In the 1940s, Pete Gray famously played major league baseball with only one arm. And in the decades since then, many other people have preserved despite amputations.
But the challenges and difficulties of dealing with the loss of a limb shouldn’t be overlooked, either. Without an arm or a leg, many of the most basic tasks that people tend to take for granted immediately become more difficult to accomplish.
That is why a recent Pennsylvania amputation case is grounds for such concern. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently issued citations against Bazzini Holdings for safety violations at its Allentown plant after a manufacturing worker suffered an injury that required amputation of an arm.
The plant makes chocolate and nut products. It employs about 250 people.
OSHA’s inspection of the plant found numerous electrical hazards and shafts that lacked protection. These were the same types of violations that the company had been cited for a few years ago, in 2008.
It wasn’t just the electrical hazards and exposed shafts that were a problem, OSHA found. It was also the fact that Bazzini Holdings failed to develop plans to address the hazards and for communicating them properly to employees.
There were also problems with lack of guarding on power transmissions and lack of noise controls to protect workers’ hearing from being damages by excessively noisy machinery.
In short there were a host of problems at the Allentown plant. In its inspection after the amputation, found a total of 15 violations of safety standards. Three of these were repeat violations.
Source: “US DOL’s OSHA Cites Bazzini Holdings For Safety And Health Violations After Workers’ Arm Amputated,” WorkersCompensation.com, 5-9-12