Toilet paper, mushrooms big hits with OSHA inspectors

Attention employers everywhere, especially in Texas, in the mushroom business, or in Florida, in toilet paper production: there’s a new tool that gathers data on where the Occupational Safety and Health Administration may be going next.

Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart P.C. in late December launched its interactive “OSHA Tracker,” giving users anywhere the ability to search and filter Occupational Safety and Health Administration data to identify emerging issues and enforcement trends.

The firm says the tool compiles comprehensive OSHA inspection, citation and penalty data and allows employers to create custom searches and filter by OSHA region, state, industry or date.

And, according to a recent law firm blog post, there are “surprising and valuable OSHA statistics for the sunshine states of Florida, Texas, and California.”

“When imagining scandalous workplace safety issues, mushroom production may not be the first industry that comes to mind,” the firm says. “However, mushroom production is the top industry by average OSHA penalty in Texas. Florida’s top industry with OSHA penalties is ‘toilet preparation’ production.”

The tool also found that California’s top industry with OSHA penalties is office supplies manufacturing, which does not include paper.