OSHA targets plastics plants as highest amputation risk. (Your Business in Brief).

The Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) in Washington, D.C., has alerted its members that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has launched a special program to reduce workplace amputations in general industry. OSHA calculates industry amputation hazard rates using injury data and violations of machine safeguarding standards. By this method, OSHA established that workplaces classified as SIC 3089--Plastics Products Not Elsewhere Classified--have the highest risk for such injuries among all industry segments. Accordingly, SPI warns, "Plastics companies listed under SIC Code 3089 will be the No. 1 focus of OSHA inspections under this new initiative. These inspections are expected to begin in February."

SIC 3089 roughly corresponds to custom plastics processors other than compounders or producers of film, sheet, proffles, laminates, pipe, bottles, foams, and plumbing fixtures.

The OSHA National Emphasis Program on Hazardous Machinery Associated with Amputations targets workplaces that use any type of power press (including press brakes), saws, shears, slicers, and slitters. According to OSHA, workers who operate such equipment suffer more than 10,000 amputations and over 800 deaths per year. The OSHA program is described on the agency's website at www.osha-slc. Gov/OshDoc/Directive_data/CPL_2-1.33.html.

SPI plans to kick off training on this subject on Feb. 14 with a machine and plant safety workshop telecast over its Plastics Learning Network to nearly a dozen viewing sites across the country. For information, contact Susan Howe, SPI senior technical director for worker & product safety, at [phone] or e-mail [e-mail].