OSHA’s Top 10

Safety ‘staple’: Richard Fairfax reflects on Top 10’s history

By Kevin Druley

Richard Fairfax devoted 34 years to working for OSHA – including as director of enforcement programs and deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health. In the years that have followed his retirement from the agency, he’s spent more than 10 as a part-time consultant for organizations such as the National Safety Council.

One of his interests over that span: charting the expansion of the OSHA Top 10 Most Frequently Cited Standards presentation at the annual NSC Safety Congress & Expo.

For much of the Top 10’s early history, Fairfax analyzed and presented federal data (using overhead projector slides) to a handful of onlookers on the Expo Floor. Soon, the audience – and the presentation – grew. Laptops and PowerPoint helped further things along.

“I think it’s become kind of a staple for the congress because there’s a lot of people for whom that’s their exposure to last year’s Top 10 violations,” Fairfax said. “Even though the violations don’t really change from year to year, there’s a lot of interest in that, which is good. It’s good to get that out there.”

Fairfax recalls the first iterations of the Top 10 occurring almost as an underground endeavor. That is, without publicity in Congress & Expo programs and Safety+Health.

In the event program for the 2004 show in New Orleans, then-NSC President and CEO Alan C. McMillan touted the Top 10 session as “a great new addition” and a “must-see for all attendees and exhibitors.” OSHA and S+H teamed up for the presentation on the Expo Floor at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on consecutive afternoons.

S+H coverage of the Top 10 dates back several years earlier, however. The magazine even experimented with different titles, including “OSHA’s Big 10” in 1998 and the more biblical “The 10 Deadly Sins” in 2001.

In 1997, then-S+H Associate Editor Al Karr wrote, “The list is little changed, OSHA and OSHA-watchers contend, for a combination of reasons. One reason is that the ‘hot’ standards cover pervasive, tough-to-correct workplace hazards, often in big industries.”

Fairfax, who recently announced his retirement from consulting, contends that the list’s constancy might be moot.

Just consider the annual influx of beginning safety professionals and Congress & Expo newcomers.

“I’ve had a lot of them come up and talk to me afterward about how helpful it was because they’re relatively new to the safety and health profession and it helps them when they’re doing their work to focus on the more serious hazards,” he said.

Fairfax remembers NSC originating the idea of the Top 10. He gladly took part in the project, first as a facilitator, then as a fan.

“I’m always in favor of anything where you get safety and health information out to people,” he said. “That’s always a good thing, you know?”