Occupational Safety and Health statistics

Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Safety and Health Statistics... 

The Handbook is divided in chapters for each of the major programs for which the BLS has data collection and analysis responsibilities. Chapter 9, Occupational Safety and Health Statistics is divided into two major subdivisions Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, and Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. 

U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Statistics 441 G Street, NW Washington, DC 20212 (202) 523-1382... 

The act requires the secretary to develop and maintain an effective program of collection, compilation, and analysis of occupational safety and health statistics. 29 CFR 1904, Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, requires employers to record information on the occurrence of injuries and illnesses in their workplaces. The employer must record work-related injuries and illnesses that meet one or more of certain recording criteria. OSHA rules found in 29 CFR part 1904 require all employers with 11 or more employees to keep OSHA injury and illness records, unless classified in a specific low-hazard industry. Employers with 10 or fewer employees must keep OSHA records, if OSHA or the Bureau of Labor Statistics informs them in writing that they must keep records. Employers may use the OSHA 301 or an equivalent form that documents the same information. Some state workers compensation, insurance, or other reports may be acceptable substitutes, as long as they provide the same information as the OSHA 301. The OSHA Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses (Form 300) serves as a means to document and classify work-related injuries and illnesses. The log also documents the extent and severity of each case. 

Hong Kong Labour Department. (2007). Occupational safety and health statistics 2007 [cited 1st Sept 2008]. Available from http //www.labour.gov.hk/eng/osh/pdf/OSHstatistics07.pdf. 

OSHA stands for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the United States government. OSHA is responsible for ensuring that workers are provided with a safe working environment. Table 1-2 contains several OSHA definitions applicable to accident statistics. 

To address its task, the committee held four public sessions in which it heard presentations from officials of EPA s Office of Research and Development CDC s National Center for Environmental Health, National Center for Health Statistics, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health the Washington State Department of Health the International Life Sciences biomonitoring committee the American Chemistry Council Crop-Life America the Association of Public Health Laboratories Environmental Defense and academe. 

The website of the U.S. Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) can be found at http //www.osha.gov. The OSHA home page contains information of value to health professionals, links to publications, technical data, and advisory information. The site has links to compliance assistance, laws and regulations, news releases, safety/health topics, statistics, and more. 

The National Safety Council of the United States reports volumes of statistics on recordable work injuries and illnesses based on recordkeeping requirements of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The 1995 figures were based on 124 million employees. [37]... 

Table XI lists several current epidemiologic studies which improve upon earlier design limitations such as statistical power and exposure assessment. Researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) are nearing completion of a large cohort mortality study of 7,000 U.S. chemical workers from 14 companies which produced trichlorophenol, 2,4,5-T and pentachloro-phenol. A particular asset of this study is the availability of good information on type and duration of exposure of the workers.

Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Identifica tion, classification, and regulation of toxic substances posing a potential occupa tional carcinogenic risk. Fed. Register 42 54147-54247 (Oct. 4, 1977). Schneiderman, M. A., Decouil4, P., and Brown, C. C., Thresholds for environmen tal cancer Biologic and statistical considerations. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci 329 92-130 (1979). 

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) also lists hazardous materials that may pose a health hazard to emergency responders. They publish the NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards, which can be obtained free from the agency. During the statistical period from 1996 to 2000, over 6000 transportation accidents involving toxic chemicals were reported in the United States. Those accidents resulted in more than 50 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and thousands of persons evacuated from their homes or sheltered in place. Some of these chemicals are listed in detail in the appropriate chapters of this book. 

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH 1997) states that musculoskeletal disorders, which include disorders of the back, trunk, upper extremity, neck, and lower extremity are one of the 10 leading work-related illnesses and injuries in the United States. Praemer et al, (1992) report that work-related upper-extremity disorders (WUEDs), which are formally defined by the Biureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as cumulative trauma illnesses, account for 11.0 % of aU work-related musculoskeletal disorders (illnesses). For comparison, occupational low-back disorders account for more than 51.0% of aU WRMDs. According to BLS (1995), the cumulative trauma illnesses of upper extremity accounted for more than 60% of the occupational illnesses reported in 1993. These work-related illnesses, which include hearing impairments due to occupational noise exposure, represent 6.0% of aU reportable work-related injuries and illnesses (Marras 1996). 

The purpose of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability. The CDC provides limited information on occupational safety and health. For example, their web page has information about accident causes and prevention, back belts, cancer—occupational exposure, effects of workplace hazards on male reproductive health, latex allergies, needle stick, occupational injiuies, teen workers, and violence in the workplace (see website http //www.cdc.gov). The Center for Health Statistics is located within CDC and provides basic health statistics on the U.S. population. This information is used to identify potential occupational health risks by occupational health researchers (see website http / / WWW.cdc.gov/nchs). 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the principal fact-finding agency for the federal government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics (see website http //stats.bls.gov). It collects, processes, analyzes, and disseminates essential statistical data. Among the data are occupational safety and health data, including annual reports, by industry, of rates of injuries, illnesses, and fatalities (http // stats.bls.gov/oshhome.htm). 

There are four main uses of injury statistics (1) to identify high-risk jobs or work areas, (2) to evaluate company health and safety performance, (3) to evaluate the effectiveness of hazard-abatement approaches, and (4) to identify factors related to illness and injiuy causation. An illness and injuryreporting and analysis system requires that detailed information must be collected about the characteristics of illness and injuries and their frequency and severity. The Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970) established iUness and injury reporting and recording requirements that are mandatory for aU employers, with certain exclusions such as small establishments and government agencies. Regulations have been developed to define how employers are to adhere to these requirements (BLS 1978). 

Discrimination, price, 681-682 Diseases, occupational. See also Occupational safety and health definition of, 1168-1170 descriptions of, 1167, 1169-1170 statistics related to, 1157, 1173-1174 Dispatching, 1723-1725 basic rules, 1723-1724 composite rules, 1724-1725 first-come-first-served (FCFS), 1511-1513 major activities of, 1770 notation used in modeling of, 1719-1722 rules, dispatching, 1511, 1513 Dispensing (solder paste), 425, 426 Display systems, virtual environment, 2502 Distance, computer screen viewing, 1197 Distance learning, 940 Distributed commerce model, 271-272 Distributed component object model (DCOM), 721... 

It would be useful to check these impressions against the official statistics on occupational risk collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), but these are notoriously unreliable. Indeed, the National Research Council, an offshoot of the National Academy of Sciences that reports on public policy issues, found the BLS data inadequate for monitoring the effectiveness of safety programs (Saddler, 1987). There are several problems. First, the data are collected as part of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) reporting system, which subjects them to distorting incentive effects. Firms are required to maintain logs of fatal and nonfatal accidents, but they have an incentive to underreport this information since it could be used as evidence to support workers compensation or tort claims by workers, and because... 

Growing pressure from unions and industries eventually led to the passage of the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970 with the objective to assure so far as possible every man and woman in the nation safe and healthful working conditions. When congress developed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, it did so after consideration of the following statistics ... 

To determine the industries likely to use a chemical, the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, the Organic Chemical Producers Data Base, and the National Occupational Hazard Survey may be of help. This last source represents the only comprehensive industrial exposure survey. Under its mandate in the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, NIOSH conducted a two and a half year statistically structured survey of United States workplaces to determine the levels of chemicals, trademark products, or physical agents to which workers were being exposed by job title. The Inventory of Chemicals in Commerce recently assembled by EPA s Office of Toxic Substances also contains data on chemical production by site as well as a coded production volume. EPA can also use Section 8 of TSCA to collect chemical use data, but has not done so to date. 

It replaces the American National Standard for Uniform Record Keeping for Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, ANSI Z16.4-1977, and USA Standard Method of Recordkeeping and Measuring Work Injury Experience, ANSI Z16.1-1967. This standard is a development of the old Z16.1, which had been in use since 1937, before it was replaced by the (for injury and iUness statistical research) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) system. The standard is useful in determining what kinds of events to evaluate. It includes statistical tools, including control charts, for data analysis. 

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