Hazard Recognition and OSHA 10 General Industry Core
Objective. Students will identify the major OSHA General Industry hazard categories, explain the hierarchy of controls, and describe employer and employee rights and responsibilities under the OSH Act.
This lesson, its worked examples and its practice questions has not yet been verified by a licensed engineer or certified journey-level tradesperson or by a certification or approval body. It is a study draft and may contain errors. Do not use it as instructions for work on a job site or on live equipment. Always follow your instructor, your supervising professional, and current official references and regulations.
VoTechWorks program approval and accreditation are still in progress. Credentials are issued only by the certifying bodies named in each program, after their own exams.
Why OSHA Exists
Before the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (the OSH Act), thousands of workers were killed or seriously injured on the job every year with no federal standard requiring employers to act. Congress passed the OSH Act to assure, as far as possible, safe and healthful working conditions for every working man and woman in the United States. The law created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inside the Department of Labor and gave it authority to set standards, inspect workplaces, and issue citations and penalties.
As an industrial maintenance technician working in manufacturing or marine environments, you will encounter hazards every shift. Knowing your rights and responsibilities under the OSH Act — and knowing how to recognize and control hazards before they cause harm — is the foundation of everything else you will learn in this program.
Employer and Employee Rights and Responsibilities
The OSH Act places the primary duty on employers to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm. This is called the General Duty Clause. Employers must also comply with all applicable OSHA standards, provide required PPE at no cost to employees, train workers in a language they understand, keep injury and illness records, and post the OSHA Job Safety and Health poster where workers can see it.
Employees also have duties: follow safety rules, use PPE correctly, and report hazards to a supervisor. Employees have the right to request an OSHA inspection, review their employer's injury logs (OSHA 300 log), receive training, and — critically — refuse work they reasonably believe poses imminent danger without fear of retaliation. Retaliation for reporting a safety concern is illegal under the OSH Act.
Major OSHA General Industry Hazard Categories
OSHA groups common hazards into categories that help workers quickly recognize danger:
- Struck-by: A moving object hits a worker — swinging crane loads, flying chips from grinding, vehicle traffic in a shop.
- Caught-in/between: A worker's body or clothing is caught in moving machinery, pinch points, or collapsing materials — unguarded rotating shafts, conveyor nip points.
- Falls (slips, trips, falls to lower level): Wet decks in marine engine rooms, open floor holes, unsecured ladders, unguarded floor openings.
- Electrical: Contact with energized conductors, arc flash, improper grounding, damaged cords.
- Chemical/Hazardous substances: Exposure to lubricants, solvents, cleaning agents, paints, and gases found in both manufacturing and marine spaces.
- Ergonomic: Repetitive motion, awkward postures, heavy manual lifting in confined spaces below deck or in tight machinery spaces.
The Hierarchy of Controls
When a hazard is identified, you don't just reach for a pair of gloves and call it solved. OSHA and recognized industrial safety practice require you to work through the hierarchy of controls from most effective to least effective:
1. Elimination — Physically remove the hazard. Most effective because the hazard no longer exists.
2. Substitution — Replace a hazardous material or process with a safer one (for example, switching from a solvent with high vapor toxicity to one with lower toxicity).
3. Engineering controls — Isolate people from the hazard through design: machine guards, ventilation systems, interlocks, noise enclosures.
4. Administrative controls — Change how work is done: job rotation to reduce ergonomic exposure, lockout/tagout procedures, safe work permits, scheduling noisy tasks when fewer workers are present.
5. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) — The last line of defense. PPE does not remove the hazard; it only reduces exposure. Safety glasses, hard hats, hearing protection, chemical-resistant gloves, and steel-toed boots are all PPE. Selection must match the specific hazard — the wrong glove for a chemical can be worse than no glove if it gives false confidence.
Always try to move up the hierarchy. PPE alone is acceptable only when higher-level controls are not feasible or while higher-level controls are being implemented.
Hazard Communication: GHS and Safety Data Sheets
OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard aligns with the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) for classifying and labeling chemicals. Every container of a hazardous chemical in your shop or engine room must carry a GHS-compliant label with a product identifier, signal word (DANGER or WARNING), hazard statements, precautionary statements, and pictograms (symbols such as a flame, skull and crossbones, or exclamation mark).
Safety Data Sheets (SDS) — formerly called MSDS — must be accessible to workers at all times during a shift. An SDS has 16 standardized sections. The most immediately useful sections for maintenance workers are Section 2 (hazard identification), Section 4 (first-aid measures), Section 8 (exposure controls and PPE), and Section 14 (transport information). Know where your facility keeps its SDS binder or electronic system before you open any chemical container.
Electrical Safety and Lockout/Tagout
Electrical hazards are among the leading causes of fatalities in industrial maintenance. OSHA's electrical standards (Subpart S for General Industry) require proper grounding, guarding of energized parts, and use of insulated tools. Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) — covered in depth in a later lesson — is the procedure used to ensure that hazardous energy (electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, gravity, thermal) is isolated and cannot be accidentally released while maintenance is performed. Never work on or near energized equipment without verifying that proper energy control procedures are in place.
Recordkeeping
Employers with more than ten employees in most industries must maintain OSHA injury and illness records on three forms: the OSHA 300 Log (injury and illness log), the OSHA 301 (incident report), and the OSHA 300A (annual summary). The 300A must be posted in the workplace each year from February 1 through April 30. Understanding recordkeeping matters to you as a technician because near-misses and injuries that go unreported cannot be analyzed and prevented.
Your OSHA 10 Card
Completing the OSHA 10-Hour General Industry course and passing its quizzes earns you a wallet card issued through OSHA's Outreach Training Program. That card tells employers you have baseline safety awareness. It does not replace site-specific training, but it is recognized across manufacturing and maritime industries and supports both your NCCER Industrial Maintenance credential and the MSSC CPT credential you are working toward in this program.
Key terms8
Materials: OSHA 10-Hour General Industry student packet, OSHA.gov citation database printouts, hierarchy of controls poster, GHS pictogram chart, sample SDS sheets for common industrial lubricants and solvents, PPE sample kit (safety glasses, hard hat, gloves, hearing protection, steel-toed boots)
Check: Students score 70% or higher on the official OSHA 10 end-of-module quizzes to receive the OSHA 10 card; instructor also grades hazard hunt worksheet with a rubric requiring correct identification of at least 80% of planted hazards.
Practice check8
Answer each question, then check it. Nothing is recorded; this is your own practice.
