Federal safety regulators are seeking more than $466,000 in penalties from a producer of roofing materials for exposing workers to high levels of hazardous dust–and in the wake of their findings have expanded the probe to three more of the company’s plants.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued 10 willful and 25 serious citations to U.S. Minerals LLC of Dyer, Ind., following an inspection of its Baldwin, Ill., plant. The agency said it will investigate conditions at three other U.S. Minerals plants in Coffeen, Ill., Harvey, La., and Galveston, Texas.
OSHA said workers at the Baldwin plant were exposed to dangerously high levels of dust containing lung-scarring silica, which can cause respiratory disease. The company failed to protect workers by installing engineering controls to reduce dust or by providing them with respirators, the agency said. It classified some of the violations as willful, meaning that they were intentional or showed conscious disregard for employee safety.
U.S. Minerals, which manufacturers abrasive blasting and roofing materials from slag produced at coal-fired power plants, has 15 days to appeal the citations and $466,400 in proposed penalties to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
“U.S. Minerals has severely jeopardized the health of its workers by exposing them to extremely high levels of dust containing silica,” said David Michaels, assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA. “Even with employees covered head to toe in dust, the company still failed to provide breathing protection and other controls.”
