How to Get Copies of OSHA Citations

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) grew out of a 1970 federal law designed to protect workers from hazardous conditions on the job. The agency's goals include encouraging companies and their employees to reduce unsafe working conditions and to launch safety programs. It achieves its objectives through both announced and unannounced site inspections to look for poor working conditions, as well as a reporting system that calls attention to dangerous office and industrial environments. OSHA maintains all its inspection findings and citations in searchable form on its website.

Instructions

Company citation searches

• 1

  Type www.osha.gov into your computer's Internet navigation bar to reach OSHA's website.

• 2

  Click on the toolbar option marked "Data & Statistics," which is the fifth selection from the left.

• 3

  Scroll down to the page's second option, called "Inspection Data."

• 4

  Click on "Establishment Search" to research citations and violations against specific companies.

• 5

  Type into the "Establishment" space the name of a particular business you're investigating. Choose a state and set a start date and an end date to refine your search.

• 6

  Click on the "Submit" button just below the establishment entry form. The page that emerges will list all a company's OSHA inspections and citations in the time period you specified. If no records come up, then the company has no inspections or citations recorded in the period.

• 7

  Scroll over to the second-to-last column on the table of records. The column is labeled "Vio," which is short for "violations." Only records with a number in the violations category will contain citations. Records without numbers in the violations category simply detail OSHA inspections that uncovered no offenses.

• 8

  Read violation citations by clicking on the box to the left of a record and then clicking on the "Get Detail" button just above the left side of the records table. The citation page that comes up will list the violation's date in the top right corner. Look to the form's bottom for the severity of the citation and the dollar amount of any fines the company incurred from the violation. The "Last Event" column at the bottom right details how the company addressed the citation.

• 9

  Choose the "Select All" option on the main records table, and then click on "Get Details" to view shorter versions of all a company's citations together on the same Web page.

• 10

  Print individual OSHA citation reports to obtain copies of the documents.

Industry citation searches

• 11

  Return to OSHA's "Data & Statistics" page to conduct an industry-wide search of OSHA citations using Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) numbers.

• 12

  Click on the "SIC Manual" option on the "Data & Statistics" page. A roster of industrial and occupational categories will come up.

• 13

  Filter through the industry categories and click on the group that represents your query subject. Find the SIC number listed immediately to the left of an occupational category.

• 14

  Return to the "Data & Statistics" page once you have your SIC number.

• 15

  Click on "Search Inspections by SIC" option, just below the "Establishment Search" link.

• 16

  Type your SIC number into the box at the top of the search page, where the site asks for the number. Refine your search by selecting a state and a time period for specific inspections and citations. A list of records will come up.

• 17

  Read through the second-to-last column on the records table, labeled "Vio" for "violations." Records with a number in the violations category contain details on citations. A blank violations box means OSHA officials took no action after an inspection.

• 18

  Click on the box to the left of a record with violations, and click on the "Get Detail" option just above the table's left side. The record will come up, with the citation's severity and fine amounts at the bottom of the document.

• 19

  Click on the "Select All" option to see abridged versions of all citations on the same page.

• 20

  Print each OSHA violation report to collect copies of the citations.