Municipal Lead Custodian Dies in Fall from Mobile Scaffolding – Massachusetts

Details

• Corporate Authors:
  Massachusetts Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation Project (Massachusetts FACE) ; Massachusetts. Department of Public Health
• Description:
  On March 27, 2011 a 69-year-old male municipal custodian (victim) was fatally injured while painting an interior section of a school lobby. The victim went to the school alone early on a Sunday morning to finish painting the lobby area that was previously started. Although the incident was un-witnessed, it appears that the victim was on mobile scaffolding when he fell from the scaffolding landing on the lobby floor. The victim was found by a co-worker later that same day when the co-worker had opened the school to let in two cooks for a fundraiser event that was going to take place that afternoon. The co-worker immediately placed a call for Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Within minutes EMS and the local police arrived at the incident location and the victim was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. The Massachusetts FACE Program concluded that to prevent similar occurrences in the future, schools should: 1. Ensure scaffolds are erected according to the manufacturer's guidelines and OSHA standards
  
  2. Ensure that fall protection is available and used by employees exposed to fall hazards
  
  3. Implement a buddy system for custodial staff to limit working alone from heights during off hours
  
  4. Conduct a job safety analysis (JSA) for custodial tasks to ensure proper practices and procedures are implemented enabling the task to be performed safely
  
  5. Provide all custodial staff with training on scaffolding and ladders that are used to complete tasks
  
  6. Ensure that custodial departments develop, implement, and enforce a comprehensive health and safety program
  
  and 7. Provide work environments that, at a minimum, meet all relevant Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations and industry accepted standards of practice per the Department of Labor Standards' policy.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Accidental Falls Accident Prevention Accidents Accidents, Occupational Construction Industry Occupational Health Personal Protective Equipment Safety Safety Management Staff Development
• Keywords:
  Accident-analysis Accident-potential Accident-prevention Construction-equipment Fall-protection Injuries Injury-prevention OSHA Region 1 Personal-protection Personal-protective-equipment Protective-equipment Protective-measures Safety-education Safety-measures Safety-practices Safety-programs Scaffolds Training Traumatic-injuries Work-practices

  More +
• FACE - NIOSH and State:
  FACE ; Construction ; Falls ; Falls - Construction - Commercial ; Prevention through Design (PtD)
• Series:
  Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation Reports (FACE)
• Subseries:
  State
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.26616/NIOSHSFACE11MA008
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Field Study
• Place as Subject:
  Massachusetts ; OSHA Region 1
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-9
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20041003
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB2012-111927
• Citation:
  Morgantown, WV: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, FACE 11MA008, 2012 Jan ; :1-9
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2012
• Performing Organization:
  Massachusetts State Department of Public Health
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• NAICS and SIC Codes:
  61 - Educational Services - (NAICS)
• Start Date:
  2005/07/01
• End Date:
  2026/06/30
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:df49d10baa4b795e91a4e9aeb9d48771e1fe5ab43b848724b4c44d087c5e5a9ea8c624dbc605f2c7c25110a720fa941c1379eb5aa5d23341a5ff27f2906886d7
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/165199/cdc_165199_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 237.24 KB ]