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Oregon Adopts Tougher Forest
Equipment Safety Standards With New OSHA Regulations
By Tony Kryzanowski
Good
communication between Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Division and the
state’s forestry contractors is paying off, even as loggers face considerably
increased expenses to raise industry standards on equipment guarding to
expressed is the fact that the employer will now have to buy gloves for
employees,” says Lulay.
Improved standards regarding protective
structures on forestry equipment is only one aspect of a major overhaul of OSHA
regulations pertaining to forest-related industries. According to Lulay, both
industry and better protect operators. Equipment manufactured after July 1, 2004
will need to be fully enclosed to protect the equipment operator, according to
updated OSHA regulations. Division representative Mike Lulay says there is no
doubt that extra guarding on machines is going to cost contractors a lot more
money. “We started talking about this issue early on, and the reality is that
while contractors don’t like spending an extra $20,000 on a machine, on the
other hand, we’ve had a couple of fatalities,” he says.
It was quite obvious to forestry contractors
and state OSHA officials that it was time to introduce higher equipment safety
standards in Oregon, after reviewing OSHA regulations from other jurisdictions
like Washington and British Columbia, where forestry equipment and operations
are very similar. Over the past three years, Oregon contractors have been
working with major manufacturers so that safety features on forestry equipment
offered for sale in the state in future are both technically feasible and will
meet new OSHA standards.
The state cannot dictate design standards to
equipment manufacturers, because legally this is viewed as interfering with
interstate commerce. So Oregon loggers themselves brought their case and ideas
directly to manufacturers. Ongoing initiatives like this have resulted in few,
if any, surprises, leading up to the introduction of new OSHA standards, which
came into force December 1, 2003. A number of training sessions were held this
fall to familiarize Oregon’s forest industry with new OSHA regulations. “Quite
frankly, the only concern that was really
www.osha.gov state regulators just felt it was
time. There were five motivating factors driving the need for the health and
safety update. These were: to make the rules more clear and concise for users,
to ensure that the rules were updated to include current technology, to
eliminate outdated and obsolete rules, to bring forestry-related rules in line
with other industries, and to address areas not currently addressed. A good
example regarding the need for new OSHA regulations on this final point is the
recent introduction of synthetic rope as a replacement for wire rope. About a
dozen Oregon contractors have made the switch to synthetic rope because research
has shown that it is just as strong, yet weighs about one-tenth as much. It’s a
labor saver.
Whereas in the past it took two or three
workers to rig up wire rope, companies are getting away with just one person
rigging up with synthetic rope. However, OSHA regulations related to the safe
use of synthetic rope did not exist before the recent update. As far as
enforcement, inspections will follow the same criteria as under the old
regulations. The number of worker’s compensation claims being made by forestry
workers was definitely not a motivating factor behind regulation changes. The
number of claims has actually gone down over the past five years. Lulay
emphasizes that the new regulations came largely from industry, and not from
state government. A committee consisting of 30 forest industry stakeholders was
the driving force behind how current OSHA regulations are written. “We as an
agency didn’t write it,” he says. “It’s what industry told us we needed. It is a
consensus standard that was actually developed by industry.”
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