The construction industry fall protection standard remained the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) most frequently cited standard for the 14th straight year, the agency announced September 17 at the National Safety Council’s (NSC) Safety Congress & Expo in Orlando.

Two days after OSHA announced its annual “top 10” list of most cited standards, the NSC revealed injury, illness, and fatality data behind the most violated safety and health standards.

“While OSHA has revealed a list of the top 10 safety citations for many years, it is critical to also highlight the factors associated with these workplace issues,” Lorraine Martin, the NSC’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “By examining injury, illness, and fatality data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in tandem with OSHA’s findings, we can better understand safety outcomes and ultimately find impactful solutions to keep workers safe.”

The top 10 most frequently cited workplace safety and health standards so far (fiscal year (FY) 2024 ends September 30) are:

• Fall Protection—General Requirements (29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) §1926.501): 6,307 violations;
• Hazard Communication (§1910.1200): 2,888 violations;
• Ladders (§1926.1053): 2,573 violations;
• Respiratory Protection (§1910.134): 2,470 violations;
• Lockout/Tagout (§1910.147): 2,443 violations;
• Powered Industrial Trucks (§1910.178): 2,248 violations;
• Fall Protection—Training Requirements (§1926.503): 2,050 violations;
• Scaffolding (§1926.451): 1,873 violations;
• Personal Protective and Lifesaving Equipment—Eye and Face Protection (§1926.102): 1,814 violations; and
• Machine Guarding (§1910.212): 1,541 violations.

The NSC called attention to workplace incidents related to the most frequently cited workplace safety standards using 2022 BLS data:

• Falls (1. Fall Protection—General Requirements, 3. Ladders, 7. Fall Protection—Training Requirements, and 8. Scaffolds) resulted in 865 deaths in 2022.  
• Respiratory illnesses (4. Respiratory Protection)­. Over 22,100 respiratory illness cases were reported in manufacturing and another 2,000 in construction in 2022.
• Hazardous energy (5. Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout)). Workers being caught in running equipment or machinery during maintenance or cleaning led to 54 deaths in 2022 and nearly 18,000 days away, restricted, or transferred (DART) from 2021 to 2022. Exposure to electricity led to 145 deaths in 2022 and nearly 4,000 DART cases from 2021 to 2022. 
• Forklift, order picker, and platform truck—powered (6. Powered Industrial Trucks) were the primary sources of 73 deaths in 2022, while DART cases were almost 25,000 from 2021 to 2022. 
• Eye and face injuries (9. Personal Protective and Lifesaving Equipment—Eye and Face Protection). Nearly 90,000 DART cases were reported from 2021 to 2022 involving face and eye injuries. 
• Caught in running equipment (10. Machine Guarding). Workers being caught in running equipment or machinery during regular operation resulted in 35 deaths in 2022 and almost 27,000 DART cases from 2021 to 2022.

The NSC also noted other top fatality events in the 2022 data outside of OSHA’s top 10 safety citations, including:

• Transportation incidents, which represent the top cause of death across industries in the United States, led to nearly 2,100 deaths, including almost 1,400 from roadway incidents involving motorized land vehicles and 325 from pedestrian vehicular incidents. Aviation, highway, motor carrier, rail, transit, and vessel transportation safety is regulated by agencies of the Department of Transportation.
• Workplace violence yielded 865 fatalities, including 791 by intentional injury by a person. There’s no federal workplace violence prevention standard, but OSHA has a rulemaking to create an industry-specific standard for health care and social assistance.
• Overexertion and bodily reaction generated more than 1 million DART events from 2021 to 2022, including nearly 700,000 DART cases from overexertion involving outside sources. There’s no federal ergonomics standard; a standard made final near the end of the Clinton administration was rescinded by Congress in 2001.

Overexertion also led the list of top causes of employers’ workers’ compensation costs in Liberty Mutual’s 2024 Workplace Safety Index, released this summer.