OSHA Inspection: AUTOMATED PACKAGING SYSTEM

Issued

Mar 2, 1992

Abate by

Oct 5, 1992

Penalty

Initial $2,625 · Current $800 Reduced

General-duty citation text

Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970:  The
employer did not furnish employment and a place of employment which
were free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause
death or serious physical harm to employees in that employees were
exposed to increased risk of cumulative trauma disorders (CTD) from
the tasks they were performing and administrative, or engineering
controls were not provided:
a.   Bag Department - Employees manually pressing side
plates and core plugs onto rolls of plastic bags
were exposed to repetitive hand, wrist, and arms
motion, resulting in trauma to tendons and nerves,
such as capal tunnel syndrome, on or about September 26
1991.
Step 1    Effective administrative protection, such as employee
training, physical assessment, job rotation, etc. shall
be provided as an interim protective measure until
feasible engineering or administrative controls can be
implemented or whenever such controls fial to reduce
employee exposure to nominal risk.
Step 2    Submit to the Area Director a written, detailed plan of
abatement outlining a schedule for the implementation of
engineering or administrative measures of control
employee injury due to manual lifting tasks.  Engineering
controls to reduce musculoskeletal stresses include, but
are not limited to job redesign, reduction of the horizontal
and vertical load distance from the body, reduction of the
lifting aids.  This plan shall include at a minimu, target
dates for the following actions which must be consistent
with the dates required by this citation.
1) Evaluation of the conditions, locations and manual
lifting activities that the employees are performing
at the onset of musculoskeletal injuries.
2) Evaluation of applicable control measure(s).
3) Procurement, installation and operation of selected
control measures.
4) Monitoring to assure effective utilization of the
control measure(s).
Step 3    Abatement shall have been completed by implementation of
feasible engineering or administrative controls, upon
verification of their effectiveness in reducing the
occurrence of muscculoskeletal injuries.

Issued

Nov 18, 1991

Abate by

Nov 26, 1991

Penalty

Initial $750 · Current $50 Reduced