A look at the most dangerous occupations in the U.S., as measured by fatal work injury rate.
One of the most common ways to measure the dangerousness of an occupation is by the total number of fatalities in a year. Going by that metric, truck drivers and material moving occupations are at the top of the list, with 1,388 fatal injuries in 2016, according to recent data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, that number is up 7% over the previous year, the highest it's been since 2007, and all told fatalities among drivers accounts for more than one-quarter of all work-related fatalities in the U.S. Little surprise, then, how much attention is being given to the development of autonomous vehicles and intelligent highway projects.However, another metric provided by the BLS offers a different perspective on the overall danger factor of a job: fatal work injury rate, calculated per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers. So any occupation with a higher percentage of its workers suffering fatal injuries would end up being higher on the list than drivers. It's not an enviable list to be on, there's no doubt about that.This slideshow offers a look at the 10 most dangerous occupations, according to fatal work injury rate.
You might not immediately think that a beauty salon is a particularly dangerous place to work, but the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences thinks differently. The NIEHS plans to spend nearly $3 million on an effort to help reduce exposures to hazardous chemicals in the workplace, specifically at beauty salons and automotive repair shops.The Institute has awarded a five-year, $2.98 million grant to the University of Arizona’s Zuckerman College of Public Health to conduct a study of these two industries, whose workers are said to be at high-risk of chemical exposure. The study will focus on businesses located on the south side of Tucson that employ primarily Latino workers. El Rio Community Health Center and the Sonora Environmental Research Institute Inc. will partner with the University of Arizona (UA) on the project.“Although preventable by definition, occupational disease and injuries are leading causes of death in the United States,” explains Paloma Beamer, environmental engineer and associate professor of environmental health sciences at UA and the study’s principal investigator. “Unfortunately, low-wage minority workers bear most of the burden of occupational disease.”Small businesses like beauty salons and auto shops use solvents that include volatile organic chemicals associated with asthma, cancer, cardiovascular and neurological diseases. Part of the study will involve training community health workers (i.e., members of the community who provide basic health education) to identify hazardous chemicals in work settings, and to work with the salons and repair shops to design and implement controls to reduce exposure.The project aims to determine whether face-to-face interaction with community health workers can help increase the capacity of workers with marginalized status, limited education and reduced access to healthcare to understand workplace hazards and effective control options to reduce exposures and prevent occupational disease.“Ultimately, by reducing workplace exposures at the source, we may also reduce air pollution in these neighborhoods and impact the surrounding community’s health,” Beamer says.Her research focuses on understanding how individuals are exposed to environmental contaminants and the health risks of these exposures with a special focus on vulnerable populations, including children, low-wage immigrant workers, Native Americans and individuals in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Her ultimate goal, she adds, is to design more effective interventions and policies for the prevention of avoidable cases of certain diseases, such as asthma.Under the NIEHS grant, the El Rio Community Health Center will provide health screenings to small-business employees and educating them on the availability of healthcare services. The research team will gather information about the businesses and investigate the likelihood of worker exposure to hazardous chemicals. The team will then work with the business owners, employees, community health workers and trade groups to design an intervention focused on reducing the sources of dangerous workplace exposures. Then they will implement the intervention in a formal clinical trial, evaluate its effectiveness and identify factors that led the businesses to use exposure control strategies.
You’ve got to hand it to the industrial safety glove market: By the year 2026, total worldwide sales will reach $9.5 billion, thanks to increased safety consciousness among both employers and consumers. That’s according to analyst firm Future Market Insights.“Growing awareness among consumers regarding health and hygiene, mounting number of accidents at workplaces, and the need for safety against hazardous chemicals and equipment handling has fueled adoption of industrial safety gloves,” observes Yogesh Sengar, a consultant with the analyst firm.In terms of trends, disposable gloves, Sengar says, are increasing in popularity due primarily to their comparatively lower cost compared to reusable gloves. Various OSHA standards, meanwhile, are pushing the demand for various industrial safety gloves such as neoprene gloves or nitrile gloves.Another trend impacting the use of industrial gloves has been the rise in automation in the manufacturing sector, particularly as it has reduced the need for humans in some tasks better suited for robots. It stands to reason, then, that as robots replace people in some of the more hazardous areas of manufacturing, that the demand for personal protective equipment such as gloves could be impacted. Robots, after all, don’t need gloves.While North America is currently the leading market for industrial gloves, the demand for such gloves in Europe is expected to outpace that of North America by 2026. In fact, even the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan) will be a bigger market by 2026 than North America, Sengar predicts.The most popular type of safety glove will continue to be chemical protective gloves, followed by leather gloves. In addition, rubber insulating gloves will also represent a significant portion of the total market by 2026. The fastest-growing product type over the next eight years will be metal mesh and fabric gloves.All told, the compound annual growth rate for industrial safety gloves between now and 2026 will be 4.6%, with the fastest growing end-user markets being pharmaceutical and food manufacturers.
To this day, I can still remember the look of panic on the warehouse manager’s face.It was back when I was in college, when during semester breaks I worked in various MRO and logistics capacities for a manufacturing plant in my home town (and by MRO and logistics, what I really mean is I did a lot of maintenance work in a warehouse, as well as loading and unloading trucks, stocking pallets, that kind of stuff). I’d been working there, off and on, for a few years, and got to be on very close and familiar terms with every pallet jack in the facility. The manual hand-crank types, that is, not the electric ones, which the regular warehousing staff hoarded for themselves (though once in a blue moon I’d borrow one “just for a minute,” with that minute lasting as long as I could get away with it).So one day during the holidays, when things were pretty slow on the loading dock and a lot of the staff had opted to use for time off, I was talking to one of the forklift drivers, kind of kidding around about how my job of moving pallets around would be a whole lot easier if they let me drive a lift truck.“You ever driven one before?” he asked me.“No, never,” I said, and with the rashness of youth added, “but how hard could it be?”“It’s not hard at all,” he said. “Let me show you.”So right then and there, he got me up on the forklift and showed me the basics of going forward and back, and how the forks go up and down. Really basic stuff. There were no trucks in the bay and nobody else on the dock. I had managed to get the forks underneath an empty pallet, and I was slowly lifting it up from the ground. My first lesson on forklift driving was going very well.The lesson only lasted 10 minutes.“Hey hey hey!” I heard a voice yelling from behind me. Keep in mind, the distance that I had traveled in my first lesson was well under 100 yards. The voice rapidly closed that distance, and I turned behind me to see the warehouse manager, out of breath, face beet-red. “You’ve gotta get down from there!”“Why?” I asked, in that same tone that every young kid doing something fun that maybe they shouldn’t be doing uses.“You have to be certified to drive a lift truck! And you have to be part of the union!” He wasn’t mad… more like spooked that somebody might come by and see me and report me to the authorities.“So you don’t want me learning how to use the forklift, is what you’re saying?”“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” he said, shaking his head half in exasperation and half in relief that he’d stopped me before the lesson had gotten very far.Was it irony then or synchronicity when, many years later, I was invited to Washington to cover National Forklift Safety Day, an event organized by the Industrial Truck Association (ITA) to highlight the safe use of forklifts, the importance of operator training and the need for daily equipment checks? If nothing else, I had learned first-hand exactly how safety violations can happen at a facility. I wasn’t out to do anything reckless or get anybody in trouble, and I certainly wasn’t looking to violate any rules or regulations. I was on that forklift for one reason and one reason only: It looked like a cool thing to do. Luckily, nobody from OSHA was paying a call that day, and I never gave the warehouse manager reason to panic like that ever again.So I get it why young people (and that goes for not-so-young people, too) attempt to do things that aren’t very safe, even though at the time the situation seems benign enough. I also certainly understand the need for vigilance for all concerned—not just managers and supervisors, but everybody in or around a facility or workplace. It has been my good fortune to serve as the chief editor of several leading industry publications—Logistics Today, IndustryWeek, Material Handling & Logistics, and now EHS Today—and when it comes to safety, no matter what the industry, one thing is always constant: We’re all in this together.
Action Concrete Construction Inc., a Huntsville, Ala.-based subcontractor specializing in rough carpentry and concrete, has been cited by OSHA for exposing its employees to fall hazards and eye injuries. Proposed penalties amount to $59,864.While investigating a worksite in Panama City Beach, Fla., OSHA inspectors identified one willful violation for failing to install guardrails or use personal fall arrest systems while employees worked at a height of 11 feet. Action Concrete was also cited for allowing its employees to use a pneumatic air gun without wearing proper eye protection. The inspection was part of OSHA’s Regional Emphasis Program for Falls in Construction.“Falls are the leading cause of fatal injuries in the construction industry,” says Brian Sturtecky, OSHA area office director in Jacksonville, Fla. “Employers must provide adequate training and appropriate equipment to ensure the workers are protected.”Action Concrete has 15 business days to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA’s area director, or contest the findings.
“Unconscionable” is how one safety administrator described a long string of asbestos violations at a Seattle hotel. The Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) determined that the owner of the Seattle Pacific Hotel willfully exposed construction workers on multiple occasions to asbestos hazards.The owner, identified as Raj Nariya, was found to have knowingly exposed untrained workers to asbestos during a renovation of the hotel lobby. Following an investigation of the work site, L&I discovered that these workers were neither trained nor certified to safely perform the removal of asbestos. More to the point, the owner had apparently been informed by a certified asbestos-abatement contractor about the presence of asbestos in the ceiling, but instead of using that contractor, he opted instead to hire untrained workers unfamiliar with the dangers of asbestos.As a result, the L&I cited the hotel for a dozen willful violations during the hotel remodeling, and fined the owner $355,000 for exposing workers to asbestos. The violations included:failing to provide respiratory protection; leaving asbestos;leaving asbestos debris on site;not taking a pre-removal air sample before removing the asbestos materials.“It’s unconscionable that anyone would knowingly expose untrained and unprotected workers to asbestos,” says Anne Soiza, L&I’s assistant director for the Division of Occupational Safety and Health. “It’s an extremely hazardous material that’s notorious for causing cancer and other serious health issues.”The owner has 15 days to appeal the citation.