Is the societal burden of fatal occupational injury different among NORA industry sectors?

PROBLEM: Since the implementation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, safety and health in the work environment has seen marked improvement. Although these improvements are laudable, workplace hazards continue to plague the American worker. Understanding the economic burden of fatalities by industry sector is important to setting broad occupational safety and health research priorities. Cost estimates provide additional information about how fatal injuries affect society and hence can improve injury prevention program planning, policy analysis, evaluation, and advocacy. METHOD: This study estimated the total, mean, and median societal costs by worker and case characteristic in 2003-2006 for the industry sectors identified in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA). Analyses were conducted with restricted access to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries data. These data exclude military personnel, decedents with unknown age or sex, and fatalities occurring in New York City. Societal costs were estimated using the cost-of-illness approach, which combines direct and indirect costs to yield an overall cost of an fatal occupational injury. RESULTS: During this period, the cost of the 22,197 fatal occupational injuries exceeded $21 billion. The mean and median costs of these fatalities were $960,000 and $944,000 respectively. Total societal costs by NORA sector ranged from a high of $5.8 billion in Services to a low of $530 million in Healthcare and Social Assistance with mean costs ranging from the nearly $800,000 in Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing to almost $1.1 million in Mining. DISCUSSION: The societal costs-total, mean, and median costs-of case and worker characteristics for occupational fatal injuries varied within each NORA sector. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: To have the greatest societal impact, these costs can be used to target resources for public and private sector research by industry.

Action Learning: a new method to increase tractor rollover protective structure (ROPS) adoption.

Action Learning is a problem-solving process that is used in various industries to address difficult problems. This project applied Action Learning to a leading problem in agricultural safety. Tractor overturns are the leading cause of fatal injury to farmworkers. This cause of injury is preventable using rollover protective structures (ROPS), protective equipment that functions as a roll bar structure to protect the operator in the event of an overturn. For agricultural tractors manufactured after 1976 and employee operated, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulation requires employers to equip them with ROPS and seat belts. By the mid-1980s, US tractor manufacturers began adding ROPS on all farm tractors over 20 horsepower sold in the United States (http://www.nasdonline.org/document/113/d001656/rollover-protection-for-farm-tractor-operators.html). However, many older tractors remain in use without ROPS, putting tractor operators at continued risk for traumatic injury and fatality. For many older tractor models ROPS are available for retrofit, but for a variety of reasons, tractor owners have not chosen to retrofit those ROPS. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) attempted various means to ameliorate this occupational safety risk, including the manufacture of a low-cost ROPS for self-assembly. Other approaches address barriers to adoption. An Action Learning approach to increasing adoption of ROPS was followed in Virginia and New York, with mixed results. Virginia took action to increase the manufacturing and adoption of ROPS, but New York saw problems that would be insurmountable. Increased focus on team composition might be needed to establish effective Action Learning teams to address this problem.

Fire and flame related events with multiple occupational injury fatalities in the United States, 1980-1995.

The National Traumatic Occupational Fatalities surveillance system recorded 1587 fire and flame related occupational fatalities among the civilian workforce in the United States between 1980 and 1995. Of these fatalities, 433 resulted from 127 incidents that involved two or more victims. For purposes of this study, these victims were categorized into one of three cause-of-death classifications: burns, inhalation or other traumatic injury. The classification 'Burns' accounted for 232 or just over one-half of the fatalities and an additional 172 cases were coded as inhalation. Other traumatic injury was named as the cause of death for another 23 fatalities or five percent of the multiple victims. The cause of death for the remaining six fatalities could not be determined from the death certificates. This study revealed the similarities and disparities of the demographic and employment characteristics associated with these three cause-of-death classifications.