SDS Manager Study of 139,777 OSHA Citations Finds Only 12% Get a Return Visit

SDS Manager released a study on October 26, 2026, that followed 139,777 first OSHA citations at 28,339 U.S. manufacturing plants and found that only 16,831 of them, or 12.0%, were followed by a qualifying OSHA return visit within about three years. The study was published by EIN Presswire.

What the OSHA Citation Study Measured

The study, Recurrence of Cited OSHA Standards: U.S. Manufacturing Plants, 2015–2022, covers private manufacturing employers under federal OSHA, with cases closed between 2015 and 2022. It used the U.S. Department of Labor's official OSHA inspection and violation files for 2003 to 2025, downloaded in October 2026. Counting rules were written down before any results were seen.

For 122,946 citations, or 88.0%, the public record shows no qualifying OSHA return visit within about three years. Where a visit did happen, the typical gap after case closure was 522 days. At the first qualifying return visit, 916 citations, or 5.4%, were cited again for the identical paragraph of the same standard, with a 95% range of 5.0% to 6.0%. Counting every qualifying visit in the window, the share rises to 6.5%.

Only 361 of the 16,831 pairs carried OSHA's formal Repeat classification, against 916 citations of the same rule. Of 106 rules with enough data to rank, 1910.212(a)(1) machine guarding was cited again most often, in 23.3% of cases. Most return visits were partial inspections, at 90.4%, and 82.2% were triggered by complaints or referrals. Counting only complete-scope return visits, the share cited again rises to 7.4%.

"Because OSHA rarely comes back, the report recommends that plants re-verify fixes themselves," said Tasmim Wahed of SDS Manager.

SDS Manager's Safety Software Business

SDS Manager is a Norwegian SaaS provider of cloud-based Safety Data Sheet management and chemical compliance software, serving chemical manufacturers and industrial firms across more than 50 countries, according to akta.pro company records. The company was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Oslo, with a headcount range of 51-100, a revenue estimate of $5 million-$10 million and a valuation estimate of $10 million-$50 million.

The same records show SDS Manager maintains a database of over 17 million Safety Data Sheets, and its ExactSDS product supports authoring of GHS-compliant Safety Data Sheets in more than 40 languages. The company has regional websites for over 50 countries and regions.

Earlier SDS Manager Studies and Launches

SDS Manager published a study on October 18, 2026, that examined 600 safety figures and found only 26 of 40 major industrial companies include contractors in their published injury rates, according to EIN Presswire. On July 6, 2026, the company launched SDS Manager EHS, a connected platform uniting incident, risk and audit management that replaces siloed tools and supports ISO 45001, ISO 14001 and OSHA requirements, EIN Presswire reported.

The report recommends three checks after every OSHA citation: re-verify the cited condition at the machine or task named, check the same rule elsewhere within a month, and keep photos, work orders and training records with the case at closure. The full ranking of all 106 rules is in the report's appendix.