Site Safety & OSHA
OSHA rules in plain English - fall protection, silica, hazard communication, inspections and your rights on site.
20 guides in this section
Guides in this section
Confined spaces: permit-required entry on a construction site
A confined space is anywhere big enough to work in, hard to get in and out of, and not made for people to stay in, like a manhole, tank, vault, sewer, or...
Do I need an OSHA 10 or 30 card?
Federal OSHA does not require you to hold an OSHA 10 or 30 card, but your state, your city, or the general contractor on the job very often does, so in...
Electrical safety on site: GFCI, cords, and power lines
Protect every temporary outlet with a GFCI, keep 10 feet from power lines and 20 feet with a crane, and lock out anything energized before you service it.
When do I need fall protection, and what counts?
On a construction site, federal OSHA requires fall protection any time you are working 6 feet or more above a lower level, and 10 feet or more on a scaffold....
The Focus Four: the hazards that actually kill on site
Four hazards cause most construction deaths, every single year, and OSHA groups them as the Focus Four: falls, struck-by, caught-in or between, and...
Hazard communication: SDS, labels, and your right to know
Every chemical on your site, from concrete sealer to solvent to fuel, has to have a Safety Data Sheet you can get to, a proper label on its container, and...
Heat illness on site: water, rest, shade, and the law
Heat kills construction workers every summer, and almost every death is preventable with three things: water, rest, and shade. There is no single federal...
Ladder safety on site: the rules that stop the fall
Set an extension ladder at a 4-to-1 angle, make it stick up at least 3 feet above the landing, tie it off, and keep three points of contact going up and...
Lead and asbestos in older buildings: what you have to do
If you are renovating, demolishing, or cutting into a building from before about 1980, assume there is asbestos in it, and assume there is lead paint if it...
Who's on the hook for safety on a shared site?
On a job site with more than one company, OSHA can cite more than one of them for the same hazard, and you do not have to own the hazard to be on the hook....
OSHA citations and penalties: how they work
When OSHA cites you, the citation names the standard you broke, sets a deadline to fix it, and proposes a penalty, and you get 15 working days to either fix...
Free OSHA help: the On-Site Consultation Program
OSHA runs a free, confidential program that sends a safety expert to your site to find your hazards and help you fix them, and it is completely separate from...
An OSHA inspection: what happens and your rights
An OSHA inspection runs in four stages, an opening conference, a walkaround, a document review, and a closing conference, and you have real rights at each...
OSHA recordkeeping: the 300 log and reporting a serious injury
Two different rules get confused here. If you had 10 or fewer employees all last year, you are exempt from keeping the OSHA injury logs, but every employer...
PPE on site: what's required and who pays for it
Your employer has to figure out what protective gear the work needs, provide it, and pay for it, with a few narrow exceptions. Under OSHA, the boss does a...
Scaffolding safety: the rules that keep it standing
A scaffold has to be built by trained people, sit on a solid base, be fully planked, hold at least four times the weight you put on it, and have fall...
The silica standard: Table 1, the PEL, and when you need air monitoring
If you cut, grind, drill, or break concrete, brick, stone, or mortar, you are making respirable silica dust, and OSHA's silica standard says you have to...
Trenching and excavation safety
A trench can bury you in seconds, and a cave-in gives no warning. A single cubic yard of soil weighs about as much as a small car, so being caught in one is...
What is a "competent person" and why every job needs one
An OSHA "competent person" is someone who can spot the hazards on a job and has the authority from the employer to stop work and fix them on the spot. It is...
Your rights on an unsafe site
You have the legal right to a safe job site, to speak up about a hazard without losing your job, and to refuse work that could genuinely get you killed. Your...