New OSHA regulations on reporting workplace deaths, hospitalizations take effect

As of Jan. 1, 2015, all employers under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are required to report all work-related fatalities within eight hours and all in-patient hospitalizations, amputations, and losses of an eye within 24 hours of finding out about the incident.

Even employers who are exempt from routinely keeping OSHA records due to company size—such as companies with 10 or fewer employees— must comply with the new reporting guidelines. These firms typically do not have to routinely keep injury and illness records.

Before the new regulations went into effect, employers only had to report all work-related fatalities and hospitalizations of three or more employees involved in the same incident.

There are some circumstances that are exempt from the reporting requirements including:

· Only fatalities occurring within 30 days of the work-related incident must be reported.

· For an inpatient hospitalization, amputation or loss of an eye, incidents must be reported to OSHA only if they occur within 24 hours of the work-related incident.

· Employers do not have to report an in-patient hospitalization if it was for diagnostic testing or observation only.

(http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/12/31/351332.htm)

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.