Are You In the Know About OSHA Recordkeeping Rules?

by Kim Caserta, Consulting Safety Officer, Safety Partners, Inc.
Denise Aronson, President, Safety Partners, Inc.

As an employer, it is your responsibility to provide a safe and healthful work place for your employees. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) assures worker safety and health by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health.

OSHA's recordkeeping rules (Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, 29 CFR 1904) require employers to record and report work-related fatalities, injuries, and illnesses. Low hazard industries and employers with fewer than 10 employees are exempt from most requirements of this rule. However, all employers covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH ACT), requires even partially exempt employers mentioned above, to report to OSHA any workplace incident that results in a fatality or hospitalization of three or more employees.

If you are not an exempt employer, you must post OSHA's Form 300A (Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) by February 1. This report must remain posted at your work site through April 30. Throughout the year, you need to complete incident reports, possibly using OSHA Form 301 and then summarize each incident on Form 300 (Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) to classify the incident and record specific details about it.

To aid proper and accurate recording on Form 300, the below decision tree will help you determine what incidents and illnesses are recordable. Keep it with your OSHA files so that you can effectively complete your 2010 logs as incidents and accidents arise.

Although OSHA requires that employers keep proper records throughout the year, it does not require that they be submitted to the agency. The records must be readily available during an inspection.

To learn more about OSHA's recordkeeping rules and obtain the OSHA Recordkeeping Handbook visit http://www.osha.gov/recordkeeping/index.html.

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Safety Partners efficiently and cost-effectively implements hands-on environmental, health, and safety (EHS) programs at emerging life sciences companies. Safety Partners tailors its programs to each client's unique science, processes, procedures, and facilities, while reducing program implementation burdens. Its expertise is unmatched, clocking over 85,000 hours at over 120 New England life sciences firms.