Eye injuries account for 25% of welder workers’ comp claims
What activities and circumstances are proximal to a welding-related occupational eye injury? Researchers categorized and described the activity, initiating process, mechanism of injury, object and/or substance, and the use of protective eyewear from the narrative text data reported for each injury.
Routinely collected workers’ compensation claims over a one year period (2000) were analyzed from a large U.S .insurance provider. An index term search algorithm of occupation, incident, and injury description fields identified 2,209 potential welding related eye injury claims. After detailed review of these claims, 1,353 welders and 822 non-welders were analyzed.