OSHA’s Inspection Priorities
                     OSHA’s Inspection Priorities
David Barton
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OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is committed for strong 
enforcement of health and safety requirements in the workplace for the safety of 
employers and the employees. In order to ensure this is happening, OSHA 
conducts inspections in the workplace without any advance notice. However, it 
can’t inspect all the existing workplaces varying in millions of numbers. So, the 
agency carries out its inspection starting with the most hazardous workplaces in 
accordance to the priority wise listed below.
Imminent danger
The first priority is given to the imminent danger. It is a condition or a hazard 
that exists, which can lead to death or serious physical harm instantly or before 
the danger can be removed through normal procedures of enforcement. During 
the inspection, if the compliance officer observes and finds a condition of an 
imminent danger, they will ask the employer to abate the hazard voluntarily and 
remove the vulnerable employees from the site of exposure. If the employer fails 
to do this, OSHA will apply to the Federal district court through a regional 
solicitor for injunction prohibiting.
Fatality and catastrophe accidents
The next priority is given to the investigation of catastrophe and fatal accidents, 
which are resulting in the hospitalization or the death of three or more 
employees. In such cases, the employer should report such disasters to the OSHA 
within 8 hours. As soon as OSHA gets the report, it will start investigating to find 
out the reason of the accidents as well as carries out research whether any 
existing OSHA standards were violated. It will gather evidences, interview the 
employees, employers and others to determine the cause.
Complaints and referrals
The third priority is for the complaints given by the formal employees regarding 
the unhealthful or unsafe working conditions and to the referrals from any of the 
sources about the hazard in the workplace. Here, under this Act, the employees 
have the right for requesting the inspection by OSHA when he/she strongly 
believes that there is a violation of OSHA standards that leads to endanger the 
physical harm or if they believe that they are in an imminent danger from a 
hazard. 
OSHA also helps the employees in maintaining the confidentiality, if requested, 
it will inform the employees about the actions that it is going to take with respect 
to the complaint made, and also holds an informal review of certain decisions 
without any inspection if requested.
Programmed inspections
The last priority is given to the programmed inspections which are targeted at 
specific workplaces, occupations, high-hazard industries or other industries that 
are identified in the recent inspection procedures. In order to inspect, OSHA 
selects the industries based on the few factors such as, previous citation history, 
employee exposure to toxic substances or random selection etc. They may also 
conduct some specific emphasis programs in just one region of OSHA or certain 
office areas with respect to the knowledge of local industry hazards.
Follow up inspections
OSHA also conducts this follow-up and monitoring inspections for determining 
whether the employer has corrected the previously referenced violations and if 
the employer is failed in doing so, the compliance officer will inform the 
employer that he/she is nonexempt of “Failure to Abate” alleged violation. 
Monitoring inspections are made to ensure that the hazards are corrected and 
employees are protected when a long period is needed for the hazard to be 
corrected. These inspections are made as essential and take the priority over the 
programmed inspections.
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