National accident records

Are these accident rates truly realistic indicators for the actual safety standards in these particular countries To answer this question outright national accident records are far from being comparable (Mertens 1984). There are mainly two classes of reasons responsible for this incompatibility first, national recording standards differ widely and second, hazard potentials vary considerably across industries and nations, respectively. 

Identification of hazards and level of risk may be helped by reviewing the school s accident record forms. Further statistical data from agencies such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), the National... 

Because of the estimating procedure the National Safety Council statistics may undercount U.S. workplace fatalities. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has also calculated worlq>lace fatality rates since the late 1930s but the scope of their survey has changed so dramatically that one cannot use the BLS data to identify a time trend. Nevertheless, the BLS s most recent data collection effort creates the most reliable source of information on fatal workplace accidents in the United States. 1 The BLS conducted a census of fatal occupational injuries for 1992 using data from death certificates, workers compensation claims, medical examiners records, autopsy reports, motor vehicle accident records, and OSH A and Mine Safety and Health Administration fatal injury reports. The BLS estimated Ae average worker in the United... 

Many companies conduct accident investigations and keep accident records and other data on the company s safety and health initiatives. If a company has a sufficient number of accidents/incidents and enongh detail in their occupational injury/illness investigation data, the company can begin to examine trends or emerging issues relevant to their safety and health intervention/prevention efforts. The analysis of this data can be nsed to evaluate the effectiveness of safety and health at various workplaces, jobsites, or for groups of workers. The safety and health data can be used by a company to compare to that of other companies that perform similar work, employ a comparable workforce, or compete in the same kind and size of market on a state, regional, national, or international basis. 

A number of failures, recorded by others regions, have been included into the study. Namely there are 5 records coming from other districts and 4 documents on failure much more detailed, coming from testing laboratories. Furthermore a dozen of accident records, coming from national and international databases have been included as relevant to the pressure equipment. They have not been useful for the FRs as data on the reference population are lacking, but they have been valuable for investigating the FMs. 

The National Center for Statistics and Analysis of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) keeps records of various types of police-reported accidents [18]. The file of reported accidents is known as the National Accident Sampling System (NASS), and it was started in the late 1970s. An accident to be included in NASS must satisfy the following three conditions [18,19] ... 

The Swedish National Defence Research Institute (FOA), which from 1978 until 1983 was connected to the SSI, runs a system of high-volume aerosol samplers that normally detects very small amounts of radionuclides by high-resolution gamma spectrometry. The FOA also has access to army airplanes and helicopters to take air samples at different heights, to record measurements from the air, and to transport equipment and personnel to remote areas quickly to perform in situ measurements with portable germanium detectors. At the SSI, routine measurements of milk were run before the Chernobyl accident. Routine programs concerning environmental surveillance of nuclear power plants currently exist. 

Occupational illness and injury187 cost 30-40 billion dollars/yr in the United States.188 In 1994 there were 6.8 million injuries and illnesses in private industry, amounting to 8.4 cases per 100 workers. Nearly two-thirds were disorders associated with repeated trauma, such as carpal tunnel syndrome.189 The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 set up the National Institute Safety and Health (NIOSH) to study the problem and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to deal with it through inspections and regulations. Both have received so much criticism of their effectiveness that they are struggling to find more effective ways to deal with the problem.190 NIOSH is searching for practical ways to protect workers, especially those in small businesses from methylene chloride, tetrachloroethylene, diesel exhaust in coal mines, isocyanates, 2-methoxyethanol, and others. OSHA is about to expand a plan that worked well in Maine, a state that used to have one of the worst accident and illness records in the United States.191 The 200 firms with the worst records were asked to look for deficiencies and to correct them. They were also inspected. These measures cut injuries and illnesses over a 2-year period. 

Health management analyst Paul Gross has stated that using DM to control demand through patient education and a 1 week, patient-centred, multidisciplinary outpatient clinic at the National Jewish Centre (Denver) reduced admissions to hospital by 83%, accident and emergency visits by 45% and inpatient days by 82% (Rodstein et al, 1994). The cost savings are not recorded but can be assumed ... 

American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Specifications for Informationed Signs Complementary to ANSI Z35.1-1972, Accident Prevention Signs, Z35.4-1973, ANSI, New York, 1973. American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Method of Recording and Measuring Work Injury Experience, Z16.1-1973, ANSI, New York, 1973. 

The National Commission on State Workmen s Compensation Laws recommended insurance providers experience rate WC premiums to the maximum extent feasible. Historically, WC insurers have not used the accident experience of a small establishment to determine the establishment s price of WC insurance. Instead, they have combined the injury statistics for all workers within an industrial class and determined a so-called manual rate for WC coverage. The product of each worker s wage rate and the manual rate for his or her industrial class summed over all workers determines the total WC insurance premium for a small firm. As firm size increases insurers pay less attention to the average experience of the industrial class (the manual rate) and more attention to the safety record of the individual firm. Experience rating of insurance policies refers to the process of adjusting insurance prices... 

At the national level it might be useful to utilise EuroSafe much more in the future, which also records information about accidents in private life (EuroSafe 2006). EuroSafe, the European Association for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, is a network of injury prevention champions dedicated to making Europe a safer place. Occupational health care systems in workplaces could have the proper expertise to utilise the systems provided by EuroSafe. Though there currently exists a national web portal of HLA in Finland (TapaturmaportaaU 2008), the significance of HLA, especially at work places, needs a new type of statistics and effective media to communicate the real, total accident figures. This would support holistic and consistent safety culture. 

---