Employers fear inconsistent enforcement of an OSHA rule allowing some work to be done without ordinarily required fall protection because key terms are not defined.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s updated fall protection rule, which went into effect January 17, allows certain activities to be done without fall protection systems, as long as the work is “temporary and infrequent” according to EHS Safety News.
“How will they define what that is? This is going to be one of the hobgoblins of this rule,” Adele L. Abrams, an occupational safety and health attorney from Beltsville, Md., said during a June 22 panel discussion on the rule at the professional development conference and exposition of the American Society of Safety Engineers. “It does open itself up to inconsistent enforcement inspection.”
Abrams said there will be uncertainty about how to define those terms until the rule is interpreted in a binding declaration by the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, “and not just by an administrative law judge.” She said she represents a lot of mechanical and electrical contractors, “and we’re looking to get some interpretative guidance on this.”
Meanwhile, she advised employers to keep track of how long crews engage in an activity that might require fall protection requirements. The rule, covering an estimated 112 million workers, updates the 45-year-old walking-working surfaces standards (29 C.F.R. 1910 Subpart D) and the personal protective equipment standards (29 C.F.R. 1910 Subpart I) by taking into account changes to safety practices and gear made since 1971, the EHS Safety News reported.
It includes training requirements that become mandatory in July and in general, requires employers to identify slip, trip, and fall hazards and then provide fall protection, ranging from guard rails to tethered harnesses.
The rule attempts to provide some clarity on what is a safe distance to an unprotected roof edge. Previously OSHA has said there is no safe distance.
Under the new regulation, work less than six feet from the roof edge requires conventional means of protection, for example, a guardrail or personal fall arrest system. The allowance for temporary and infrequent activity applies to distances from between six feet and 15 feet, according to the EHS Safety News.
July 28, 2017
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