Workplace Injuries

Classification and Prevalence

Taxonomies for classifying workplace injuries vary considerably, and often correspond to how governmental agencies (e.g., BLS, Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA]) classify information on both workplace injuries and the industries in which they occur. Each year in the United States, for example, the BLS collects workplace injury data from thousands of work establishments. Instead of adopting a particular classification system here, however, we classify workplace injuries on two dimensions that refer to the nature of the injury and transcend industry sector: timing (acute or chronic) and physical severity (minor or major). Acute workplace injuries have sudden onset, and examples of these include cuts and bruises, sprains, needlesticks, and burns. A chronic injury persists for a longer period of time and may include a category of injuries including carpal tunnel syndrome attributed to repetitive strain (e.g., keyboarding, some assembly-line tasks). Within this definition of chronic injuries, we do not include workplace illnesses that characterize longer-term exposure to harmful substances, including poisoning and radiation, or possible interactions between these harmful substances and social contagion like sick building syndrome. Alongside injury timing, the physical severity of injuries ranges from negligible irritation to death. The consequences of a minor injury might be some on-the-job first aid, little suffering for the victim, and no significant loss of work, whereas a more major injury might involve hospitalization, more widespread suffering for the victim and family, and prolonged and even total loss of life and work.

Although workplace injuries can occur in any employment situation and wide variation does exist in workplace injuries by industry, a number of occupations and workplaces consistently rank among the most dangerous as measured by worker fatalities. For example, at the time of this writing, fishing and logging ranked as the two most dangerous occupations in America, with death rates nearly 18 and 30 times, respectively, that of a typical American workplace (i.e., 4.0 per 100,000 workers). Thus in terms of events in dangerous workplaces, falling trees in forests, drowning in open water, traveling to or from high altitudes (69.8 deaths per 100,000 workers for pilots and navigators and 69.8 deaths per 100,000 workers for structural metal workers), and car crashes on highways (drivers and sales workers such as pizza delivery drivers face 37.9 deaths per 100,000 workers) are, on average, the most dangerous work situations facing U.S. workers. Data reported in the BLS's annual Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses suggest that millions of nonfatal workplace injuries occur in workplaces every year. Private industry, for example, reported approximately 4.4 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses in 2003. We believe that figures for nonfatal workplace injuries are conservative at best, and leave it up to the reader to explore the injury classification system, industrial and occupational rates, and systemic threats to reliable and valid workplace injury data relevant to their context.

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