OSHA Recordable Injury Checker

This checker takes one injury or illness through the general recording criteria of 29 CFR 1904.7 and tells you whether it belongs on the OSHA 300 Log, and in which column. Answer what happened to the employee and the verdict updates as you go. The first two questions are inputs, not decisions. The checker does not work out whether a case is work-related or whether it is a new case: it takes your answers as given. Those two calls belong to 29 CFR 1904.5 and 1904.6, and you should read them before you answer yes to either. Under 1904.7, a work-related new case is recordable if it results in any one of six things: death; days away from work; restricted work or transfer to another job; medical treatment beyond first aid; loss of consciousness; or a significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health care professional, meaning cancer, a chronic irreversible disease, a fractured or cracked bone, or a punctured eardrum. Loss of consciousness has no minimum length. A recommendation from a physician counts even when the employee ignores it. First aid is a closed list. The regulation names fourteen treatments, such as cleaning a surface wound, bandages, hot or cold therapy, a non-rigid support, an eye patch and drinking fluids for heat stress, and says that this is a complete list of all treatments considered first aid for part 1904 purposes. It does not matter who gives the treatment.

A cut that is cleaned and bandaged is first aid and not recordable; the same cut closed with sutures is medical treatment and recordable in column J. Visits only for observation or counseling, and diagnostic tests such as x-rays and blood tests, are not medical treatment at all. A case goes in one outcome column only, chosen by its most serious outcome: G for death, H for days away, I for job transfer or restriction and J for everything else that is recordable. So a case with both days away and restricted work goes in column H. For columns H and I, count calendar days from the day after the injury began, and you may stop counting at 180. Recording is separate from reporting. A recordable result does not mean OSHA has been told. A work-related death must be reported to OSHA within 8 hours, and an in-patient hospitalization, amputation or loss of an eye within 24 hours (29 CFR 1904.39). This checker does not ask about those events, but every recordable verdict reminds you of the deadlines. What this tool does not cover: the specific recording criteria in 1904.8 to 1904.12 (needlesticks, tuberculosis, hearing loss and the like), privacy concern cases, State Plan differences and updates to entries from earlier years. If a case does not fit neatly, ask OSHA or your OSHA area office before you rely on any checker's answer.