Safety News: Week of October 12

A quick roundup of what’s moving in the safety world this week — new standards, OSHA enforcement, and incidents worth learning from.

New ANSI head protection standard. ISEA released ANSI/ISEA Z89.1-2026, the first major revision of the industrial head protection standard in over a decade. It adds Type I+ and Type II+ designations for helmets tested beyond the base standard: chin strap retention, roll-off resistance, and multi-directional impact protection. It doesn’t make your current compliant hard hats obsolete, but the next time you’re buying head protection for crews working at height or around heavy equipment, it’s worth specifying the “+” performance levels.

OSHA cites six employers over excavation hazards. At the Monroe Commons construction site in New York, OSHA issued 23 serious and 5 willful citations after finding a nearly 75-foot unstable excavation embankment with no proper sloping or shoring. Proposed penalties total roughly $648,000 across the general contractor and five subcontractors. The takeaway: excavations need a competent person doing daily inspections and cave-in protection engineered for the actual depth. No exceptions, no shortcuts.

$255K fine after trench collapse kills 20-year-old. OSHA cited J.D. Wagoner Excavating after a trench wall failed at a Pennsylvania site, engulfing and killing 20-year-old Dalen Martin as he installed storm sewer 12 feet down. The agency issued a willful violation for zero cave-in protection and repeat violations for having no competent person doing daily inspections. Trench deaths are almost always preventable: slope it, shore it, or shield it — and keep spoil piles at least two feet back from the edge.

Florida worker killed by rotating drill pipe. OSHA cited T&T Pipeline Co. with a willful violation and $165,514 in proposed penalties after an employee was fatally struck by a rotating pipe stem while changing a drill bit on a horizontal directional drilling machine. Struck-by deaths during maintenance are a lockout/tagout problem at their core: if it can rotate, it gets secured before hands go near it.

CSB: Shell’s $95 million blast was preventable. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board‘s final report on the Shell Polymers furnace explosion found a preventable control-system failure — a confusing interface let an operator put the unit into a catastrophic state, while the real safeguards were administrative procedures instead of engineered interlocks. The lesson travels well beyond refineries: paperwork isn’t protection. Where a serious hazard exists, engineer it out.

That’s the week. If any of this hits close to home on your sites, that’s what we’re here for — 1stamericansafety.com.