Massachusetts Workers’ Compensation Lawyer Blog

Healthcare is the country’s most dangerous occupation, resulting in more than $7 billion each year for back injuries alone. In 2010, the healthcare industry reported more than 650,000 workplace injuries and illnesses, which is 152,000 more than the second-most dangerous industry.

In 2011, nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants suffered musculoskeletal injuries seven times more than the national average. There is also the issue that 45 percent of workplace violence incidents resulting in missed workdays occur in the healthcare industry.

An analyst stated, “The patient and worker safety programs share a lot of the same characteristics. So if your environment is safer for your patients, it is inherently safer for your workers.”

An employee was injured during a collapse at a construction site on the campus of Temple University. It appeared to be caused by a steel of a floor that collapsed.

Engineers believe that a connector on the fifth floor failed, causing a steel beam to split from the structure and land on the floor below. The construction worker suffered a leg injury and was taken to the hospital where he is in stable condition.

State inspectors and federal officials will be inspecting the rest of the building.

An American Eagle Airlines worker was seriously injured when he was pinned between a baggage loading vehicle and the cargo area of an airplane at Greater Rochester International Airport. The twenty-five-year-old employee was loading bags onto the airplane prior to the flight at the time of the injury.

The employee was standing on a baggage loader while it was in gear and the parking break engaged, when it suddenly lurched forward, pinning him. Another worker found him unresponsive and backed up the baggage loader to free him.

The company stated, “The safety of our people is always a top priority for American Eagle and we are conducting a full review to determine how our team member was injured.”

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Bacardi Bottling Corp. with 12 safety violations following the death of a 21 year old temporary employee his first day on the job. The proposed penalties for the willful and serious violations total $192,000.OSHA’s Assistant Secretary of Labor said, “A worker’s first day at work shouldn’t be his last day on earth. Employers are responsible for ensuring the safe conditions of all their employees, including those who are temporary.”

The employee was cleaning glass from under the hoist of a palletizing machine when the worker accidentally restarted the palletizer. Bacardi failed to train the employee of using locks and tags to prevent these kinds of accidents and to ensure its employees used these procedures to lock or tag out machines.

Over 2,000 former NFL players sued the league on Thursday claiming that it deliberately and fraudulently concealed the risk of brain injury from players. The complaint joined more than eighty lawsuits that were previously filed by former players.The suit seeks unspecified financial compensation for fraud, misrepresentation and negligence against the NFL. The lawsuit remains open so that other players may still join. It also names Riddell Inc., the official NFL helmet maker, as a defendant and affiliated companies including Riddell’s parent corporation, Easton-Bell Sports Inc.

The filed complaint said, “The NFL and its agents continued to market, as it had in the past, the ferocity and brutality of the sport that, in part, gives rise to the latent and debilitating neurocognitive conditions and injuries from which plaintiffs suffer.”

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Ardagh Glass, Inc. for one willful and one serious violation after an employee suffered a finger amputation and crushed hand while removing a glass mold from a bottle-making machine. The proposed penalties for these citations total $77,000.The willful violation involves failing to implement lockout procedures on machines when workers are performing service and setup operations on equipment. OSHA defines a willful violation as “one committed with intentional, knowing or voluntary disregard for the law’s requirements, or with plain indifference to worker safety and health.”

The serious violation involves failing to guarantee that employees that operate equipment were protected to prevent contact with moving parts and molten glass. OSHA defines a serious violation as one that occurs “when there is substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result from a hazard about which the employer knew or should have known.”

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Regency Technologies for eleven health and safety violations. The eleven violations carry a proposed fine of $66,000.Nine of the eleven violations involve exposing workers to cadmium, which is a metal found in televisions and other electronics, at the company’s recycling facility. The OSHA area director said, “Regency Technologies has a responsibility to protect workers from unique hazards found in its facility, such as cadmium, and to conduct the proper exposure and medical monitoring necessary to ensure that permissible exposure levels are not exceeded. Exposure to cadmium can cause adverse health effects on the kidneys, lungs and bones.”

Eight serious citations involve violations for exposure to cadmium, including overexposure, contamination, lack of protective equipment, training, medical surveillance, and regulated areas and changing rooms for cadmium exposure.

Also, two serious health violations were cited for failing to train workers in bloodborne pathogen regulations and lack of hepatitis B vaccinations for exposure. One other-than-serious violation was cited for failing to post warning signs regarding cadmium areas.