Personal Injury News

Workplace Injuries And Illnesses In 2004

A total of 4.3 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses were reported in private industry workplaces during 2004, down from 4.4 million in 2003.  These cases occurred at a rate of 4.8 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers, according to the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), U.S. Department of Labor.  This was a decline from the rate of 5.0 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers reported by BLS for 2003 and resulted from a 2.5 percent decrease in the number of cases reported combined with a 1.6 percent  increase in the number of hours worked. 
     
This release is the second in a series of three releases from the BLS covering occupational safety and health statistics in 2004.  The first release, in August 2005, covered work-related fatalities from the 2004 National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.  In December 2005, a third release will be issued three months earlier than it has been in the past and will provide details from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses on the more
seriously injured and ill workers (occupation, age, gender, race, and length of service) and on the circumstances of their injuries and illnesses (nature of the disabling condition, part of body affected, event or exposure, primary source producing the disability, the time of day of occurrence, and the number of hours into the workshift before the occurrence).  “More seriously” is defined in this survey as cases involving days away from work. 
     
Goods producing industries as a whole had an injury and illness rate of 6.5 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers, while service providing industries as a whole had a rate of 4.2 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers.  Both of these rates declined by 0.2 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers from the rates reported for 2003.  Among the goods producing industry sectors, incidence rates during 2004 ranged from 3.8 cases per 100 full-time workers in mining to 6.6 cases per 100 full-time workers in manufacturing.  (See table 1.)  Within the
service providing industry sectors, incidence rates ranged from 0.9 cases per 100 full-time workers in the finance and insurance sector to 7.3 cases per 100 full-time workers in transportation and warehousing.  Among all private industry sectors only the utilities sector experienced a significant increase in the injury and illness rate, rising from 4.4 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers in 2003 to 5.2 cases in 2004. Read more at bls.gov

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	Did You Know?
	There are four general types of slip and fall accidents Trip-and-fall accidents, where there is a foreign object in the walking path. Stump-and-fall accidents, where there is an impediment in the walking surface. Step-and-fall accidents, where there is an unexpected failure or hole in the walking surface Slip-and-fall accidents, in which the interface of the shoe and the floor fails Both the property owner as well as the injured person can be held to varying degrees of responsibility for an injury.