OSHA focus four hazards

The numbers, as published

OSHA publishes two figures worth quoting exactly. There were 5,283 fatal work injuries in 2023 across all industries, a rate of 3.5 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers. And for construction specifically: in 2024 there were 389 fatal falls to a lower level out of 1,034 construction fatalities.

That single ratio is the argument for the whole hierarchy of this site. Falls to a lower level alone account for well over a third of construction deaths, and OSHA’s own comment beside the figure is three words long: these deaths are preventable.

The citation record agrees. Fall protection general requirements (1926.501) was the most frequently cited federal standard in fiscal year 2024, and fall protection training (1926.503) was seventh.

Falls

The largest of the four, and the one with the clearest rule. In construction the general trigger is 6 feet above a lower level under 1926.501(b)(1), with different numbers for scaffolds, steel erection and ladders. OSHA’s own fall lesson pairs guardrails and safety nets with personal fall arrest and adds a separate ladder exercise — because ladders are their own fatality stream and carry no trigger height at all.

The trigger heights and the exceptions are set out in OSHA fall protection requirements, and the three conventional systems are compared in guardrails vs safety nets vs PFAS.

Struck-by

Four sub-families, and they need different controls: struck by a flying object, a falling object, a swinging object, or a rolling object. OSHA’s student materials for this lesson include a nail-gun hazard alert and a cranes-and-rigging focus, which is a fair map of where the deaths cluster.

The exclusion zone is the control that appears in three of the four rows, and it is the one that vanishes first when a job runs late.

Caught-in or -between

Trench collapse, machinery entanglement, and being pinned between equipment and a fixed object. OSHA’s student materials for this lesson are built around ten fatal-facts accident summaries, which tells you how mechanical and how repetitive the pattern is.

Two standards carry most of it. Excavations: cave-in protection is required in every excavation except one made entirely in stable rock, or one less than 5 feet deep where a competent person’s examination shows no potential for cave-in — see trenching and excavation safety. Machinery: the control of hazardous energy, which was the third most cited federal standard in fiscal year 2024 — see lockout/tagout requirements.

Caught-in

Electrocution

Contact with overhead power lines, contact with energised sources, and improper use of extension and flexible cords. On a jobsite the first is the killer and the third is the citation.

The controls are unglamorous and they hold: plan the clearance from overhead lines before the equipment arrives, assume every line is energised, use GFCI protection on every temporary circuit, take damaged cords out of service instead of taping them, and de-energise and lock out rather than working live.

All four families end up as rows on the same weekly walk. That is what the construction safety checklist is grouped around, and each of the four is a month of toolbox talks if you want one.