Page 29 - Occupational Health & Safety, March 2019

Civilian Occupations with High Fatal Work Injury Rates in 2017
Fishers and related fishing workers Logging workers Aircraft pilots and flight engineers Roofers Refuse and recyclable material collectors Structural iron and steel workers Driver/sales workers and truck drivers
Farmers, ranchers, other agricultural managers
First-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers
Electrical power line installers and repairers
1,000
99.8
not distributed randomly,” they write. “As the CPWR surveillance results show, they are disproportionately high among small- er employers, and also among employers who employ primarily immigrant work- ers.” Such employers are less likely than larger employers to have even basic health and safety procedures in place.
“The composite rate for all traumatic injuries was lower in 2015 than in 2003, even though it increased during 2012-2015. However, this was not the case for fatal falls,” the article’s conclusion states. “Be- cause falls account for such a large propor- tion of all deaths, they disproportionately affected the composite trend in the last de- cade. If we ignored falls, the industry fared well. If we focused solely on falls, it was as if the industry had made no progress in pre- vention in that decade. Progress had been made, but progress had also been lost.”
The authors conclude that New York City—with intensified inspections of smaller and less well capitalized construc- tion projects, as well as a 2017 mandate requiring construction safety training— shows there are ways to address the prob- lem. Permitting, licensing, and criminal prosecution may be powerful tools for promoting safety by requiring that only qualified employers and workers are in the industry, they write.
OSHA’s Fall Prevention Training Guide for Employers
OSHA’s Fall Prevention Training Guide3 of- fers several 5-10 minute toolbox talks that employers can use to train workers on fall protection and prevention, fact sheets in English and Spanish, and bilingual booklet on ladder safety. The first toolbox talk in the document concerns ladder safety—an especially important topic in March.
The guide’s advice for trainers section recommends doing these things to get workers actively involved in the safety meetings:
■ Ask questions instead of simply giving them information. After you ask a question, wait a short time to let people think, then call on volunteers to answer.
■ Ask about personal experiences, which can help the group see how the topic is relevant to them. You could ask: “Has anyone here fallen off a ladder? What happened?”
■ Make sure everyone has a chance to talk, but if a crew member is talking too much, invite someone else to speak.
■ Never make fun of anyone or put any- one down, especially for asking questions.
■ Don’t fake it. If you don’t know the answer to a question, do not guess. Write it down and promise to get back to the questioner.
■ Stick to the topic. If questions or comments move too far from the topic, tell them their concerns can be addressed later, either privately or in a future safety meeting.
The second toolbox talk concerns scaf- folding safety. It covers designing, using, and maintaining scaffolding once it has been erected.
Toolbox talk three is about safe roofing work. It includes typical fall hazards (floor openings, unprotected leading edge work, skylights, etc.), the elements of personal fall arrest systems and the need for work- ers to inspect theirs before each use, and the use of guardrails, netting, and other protection systems.
Workers are to be trained on hazard recognition and on the OSHA fall protec- tion standard.
Jerry Laws is the editor of Occupational Health & Safety.
REFERENCES
1. https://www.osha.gov/StopFallsStandDown/ 2. https://academic.oup.com/annweh/ar-
ticle/62/Supplement_1/S25/5096686
3. https://www.cpwr.com/sites/default/files/ publications/KF2018-lessons-from-a-decade. pdf and https://www.osha.gov/Publications/ OSHA3666.pdf
Total fatal work injuries = 5,147 All-worker fatal injury rate = 3.5
41
55 59
91 30
14
987
258
53 26
750
500
250
48.6 45.2
35.0 33.4
26.8 24.0
21.0 18.7
0 50
100 150
Number of fatal work injuries
Fatal work injury rate
(per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers)
84.3
www.ohsonline.com
MARCH 2019 | Occupational Health & Safety 23
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