About this data and methodology

Data as of October 5, 2026

Citation Atlas is an independent site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Labor or OSHA, and it does not use their seals or logos. It republishes public-domain enforcement data so it is easier to read by standard, state and industry.

Source

All records come from the Department of Labor's OSHA enforcement datasets (inspection, violation and violation-event tables), downloaded as bulk files from the DOL Open Data Portal (data.dol.gov). These cover federal OSHA and the State Plans that report to OSHA's information system. We rebuild the site from a fresh download once a week.

What "last 12 months" means

A cited inspection is included if at least one of its citation items has an issuance date in the 365 days before the data date (Oct 5, 2025 to Oct 5, 2026). Citations reach the public data with a delay: in the current snapshot the newest issuance date is September 3, 2026, about 32 days before the data date. Citations are typically issued two to three months after an inspection opens, and up to six months later. Monthly counts for the most recent one or two months are therefore incomplete.

"Inspections recently opened" counts inspections opened in the last 60 days that have no citation items in the data. State pages show the count, an industry breakdown and the 5 most recent; the full list goes to alert subscribers. Opening an inspection does not mean a violation was found; many inspections close with no citations.

Status labels

OSHA's data does not carry a single "status" field. We derive one per citation item and per inspection:

• Open: Citations issued; not yet a final order in the public data.
• Contested: Under contest; not a final finding. Items and penalties may change.
• Informal settlement: Resolved through an informal settlement agreement.
• Formal settlement: Resolved through a formal settlement after a contest.
• Final order: The citation items have become a final order.
• Deleted: All citation items were deleted or withdrawn.
• Status not determinable: Item statuses are mixed or incomplete in the public data.

Rules, in order: an item flagged as deleted is "Deleted"; an item with a contest date and no final order or settlement is "Contested"; an item with a formal or informal settlement event is labeled with that settlement; an item with a final-order date on or before the data date is "Final order"; otherwise it is "Open". An inspection takes the most significant status of its live items (contested, then formal settlement, then informal settlement); if items are a mix of final and open, it is shown as "Status not determinable". About 9% of cited inspections in this period had at least one contested item.

Penalties

The initial penalty is the amount proposed when the citation was issued. The current penalty is the amount in the record today after any settlement, contest decision or amendment. Deleted items are excluded from the current total. Penalties are as recorded and are not adjusted.

Names and privacy

• Establishment names are cleaned with rules: case-number prefixes used by some State Plans are removed and names are converted from all capitals to title case. The raw name is on the linked osha.gov page.
• Where an establishment name appears to be an individual person (for example a sole proprietor), we do not publish a page for it and we withhold the name in tables. The detection is rule-based and can miss cases; tell us if it did.
• We never publish names of injured or deceased workers and do not include accident narratives.
• Records are grouped by establishment name, state and ZIP code, not by corporate parent. Different sites of the same company have separate pages; unrelated companies with similar names are not merged across ZIP codes.

Deadlines

Each citation item in the OSHA data can carry an abatement date (the date by which the employer must correct the alleged hazard), a contest date (when a notice of contest was recorded) and a final-order date. We show these as recorded and label them "per OSHA record". About 70% of recent items have an abatement date; dates earlier than the issuance date are treated as data-entry errors and not shown.

An employer has 15 working days from receipt of a citation to contest it. The data has the issuance date, not the receipt date, so where an open inspection has no contest or final-order date we show an estimated contest deadline: 15 working days (weekdays, excluding federal holidays) after the latest issuance date, always labeled as an estimate. The real deadline is usually a few days later, because citations are delivered by certified mail. Because citations reach the public data about a month after issuance, most estimated deadlines have passed by the time they appear.

Inspection history

"Inspected 3 times since 2019" counts every OSHA inspection in DOL's full history (back to the 1970s, about 5.2 million inspections) recorded at the same normalized establishment name, state and ZIP code. Different names or ZIP codes for the same business are not joined, so history can be undercounted; two unrelated businesses with the same normalized name in one ZIP code would be counted together (rare). Earlier penalties are initial (proposed) amounts.

"Top 5 to call this week"

Paid alerts open with five citations ranked by fixed rules, not judgment. Points: alleged willful item(s) 50; alleged repeat item(s) 40; initial penalty of $100,000 or more 30, $25,000 or more 20, $10,000 or more 10, $5,000 or more 5; an earlier inspection with citations at the same establishment 15 (any earlier inspection 5); an estimated contest window still open 10; abatement due within 30 days 5. Ties go to the larger proposed penalty. Withheld names are never ranked. The one-line reason lists only these facts.

Penalty and status changes

Each week we save every cited inspection's current penalty and status, and compare it with the previous week's snapshot. A change is reported as recorded, for example "current penalty reduced from $14,188 to $4,308; status now informal settlement". For the first week (no earlier snapshot), changes are settlements recorded in the last 7 days of data, shown with the initial and current penalty.

Contact data

Paid alerts, the CSV and the API include a public business listing phone and website from Overture Maps Places where one matches the establishment: name similarity plus a matching house number or street address ("name + address"), or a near-exact name in the same ZIP code ("probable"). Weaker matches are not shown. Government establishments and names withheld as individuals are never matched. In a hand check of 50 matches, every error came from government buildings sharing an address, which is why they are excluded. These pages never show phone numbers.

Standards

Standard summaries are plain-language explanations written for this site. They are not the regulatory text and are not legal advice. Pages exist for federal 29 CFR standards and the General Duty Clause cited in at least 10 inspections in the period. Several State Plans (for example California, Washington, Oregon and Michigan) cite their own state codes; those items count toward state totals but do not have standard pages.

What we leave out

To avoid thin pages, we only publish a weekly digest when a state had at least 5 cited inspections that week, a state-by-industry page when the combination had at least 20 cited inspections in 12 months, and establishment pages for a capped number of recently cited establishments, prioritized by recency and penalty size.

Corrections

If a record is wrong, outdated or should be removed, use the corrections page. We aim to respond within two business days.