OSHA Amputation Reporting: Deadlines, Filing, and Penalties

Under federal OSHA amputation reporting requirements, an employer must notify OSHA within 24 hours of learning that a worker suffered a work-related amputation. The rule sits in 29 CFR 1904.39 and applies to every employer covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act, no matter how small the business or what industry it operates in. Miss the deadline and penalties can reach into six figures.

What Counts as an Amputation

OSHA’s definition is broader than most employers assume. An amputation is any body part that has been completely or partially severed, cut off, or detached, and that includes fingertip amputations with or without bone loss. Losing the fleshy tip of a finger is treated the same as losing a hand.¹

Medical amputations count too. If a worker’s crushed hand is later removed surgically because the damage cannot be repaired, that is a reportable amputation, subject to the timing rule discussed below. And successful reattachment does not erase the obligation. If a severed finger is reattached in surgery, the employer still reports the event. OSHA is tracking the hazard that caused the injury, not the medical outcome.¹

Several serious injuries fall outside the amputation category and are not reportable under this rule: avulsions where tissue tears away without losing the underlying structure, deglovings, scalpings, enucleations (eye removal has its own reporting category), severed ears, and broken or chipped teeth.¹

When the 24-Hour Clock Starts

The 24 hours run from the moment the employer learns about the amputation, not from the moment the injury happens. If a night-shift worker goes to the hospital and the plant manager finds out the next morning, the clock starts that morning. The same rule applies when it isn’t obvious the injury was work-related: if you initially think the injury happened off the job and later discover it was work-related, your 24 hours begin at the moment of that discovery.²

Learning about the injury includes anyone acting on the company’s behalf: a supervisor, a manager, or another company representative. Word to any of them starts the clock for the employer as a whole.

The Separate 24-Hour-From-Incident Limit

There is a second time limit that catches many employers off guard. The amputation itself must occur within 24 hours of the work-related incident for the reporting requirement to apply. If a worker’s hand is crushed on Monday and surgeons decide on Wednesday that they have to amputate, more than 24 hours after the incident, no report to OSHA is required. The injury still has to be logged internally, but the phone call to the agency is not.¹ Staying in touch with the treating hospital matters here, not only for meeting your deadline but for knowing whether you have one at all.

Which Employers Have to Report

All employers covered by the OSH Act must report work-related amputations. The partial exemption that allows businesses with 10 or fewer employees to skip routine OSHA recordkeeping does not apply to reporting. Small employers face the same 24-hour deadline as large ones for amputations, fatalities, hospitalizations, and losses of an eye.³

Temporary and Contract Workers

When a temp or contract worker is injured, the employer who provides day-to-day supervision is responsible for reporting. Day-to-day supervision means controlling the details, methods, and processes of the work, not just specifying the result. In most staffing arrangements, that is the host company where the worker actually performs the job, not the staffing agency.⁴

The injury should be recorded on only one company’s logs. The host employer and the staffing agency should coordinate to avoid double-recording, and the agency should stay informed about injuries to its workers.⁵

What Information You Need

Before you call or file online, gather these details. OSHA asks for all of them:

The establishment name (the legal name of the business, not a trade name).
The physical address where the incident occurred.
The time of the event.
The injured employee’s full name.
A contact person and phone number at the site for follow-up.
A factual description of what happened: the machine or process involved, which body part was affected, and whether the loss was immediate or surgical.

Keep the description mechanical. Stick to what people observed, and avoid speculating about fault or root cause in the initial report. That analysis comes later.²

How to File the Report

OSHA accepts amputation reports three ways, and any one of them satisfies the requirement:

By phone to the nearest OSHA Area Office during business hours.
By calling the 24-hour hotline at 1-800-321-6742, which is the primary option if the Area Office is closed.
Online, through the Serious Event Reporting form at osha.gov. The form asks for the same identifying details, so there is no anonymous route.

Save the confirmation number or digital receipt. It is your proof of compliance if the submission is ever questioned.⁶

Situations Where You Don’t Report but Still Record

Two narrow exceptions waive the reporting requirement, though the injury still has to be logged internally.

The first covers motor vehicle accidents on public streets or highways. If a work-related amputation happens in that kind of accident, no report to OSHA is required, with one carve-out: amputations in construction work zones must be reported regardless of whether a motor vehicle was involved.¹

The second covers commercial or public transportation. Amputations that happen on an airplane, train, subway, or bus are not reportable to OSHA.¹

Reporting and recordkeeping are separate legal duties, and one does not substitute for the other. Calling the hotline within 24 hours handles reporting under 29 CFR 1904.39. If you are required to keep OSHA logs, you also have to enter the amputation on your OSHA 300 form, and you have to do that in the exceptions above, in surgical amputations that fall outside the 24-hour-from-incident window, and in every other case as well.²

What OSHA Does After You Report

Filing does not automatically trigger an on-site inspection. OSHA often handles amputation reports through a Rapid Response Investigation, conducted offsite. Within about a day of your report, an OSHA representative calls the employer to review the incident and explain what comes next.⁷

The employer then conducts its own internal investigation and sends the results in writing to the Area Director within five working days. That written response has to identify the cause, name the hazards, and describe corrective actions already taken. Photographs, revised procedures, and training records strengthen the response. The employer also has to post OSHA’s Rapid Response letter in a visible location near where the incident occurred and share it, along with abatement documentation, with any employee representative or safety committee.⁷

If OSHA is satisfied, the matter closes with a written notification. If the employer fails to respond in five working days, gives inadequate answers, or the circumstances point to a larger problem, the agency can escalate to a full on-site inspection.

Penalties for Missing the Deadline

Failing to report a work-related amputation within 24 hours exposes the employer to citations and fines. As of the January 2025 adjustment, the maximum penalty for a serious or other-than-serious violation is $16,550 per violation. If OSHA finds the failure was willful or repeated, the maximum climbs to $165,514 per violation, with a minimum of $11,823.⁸ These figures adjust for inflation each January.

The actual penalty is set based on the gravity of the violation and then adjusted for company size, good faith, and violation history. A first-time reporting failure at a small company with a clean record lands near the low end. A company with a pattern of under-reporting or a citation history faces something closer to the maximum. A citation for failing to report also signals to OSHA that the site warrants closer scrutiny, which usually means more inspections going forward.⁸

1
eCFR. 29 CFR 1904.39 – Reporting Fatalities, Hospitalizations, Amputations, and Losses of an Eye as a Result of Work-Related Incidents to OSHA
2
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 29 CFR 1904.39 – Reporting Fatalities, Hospitalizations, Amputations, and Losses of an Eye as a Result of Work-Related Incidents to OSHA
3
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 29 CFR 1904.1 – Partial Exemption for Employers With 10 or Fewer Employees
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eCFR. 29 CFR 1904.31 – Covered Employees
5
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Temporary Worker Initiative Bulletin No. 1 – Injury and Illness Recordkeeping Requirements
6
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Report a Fatality or Severe Injury
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Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Revised Interim Enforcement Procedures for Reporting Requirements Under 29 CFR 1904.39
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Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 2025 Annual Adjustments to OSHA Civil Penalties