot, something that we will see coming from a mile away and can avoid it, like seeing the scary clown carrying the machete at the end of the hallway.   00;19;24;27 - 00;19;51;28 Pete Koch We should be able to identify the threat and run the other way. Or like the retired master electrician closed the door. But we don't all the time. We don't see it all the time. We become complacent. We don't know that the hazard or at least forefront of our brain, that the hazard that's in right in front of us can cause substantial injury or possibly even kill us.   00;19;53;03 - 00;20;15;03 Pete Koch So how do we fight complacency? Because it's going to happen to us. We all experience it in our lives and personally it's really hard to fight that because it's right there in front of us and we get really used to the things that are around us and experts actually have a name for that. It's called Intentional Blindness. It's the concept of that.   00;20;15;03 - 00;20;48;02 Pete Koch We become blind to what's right in front of us. And I know that you've experienced that before, where you don't see something that's right in front of you because something else was taking your attention and becoming familiar with a place or an area can compound this inattentive blindness, especially when we couple it with some other demands. And there are tons of different demands at work that can cause us to lose sight of the goal of coming home every day safe and in one piece.   00;20;48;10 - 00;21;05;11 Pete Koch Because at the end of day, if you don't do that, then what is work for? Like, we work for many different things. We work for a goal. We work for something to do. We work for money. We work for our families. And if we don't come home at the end of the day or our employees don't come home at the end of the day, then what's it really for?   00;21;05;12 - 00;21;35;15 Pete Koch Because we're not achieving the goal that we want. But consider, think about how narrow a focus or consider how to narrow a focus on productivity can drive some strange choices in the workplace. Like if all we ever focus on is being productive and the money, then we make some weird choices. We don't see the things that are right in front of us, and if we do that enough without getting hurt, right?   00;21;35;15 - 00;22;00;03 Pete Koch So there's that positive reward. So I'm going to focus on the money all the time and I'm not going to have anybody get injured. And that successful experience of being exposed to a hazard and not becoming injured, which happens a lot more frequently than the other, that feeds the attitude of complacency. And it just it's a self-perpetuating cycle when I don't focus on the things that are important.   00;22;00;03 - 00;22;27;10 Pete Koch And, yes, productivity is important. We cannot be a successful business without having productivity and quality. But if we don't balance that with safety, then we won't be successful over the long term. But again, going back to it as an individual, it may not be possible to avoid all instances of intentional blindness when it comes to safety, because a lot of the other external factors, it becomes incredibly difficult.   00;22;27;21 - 00;22;51;05 Pete Koch So it's important to remember that this is going to happen to you. It's interesting how it all works. Your brain is sophisticated enough to help you take in and understand all those visual and auditory cues out of all the background noise that we see and hear every day and what gets passed on your brain, things will provide you or provide you with the most value.   00;22;51;13 - 00;23;26;02 Pete Koch It's thinking that hears all the information that you need to make this decision. But what happens in that effort, that visual information, both important and not important, can sometimes get overlooked. And we don't have the whole picture. I bet you it's happened to you like you're driving down the road, a road that you have driven a million miles over or you've driven down that road a million times, and all of a sudden you start thinking about your day or what you're going to do when you get home or something happens and you think back.   00;23;26;10 - 00;23;49;16 Pete Koch And it's been a couple of minutes since you've actually paid attention to what's going on, on the road. You didn't notice the stop sign or you didn't notice the change in speed sign or you didn't notice the person that was right on the side of the road until they until you were already past them. That's that inattentive blindness that happens.   00;23;49;25 - 00;24;22;16 Pete Koch And the only way to combat this on our own is to really stop and really alua your current situation. When you find yourself focused somewhere else or you're finally you find yourself focused on something other than the the combination of information that you actually need to get your job done, productivity, safety and quality. You won't have all the information you really need to stop and take a look at what you're up against in order to be successful as an individual.   00;24;23;03 - 00;24;50;23 Pete Koch It's really hard, but you have help out there, and business and business owners play a much bigger role in fighting against complacency as a killer. Then they might think, and interestingly enough, I'll phrase it this way OSHA was actually created for just that reason so that we aren't complacent in the workplace or those outside factors don't drive us to complacency and inattentiveness.   00;24;51;12 - 00;25;24;21 Pete Koch And the thing that that describes best, the employer's responsibility is OSHA's general duty clause. And I imagine you've heard it before, but I'm just going to read it here so that you know it again. And it states each employer shall furnish to each of his employees employment. So they got to be employed and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.   00;25;25;00 - 00;25;51;04 Pete Koch And that's from the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, Section five A or what we typically call the general duty clause. And not only is this the catchall, but it's the one standard to rule them all. It all comes back down to providing a place that's free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause injury or serious death.   00;25;51;19 - 00;26;17;09 Pete Koch And that's the responsibility the employer has. They need to know what the job is, what the potential hazards are, and then put the protections in place and train the employees around those hazards and protections before they get engaged in the job. That's great. Seems simple, right? Well, how do you do that if the work that you're engaged in is dangerous in and of itself?   00;26;17;14 - 00;26;40;12 Pete Koch Like a lot of the work that we do here in the States or around the world, actually think about the flag or on the side of the road. Their job is inherently dangerous. The the individual that we talked about from the one of the OSHA incidents that we read that I read through, the one that that fell 30 feet through the skylight, that job is inherently dangerous.   00;26;40;12 - 00;27;17;15 Pete Koch The person who was straightening out the bar stuck. His job is inherently dangerous. How do you fix that? Well, like I described earlier, the rest of the standards provide a place to start. So as a business owner, you know, you've got a duty. But where do I go from there? You can start by learning more about the standards because they give you a lot of great information about what you need to do and how your workplace should look in order to protect your staff or your employees from the hazards and exposures that are there.   00;27;18;06 - 00;27;39;22 Pete Koch And in my experience, there's really no substitute for initial and ongoing training. So as an employer, that's a place to start. So when I bring a new employee on, how do I teach them about what's going on in the workplace, not just where the bathrooms are, where the paycheck is, and what the job is, but what do they really need to do to keep themselves safe?   00;27;40;00 - 00;28;07;08 Pete Koch That's step one. If you've got someone who's been there forever and knows everything, they're a huge resource for you. First, normalize their understanding of what's required to be safe, and then once you know that they know what's required, then have them help you teach it. Have them be the ambassador, have them help The Apprentice along. That mentorship will really mean a lot and goes a long way.   00;28;07;20 - 00;28;33;15 Pete Koch But if you don't normalize their understanding of the safety requirements first, then you're bound to start teaching the wrong things going forward. The other prongs of that safety four are checklists and job hazard analysis. Those are excellent tools that can help not only drive your training, but help provide some checks throughout the day to help your employees fight complacency.   00;28;33;21 - 00;29;01;09 Pete Koch Those checklists are awesome. Why do you think pilots go through a preflight check? That's a really high valued job that they have and it's the price for failure is enormous. So the checklist helps them fight complacency because they've got to go through each and every one. And there's two people doing those checks as they go through. So checklists are great not just to pencil whip something, but to actually give your staff something to check in on themselves for.   00;29;01;17 - 00;29;23;19 Pete Koch And then job hazard analysis are awesome as well because they can really give you a roadmap of what safety should look like. So this podcast episode isn't about those the checklists and the job hazard analysis, but there are some great resources out there that can help provide you examples to base your checklists and job hazard analysis is off if you don't already have some.   00;29;24;05 - 00;29;51;25 Pete Koch I'll put some information about those in the show notes that you can jump in and take a look. But really, at the end of the day, the hazard that plays a part in almost every workplace injury and fatality is complacency. It's really the only killer cause. And if it's not the only killer cause, it contributes to other causes.   00;29;52;08 - 00;30;16;28 Pete Koch And in a future episode, this is an interesting piece. If you want to jump into a future episode, I'll be talking with Dr. Julie Sorenson about the concept of nudging in behavioral science and how it applies to workplace safety. So you should totally two in because I think nudging is that one tool that you can have in your manager's bag that can help combat complacency as a killer cause.   00;30;17;04 - 00;30;42;16 Pete Koch So tune in for that one because it's going to give you some different insight into how to help with complacency in the workplace. Well, we've made it to just about the end of this podcast episode. And so to all of you listening out there, thank you. We really appreciate you. Today on the Mimic Safety Experts podcast, Halloween episode Killer causes have been the topic of discussion.   00;30;42;26 - 00;31;06;24 Pete Koch The Mimic Safety Experts podcast is made possible by Mimic a workers compensation insurance carrier whose mission it is to make worker's comp work better. Check us out at Memo Icon. If you would like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast, email me at podcast that mimic Mediacom and we may feature on a future episode. You never know.   00;31;06;24 - 00;31;40;03 Pete Koch Your idea may be the perfect topic for someone out there in podcast land. Check out our show notes for this episode at Mediacom Forge Slash Podcast, where you can find Memex entire podcast archive and while you're there, sign up for Mimics Safety Net Blog so you never miss any of our articles and safety news updates. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you would subscribe to our podcast and then take a minute or two to review us on Spotify, iTunes or whichever podcast service that you found us on.   00;31;40;14 - 00;33;09;13 Pete Koch And if you've already done that, thank you, because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time. This is Peter Koch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good, but using what you learned here is even better.