Occupational Health in the USA

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 28 Feb 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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National Center for Health Statistics

Improvements in workplace safety constitute a major public health achievement in the twentieth century.

Despite important accomplishments, preventable injuries and deaths continue to occur.

In 2001 the occupational injuries with lost workdays rate, 2.6 per 100 full-time equivalents (FTEs) in the private sector, was at its lowest level in three decades. The industries reporting the highest injury rates in 2001 were transportation, communication, and public utilities (4.2) and construction (3.9) .

Of the total 8,786 fatal work injuries in 2001, one-third resulted from the September 11th terrorist attacks. Excluding the September 11 fatalities, the occupational injury death rate in 2001 was the same as in 2000, 4.3 deaths per 100,000 employed workers.

Mining (including oil and gas extraction), the industry with the highest death rate in 2001 (30.0 per 100,000), accounted for 3 percent of occupational injury deaths, excluding deaths from the September 11th attacks.

The industry accounting for the largest percentage of occupational injury deaths, construction (21 percent), had a death rate of 13.3 per 100,000. A total of 2,859 pneumoconiosis deaths, for which pneumoconiosis was either the underlying or nonunderlying cause of death, occurred in 2000, compared with 4,151 deaths in 1980.

Pneumoconiosis deaths are primarily associated with occupational exposures and can be prevented through effective control of worker exposure to occupational dusts.