Your Establishment Received a Letter from OSHA: Now What?

OSHA sends letters to about 13,000 businesses regarding their excessive injury and illness rates in a given year. Such a letter certainly should grab the attention of management in any facility, particularly if the rate is high enough to place a facility into OSHA's Site-Specific Targeting (SST) Inspection Program. OSHA uses the SST program to select individual employers for inspection based on information provided by employers that responded to its annual data initiative survey. This survey is a nationwide collection of establishment-specific injury and illness data from nearly 80,000 nonconstruction employers. OSHA clearly states that inspections conducted under SST will be comprehensive programmed safety and health inspections. Occasionally, an SST inspection may be a records only inspection. Establishments that receive an alert letter from OSHA are at significantly increased odds of being selected for an SST inspection.