It may be on the top 10 list of dream jobs—working in a brewery. But, in fact, making beer is a highly hazardous activity.
Among the dangers are extremely hot liquids, caustic chemicals, fast-moving machinery, wet floors, forklifts, and carbon dioxide emissions. Yes, those beautiful bubbles can be bad for workers’ health.
Making beer is fraught with so many dangers that two Vermont breweries, Long Trail and Otter Creek, asked the Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Administration to help them make safety improvements to their facilities and implement new workforce procedures to eliminate some of the hazards. “Safety awareness now permeates every department in the company,” said the safety manager of both breweries, and the companies have been recognized by federal OSHA’s Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program.
Unfortunately, the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Houston was recently cited by federal OSHA and fined $88,000. It’s those bubbles again. In an alleged willful violation, OSHA claims Anheuser-Busch failed to consider the carbon dioxide atmosphere in the brewing cellars to be immediately dangerous to life or health and ignored respiratory hazards at the site. The company was also cited for confined-space violations in the brewery’s cellars.