ConDig (26-Sept-23).  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has fined a Georgia-based concrete pipe manufacturer $245,546 after a 19-year-old worker died inside a mixer.

The agency said that it cited Foley Products Company LLC for willfully exposing workers to crushed-by hazards by allowing them to enter the mixer without making sure to first follow energy-control procedures. 

OSHA also found the company exposed workers to confined spaces hazards by not making sure a safe atmosphere existed inside the mixer before the workers entered and by failing to have an attendant ready to retrieve workers safely. 

The agency also said that the company did not make certain workers were trained and that they understood the safe application and removal of energy controls before servicing machines.

The investigation followed the death of a 19-year-old worker after a concrete mixer restarted while the teen tried to clean the machine’s inside in Cantonment, Florida, in March.

“Foley Products Company’s failure to implement well-known safeguards cost the life of a worker just beginning their adulthood,” said OSHA area office director Jose A. Gonzalez in Mobile, Alabama. 

“This preventable tragedy should serve as a reminder of the importance of complying with safety and health standards, as required by law.”

The company has 15 business days from receipt of the citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA – as Foley Products Company has done – or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.