U.S. National Safety Council

One of the best ways to determine that potential is to examine the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), which by law in most jurisdictions must be provided by the manufacturer for any hazardous material used in the workplace and made available to the employees by plant management. The MSDS provides all the information necessary to determine the hazard potential and the requirements for control of any hazardous substance. Still other information can be found in the various guidelines published by the American Industrial Health Association, or by the U.S. National Safety Council, or by NIOSH (the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) or various other national, state, or provincial government bodies. (See Appendix II for information on sources.) Once you have an inventory, of course, you can start relating potential health problems to possible sources in particular areas. Also, in the process of preparing this report, you will begin to build an invaluable library that will stand you in good stead for further consideration of the problems at hand. 

U.S. National Safety Council. 2012. The total cost of injuries How much do you really pay http //www.nsc.org/news resources/injury and death statistics/Pages/Estimatingthe CostsofUnintentionallnjuries.aspx, downloaded, March 21, 2014. 

U.S. National Safety Council. 2013. Injury Facts. Itasca, IL National Safety Council, http // www.mhi.org/downloads/industrygroups/ease/technicalpapers/2013-National-Safety-Council-Injury-Facts.pdf, downloaded March 21, 2014. 

The most typical safety measurement tool is to track the number of accidents. The types of data needed to do this are costs of system downtime (and lost productivity and product or market share), equipment damaged during an accident, accident cleanup, equipment replacement, and, of course, personnel injuries and death (including medical costs, workman s compensation, and potential lawsuits). These data can be easily trended and tracked on a monthly or quarterly basis. You can then compare your statistics to national averages. The U.S. National Safety Council (many countries publish comparable information at the federal governmental level) publishes accident costs across all industries. These costs include estimates of lost wages, medical expenses, insurance administration costs, and uninsured costs. 

U.S. National Safety Council, (1991). These figures include estimates of wage losses, medical expenses, insurance administration costs, and uninsured costs. 

Work accidents in Europe and the United States in 1980 (from Europaisches Parlament 1983, (1) Deutscher Bundestag 1985, (2) U.S. National Safety Council 1985). 

The chemical industry has an excellent record of meeting that challenge. In 1985, the latest year for which national statistics are available, chemical companies reporting to the National Safety Council had a lost-time injury rate of 0.52 injuries per 200,000 hours worked, compared to a rate of 1.98, nearly four times higher, for all U.S. industry (1). 

Fortunately, for school children, in spite of the inactivity of the federal government, local education authorities in many U.S. states and Canadian provinces have decided to adopt a very simplistic but effective fire test, namely the National Safety Council Standard School bus seat upholstery fire block test, which was approved by the National Conference on School Transportation as part of the National Standards for School Buses and National Standards for School Bus Operations.76 The test involves putting a few sheets of newspaper in a paper bag, placing the bag on a school bus seat and igniting it with a match. If the seat is made of adequate materials, most of it will not bum and if the materials are unsafe, the seat padding and cover will be completely destroyed. Unfortunately, this test has not been adopted by all the local education authorities and it is being applied in different ways. The ASTM subcommittee E05.17, on fire safety and transportation, is working on the development of a paper bag seat test method based on the National Safety Council Standard. 

OSHA. 1990. National Research Council Recommendations Concerning Chemical Hygiene in Laboratories (Non-Mandatory). Occupational Safety and Health Standards. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Code of Federal Regulations. 29 CFR 1450, Appendix A. 

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]... 

The grandfather of them all is the National Safety Council, mentioned earlier in this chapter. The NSC was founded in 1913 and charted by the U.S. Congress in 19S3. It is the nation s leading advocate for safety and health. Its mission is to educate and influence society to adopt safety, health, and environmental policies, practices, and procedures that prevent and mitigate human suffering and economic losses arising from preventable causes. 

Now to get the discussion down to a more mundane subject, one in which most all safety practitioners participate — motor vehicle operation. According to Injury Facts, 2001 Edition, a National Safety Council publication, motor vehicle operation resulted in 43,000 fatalities in the United States in 2000, and 2,300,000 persons sustained disabling injuries (p. 82). Assume a U.S. population of 283,800,000 the probability of a resident, on average, being killed in an auto accident in 2000 was 1 in 6600. The probability of sustaining a disabling injury was 1 in 123. 

U.S. workers are safer on the job than in their homes and conunnnities. Home and communities deaths are np 75 percent. According to the National Safety Council 2011 Injury Facts, for every worker killed on the job, approximately 15 workers are killed off the job. Nearly three times as many workers suffer nonfatal injuries off the job as on the job. (NSC, 2012b)... 

According to the latest injury statistics released by the National Safety Council, for every one injury at work there are three home injuries (non-work related) reported. Are U.S. homes so unsafe Or are these statistics now showing the result of many years of the industrial injury-reporting fear factor Are employees taking work injuries home because of the fear factor ... 

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... 

The cost of workplace injuries is enormous. In 1992 the U.S. economy lost 115.9 billion from work-related accidents 62.5 billion from wage and productivity losses, 22.0 billion from medical costs, 14.5 billion from administration expenses, 3.4 billion from motor vehicle damages, 10.2 billion from indirect employer costs, and 3.3 billion from fire losses (National Safety Council 1993). In addition to monetary losses, work injuries cause pain and suffering and frequently result in permanent disabilities that impede the normal enjoyment of life. The National Safety Council (1993) estimated that for every dollar of monetary loss accidents lower the quality of life on average by two dollars. With a two-to-one quality-of-life loss ratio the total cost of workplace accidents in 1992 was 347.7 billion, about 5.8 percent of 1992 U.S. GDP. 

Slips and falls may appear to be simple trivial accidents, but they result in thousands of deaths and cost billions of dollars in direct and indirect cost [59]. According to statistics compiled by the National Safety Council, falls are the second leading cause of accidental deaths. Over 40% of the dollars spent on workers compensation in the U.S. food service industry are due to the results of slips and falls. Annual expense from slips and falls is about 12,000 per restaurant for an average of 3-4 accidents per year. In 1988, for example, more than 12,000 people died from accidental falls. In public areas such as hotels, motels, and restaurants, slips and falls occur more frequently than any other accidents. Slips and falls can result in serious injuries, especially to the head and back. The floor surface is the single most important factor contributing to slips and falls. The slip-fall relationship between the floor snrface and the floor coating is also an important consideration, as it relates to liability and worker s compensation, especially in the fast food industry, where a floor can be wet or greasy. 

Healthy People 2010 Objectives from the US. Deparunent of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has made the facts available relevant to occupational injuries and illnesses. Every five seconds a worker is injured. Every ten seconds a worker is temporarily or permanently disabled. Each day, an average of 137 persons die from work-related diseases, and an additional 17 die from workplace injuries on the job. Each year, about 70 youths under 18 years of age die from injuries at work and 70,000 require treatment in a hospital anergency room. In 1996, an estimated 11,000 workers were disabled each day due to work-related injuries. That same year, the National Safety Council estimated that on-the-job injuries cost society 121 billion, including lost wages, lost productivity, administrative expenses, health care, and other costs (National Safety Council Injury Facts, 2010). A study published in Jnly 1997 reports that the 1992 combined U.S. economic burden for occupational illnesses and injuries was an estimated 171 billion (U.S. Department of Conunerce, www.commerce.gov, 2001). 

In general, safety is not something that enployers think of as a cost-saving measure. However, with the National Safety Council noting that there are 3.4 billion work-related injuries aimuaUy with 156.2 billion spent each year on work-related injuries, safety measures to avoid the cost of injuries become a viable budget consideration. Specifically to the question of hand protection, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control cite 1,080,000 hand injuries annually with visits to the emergency room. At the same time, there are 110,000 days annually away firom work due to hand and finger lacerations. 

Sources reviewed include studies by the National Safety Council, NHTSA, U. S. Office of Science and Technology and numerous safety researchers. See Sam Peltzman. "The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation." Journal of Political Economy 83 (August 1975) 677-725 especially pp. 678-680 and 718-721. 

The National Health Survey conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service is a continuous sample of households to record health data including those injuries experienced by members of the households within two weeks prior to the interview. Accident figures reported by the National Safety Council are based on this sample. In 1984, 39,000 out of the nation s 85 million households were interviewed. The survey of occupational injuries and diseases conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics involves a nationwide sample of approximately 280,000 companies. The figures are not comparable to the National Survey data due to differences in accident definitions and employment coverage. 

Rough estimates only exist for occupational injuries that are not required to be reported to the national safety administrations. The ratio between recordable cases (three lost workdays in West Germany) and first aid accidents is supposed to be approximately 1 9 (Skiba 1985) or 1 10 (Krause 1974). Similar results were indicaded by other studies. The U.S. Industrial Safety Research Council (Swain 1985) reports a relationship of 1 10 for disabling and nondisabling injuries. Heinrich (1959) suggests a figure of 1 serious accident to every 29 nonserious accidents in the U.S. industries. The relationships between serious and minor injuries, near misses and unsafe acts, will be discussed in detail in a later section. 

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