High-profile disasters put new focus on workplace dangers
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health photo
We’re not even halfway through 2010 and already have seen some high-profile workplace disasters, including 29 dead in a West Virginia coal mine and the 11 workers lost two months ago when the BP oil rig collapsed in the Gulf of Mexico.
Those epic tragedies make headlines, unlike the many other workplace injuries and even deaths that occur daily nationwide. Some 5,214 U.S. workers died as a result of occupational hazards in 2008, according to federal statistics. That was down from 5,657 a year earlier – in part due to the slower economy, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis – and the lowest since the BLS began recording a fatality census in in 1992. Interestingly, though, workplace suicides – 263 for the year – were the highest on record.
As your readers scramble for still-scarce jobs, they might appreciate a look at workplace safety in your neck of the woods.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics site offers national and state-by-state data up through 2008. The statistics are sliced into a number of different permutations including industry type, worker classification, etc. and are divided into fatal and non-fatal incidents.
Not surprisingly, high-risk jobs in public safety and construction have a high fatality rate, and across all occupations, a large percentage of deaths are transportation-related. In 2008, for example, 982 motor vehicle operators died.
But there are some surprises in the national numbers - who would’ve thought that floral designers, public service announcers and book-keepers were at risk of dying on the job. But several did, in 2008.
As to on-the-job injuries, the BLS says there were nearly 3.7 million in 2008, and about a third were serious enough to cause missed work. Here’s a look at the incidence rate by industry; – aside from public safety personnel, health care workers have quite a high injury rate. With so many displaced workers turning to the health care industry as a second career, that’s an excellent niche story to develop in your marketplace.
Or, depending on your region, take a look at other high-risk fields like agriculture, motor-vehicle manufacturing (including RVs, trailers and mobile homes) and tourism-related injuries. Problems range from skin diseases to poisoning to assaults to ergonomics issues.
This state-by-state resource and reports database from the BLS will guide you to your area’s data collectors as well as state-specific reports in the BLS site.
And of course, the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety & Health Administration is the clearinghouse for worker safety information; they publish weekly fatality and catastrophe reports which will give you leads to specific incidents in your area, complete with the names and addresses of the companies involved. The report for May 1, for example, tells about a Minnesota supermarket worker who died of an infection, an Arizona worker who got trapped in a freight elevator gate and a Nebraska worker engulfed in grain while working on a conveyor belt.
Among the many publications of interest on the OSHA site is searchable accident investigation database.
Other sources of information, ‘real people,’ and data would include labor unions, attorneys specializing in workers compensation cases and trade groups for facilities managers. Professional journals and industry magazines like EHS Today.
The obvious caveat is that this topic can creep into sensationalism pretty quickly. With U.S. workers putting in hundreds of millions of hours each day, the laws of probability favor some mishaps and accidents. Don’t blow small numbers out of proportion; just give readers food for thought.
