When to Post the OSHA Injury Summary and How Long to Keep It

If you work somewhere that posts an injury and illness summary on the breakroom wall every February, that timing isn’t arbitrary — it’s set by federal rule. Under 29 CFR §1904.32(b)(6), a covered employer “must post the summary no later than February 1 of the year following the year covered by the records and keep the posting in place until April 30” (eCFR, 29 CFR Part 1904). The underlying records behind that summary have their own separate retention clock: five years under §1904.33(a). And if the business is sold, §1904.34 puts the transfer duty on the seller, not the buyer.

This original record-reading guide is a general reading aid, not cited evidence. It does not depict a source record; the article text and source links provide the facts.

Key points

• The annual injury/illness summary must go up by February 1 of the year after the year it covers, and stay posted through April 30.
• The OSHA 300 Log, privacy case list, annual summary, and OSHA 301 Incident Report forms must all be kept for five years after the calendar year they cover.
• Those retention duties don’t reset when a company changes hands — record transfer is mandatory.
• These rules govern posting timing and record retention only; they don’t determine whether a workplace has to keep a log in the first place, or whether any specific incident belongs on it.

OSHA posting window

The rule is specific about both ends of the window. As the regulation states, “You must post the summary no later than February 1 of the year following the year covered by the records and keep the posting in place until April 30” (eCFR, 29 CFR Part 1904). In practice, that means the summary covering a given calendar year’s injuries and illnesses goes up the following February 1 at the latest, and it has to stay visible to employees for three full months before it can come down.

Record-retention period

Posting is a three-month obligation, but the records that feed the summary carry a much longer retention requirement. The rule requires that “you must save the OSHA 300 Log, the privacy case list (if one exists), the annual summary, and the OSHA 301 Incident Report forms for five (5) years following the end of the calendar year that these records cover” (eCFR, 29 CFR Part 1904). That five-year clock starts running at the close of the calendar year the records describe, not at the date the summary is posted or taken down.

Ownership-change records

The recordkeeping obligation follows the records, not the original employer. Under the transfer provision, an employer “must transfer the part 1904 records to the new owner” when ownership changes (eCFR, 29 CFR Part 1904). The new owner then becomes responsible for keeping those records for the remainder of the applicable retention period.

What this article doesn’t answer

This article covers only the posting deadline, the five-year retention period, and the ownership-transfer duty for records that already exist. It does not address whether a particular employer is required to keep an OSHA 300 Log at all — separate provisions exempt some small employers and certain low-hazard industries from routine recordkeeping — and it does not address whether any specific injury or illness should have been recorded on the log in the first place. Both of those are case-by-case determinations that depend on facts this article doesn’t cover.

Source links

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-XVII/part-1904