Content about Industrial hygiene

CHICAGO — For Toledo’s NuCentury Textile Services, 2012 began under horrible circumstances.

Published reports indicate that, on Jan. 3 last year, an employee failed to turn off and lock a folder before servicing it. His clothes got caught in the machine, and his hand and forearm were injured. He later died from complications while recovering at home.

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) cited NuCentury for several alleged safety violations and fined it $40,000. NuCentury hired a safety consultant and took other steps to improve its safety program, prompting OSHA to lower the fine to $19,600.

Despite best efforts, on-the-job accidents do occur in and around textile service facilities, and employees are injured or, on rare occasions, even killed.

There are resources available to  help an operator ensure his plant is being run safely, and among them is SafeTRSA, a program offered by the Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA).

It provides safety training materials to TRSA members and measures the industry’s progress in implementing enhanced practices to reduce and eliminate occupational injuries and illnesses in plants and depots, according to Ken Koepper, director of marketing and public relations for the association.

Success is quantified when TRSA administers its annual survey of its members’ occupational injury and illness data, he explains. “Such tracking over the past several years has prompted TRSA’s creation of industry-specific initiatives and resources to focus on the industry’s highest risk areas and those cited most frequently by OSHA.”

This has resulted in TRSA members’ adoption of proven policies and procedures for maintaining equipment (lockout/tagout), handling soiled linen (especially bloodborne pathogens) and working in confined spaces, Koepper says.

“The networking and information-sharing between members on such matters has generated new programming for educational institutes and conferences as well as publications, online resources, videos and more.”

Membership-wide safety statistics enable TRSA companies to easily compare their improvements to the industry norm and foster further gains.

Data from 2011, reported in 2012, will be released by TRSA shortly.

“Our survey from 2010 covered 59 textile services companies operating 720 processing facilities and depots,” Koepper says. “It showed that in the prior four years, the industry experienced across-the-board reductions in its injury and illness rates. TRSA calculates separate TRIR and DART rates for plants and depots.

“The new report will reflect further reductions. Also, participation in the survey increased in 2012, to 66 companies operating 792 facilities.”

TRIR stands for Total Recordable Incidence Rate. DART is short for Day Aways, Restricted or Transferred.

From 2006 to 2010, TRSA respondents reduced their total number of recordable injuries and illnesses per 100 employees (TRIR Rate) from 9.5 to 5.5, Koepper says. Injuries and illnesses per 100 employees resulting in days away from work, job restrictions and/or job transfers (DART Rate) dropped from 5.8 to 3.9.

TRSA also calculates separate figures for the industrial and linen segments. The new report will cross-reference these with the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) industry-wide figures, according to Koepper.

In 2011, at TRSA’s request, for the first time in roughly a decade, BLS published separate TRIR and DART rates for textile services (industrial and linen) as opposed to the agency’s prior practice of only consolidating them with all other types of commercial laundry (mostly dry cleaning and coin laundry).

Koepper says TRSA requested this reporting enhancement as a means for tracking future industry-wide improvements.

“Although TRSA and BLS results show that the industry is still short of achieving its ultimate objective—eliminating occupational injuries and illnesses in its facilities—these reports also demonstrate dramatic progress towards achieving that goal,” he says.

TRSA hosted a Safety Summit last year that focused on enhancing safety cultures across the industry.

“It had been four years since the industry conducted a single-subject meeting on safety,” Koepper says. “Although it was a seminar topic in conferences and educational institutes, too much time had passed since an event dedicated to the subject was held.”

Audiences for prior safety-focused meetings had consisted mostly of hands-on safety professionals. The Summit concept involved the highest levels of textile services management, elevating TRSA’s involvement in guiding operators in increasing the prominence of safety in their corporate cultures.

“The Summit went beyond day-to-day injury prevention tactics,” Koepper says. “It examined options the industry could exercise collectively to hire the proper expertise, immediately assess the greatest risks and devise near-term action plans for developing standards and communicating them to operators.”

The TRSA Safety Committee is working on those plans, and a second Safety Summit has been scheduled for May 22 in Indianapolis.

Koepper says he’s seen the industry make great strides in automation in recent decades.

Automated material handling reduces the “manual labor requirement for this purpose. Soil bags are hoisted and carried on rails automatically to washers. Computing drives clean-side garment sorting. To prevent hazardous discharge of energy, smart systems are limiting access to areas where electricity must be controlled to ensure machines don’t start unexpectedly.”

But automation isn’t likely to ever completely eliminate all the different types of human movement required to provide textile services.

“Route service, for example, will always involve an individual walking from a truck to a customer’s receiving area,” Koepper says. “To reduce exposure, the industry has increased its proficiency in safer lifting, carrying and pushing. More individuals are cross-trained to perform different jobs in the course of a day to curtail redundant motion.”

TRSA is guiding members in their quest to convince every employee that safety comes first and productivity second.

While it is still a huge job to get to zero incidents in an industry so heavily dependent on athleticism and individual workers’ judgment, Koepper says TRSA is pleased with the gains of recent years and believes more improvement lies ahead.  

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is “struggling” with incentive programs that recognize employers for exemplary efforts in preventing workplace injuries and illnesses, Richard E. Fairfax, deputy assistant U.S. labor secretary, told an audience of Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA) members on Tuesday.

Fairfax, speaking to TRSA’s Leadership & Legislative Conference, said limited resources have prevented OSHA from expanding these efforts after they grew significantly in recent years, particularly during President George W. Bush’s administration.

In more recent years, OSHA has concentrated on evaluating their effectiveness. “I think the world of the program,” Fairfax says of the Voluntary Protection Program (VPP), but he indicated that such endeavors might need better quality control.

The VPP, Safety & Health Achievement and Recognition Program (SHARP) and other honors awarded to employers, including many in the textile service industry, are under evaluation by an OSHA team Fairfax appointed last summer. “I told them to take as long as they want, to do a top-to-bottom review,” he says.

In the meantime, he urged employers to take advantage of other compliance assistance programs, such as the free OSHA consultation service for companies with 250 workers or less. Agency personnel who visit a business and find violations don’t notify the federal office of these unless the location’s management refuses to fix them. This program saw a budget increase in 2011, Fairfax notes. Each OSHA area office employs a compliance assistance specialist who performs these inspections.

“Our senior and best compliance officers have moved into those positions,” he explains. “They’re not allowed to do anything in enforcement.” They exist for training and outreach and usually “all it takes is a phone call to the office” to involve them in a voluntary compliance effort.

Fairfax also pointed out that the agency hopes to increase its use of private-sector safety pros to help with other employers’ preventive efforts. In this special government employee (SGE) program, such an individual receives three days of free OSHA training, and then participates annually as a member of an OSHA team evaluating other companies’ safety procedures. The agency wants to increase the number of SGEs who can help permanent OSHA staff work with employers in preventive efforts.

Fairfax’s presentation included numerous statistics on the agency’s enforcement activities in 2011, such as a leveling of inspection totals from the prior year (down about 300 to 40,600) and a 6,000 decline in violations to 91,000. The textile services business had no willful or repeat violations, a rarity among industries, Fairfax says.

Those findings are consistent with TRSA’s SafeTRSA education and benchmarking program, which has logged results of improved safety practices among member companies during the past five years:

• 42% reduction in total recordable injuries and illnesses rate (TRIR)
• One-third reduction in DART Rate (days away from work, restrictions or transfers)
• Most recent annual improvement of 5% in TRIR and 2.5% in DART rate

ANDOVER, Mass. — The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently cited Royal Institutional Services Inc., a commercial laundry in Somerville, Mass., for four alleged violations of workplace safety standards following a worker injury.

OSHA opened its inspection after learning that a mechanic sustained a crushing hand injury on Jan. 26 while lubricating the chain of an ironer that was running.

The laundry, which is owned by Angelica Corp., faces a total of $49,935 in proposed fines.

OSHA’s inspection found that the machine had not first been de-energized and had its power source locked out before maintenance was performed, as required by the agency’s hazardous energy control or “lockout/tagout” standard.

OSHA cited Royal Institutional Services for one repeat violation with a fine of $35,000 for the lack of energy-control procedures; two serious violations with $14,000 in fines for the lack of effective training and evaluation; and one other-than-serious violation with a fine of $935 for a lack of documented lockout procedures for a machine.

Upon receiving the citations and proposed penalties, Royal Institutional Services had 15 business days to comply, meet with OSHA or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

CHANDLER, Ariz. — The Chandler facility of national uniform services provider Cintas Corp. has been accepted as an Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) “Star” site, the agency’s highest recognition for the practice of, and commitment to, world-class occupational safety and health.

Cintas says it is the first industrial launderer in the United States to receive the Star certification.

WASHINGTON — The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is requesting information and comment on occupational exposure to infectious agents in settings where healthcare is provided. Such facilities include hospitals, outpatient clinics, school clinics, correctional facilities, medical examiner offices, mortuaries, and laboratories that handle potentially infectious biological materials.

“At what points during the laundering process are workers most vulnerable to injury or even death, and what precautions should be taken to minimize the risk? I want to make sure I am doing everything I can to protect my staff.”

Consulting Services: Charles Berge, American Laundry Systems, Haverhill, Mass.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA) has posted a Permit-Required Confined Spaces (PRCS) Policies and Procedures Manual, the third in a series of safety manuals designed to help the textile services industry enhance workplace safety, at www.safetrsa.org.

CHICAGO — The goal of any laundry service, whether it’s an on-premise laundry or a textile rental company, is to satisfy the needs of its customers. After all, there wouldn’t be much point in a laundry continuing if it didn’t process and supply what its end users or accounts required.

DALLAS – Safety was at the forefront of Tuesday's opening session of the Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA) Tech/Plant Summit, but attendees were also treated to a birth announcement of sorts.

The Val Verde auditorium at the Hilton DFW Lakes was filled to capacity when Roger Cocivera, TRSA president and CEO, welcomed attendees and announced the association’s plans to ramp up its efforts in promoting workplace safety.

LINDEN, N.J. — The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating how two workers died here Saturday while cleaning an industrial-sized tank at a commercial drycleaner.

The victims — Victor M. Diaz Jr., 42, of Hillside, N.J., and Carlos Diaz, 41, of Paterson, N.J. — were found in the empty 20,000-gallon steel tank at North East Linen Co., formerly known as Morey La Rue Laundry & Dry Cleaning. Autopsies determined that toxic fumes had asphyxiated them.

WASHINGTON — With the recent death of a Cintas laundry worker still fresh in mind, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.; and others have introduced legislation aimed at cutting down on the number of American workers killed or injured on the job each year.