At the time of their accidents, Jeremy Lewis was 27, Josh Potter 25. The men lived within 75 miles of each other. Both were married with two children about the same age. Both even had tattoos of their children’s names.
OSHA report shows high cost of workplace accidents
March 6, 2015
A new report from OSHA shows how workplace injuries and illnesses can force working families out of the middle class and into poverty. Adding Inequality to Injury: The Costs of Failing to Protect Workers on The Job explores the heavy costs of occupational injuries on workers, their families and the economy.
“You’ll shoot your eye out kid,” Santa replies in the 1980s movie classic A Christmas Story, when Ralphie asks for a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. That phrase has become synonymous with eye safety in a joking manner.In reality, personal protection equipment (PPE) isn’t laughable when thousands of people are blinded, injured, or killed each year from accidents that could have been prevented or minimized if appropriate PPE had been used.
He walked into the grain storage bin on his own two feet, but left in an ambulance. A 35-year-old employee of the Beattie Farmers Union Cooperative had to have all the toes on his left foot amputated after his foot became entangled in an auger that was inadvertently turned on while he was cleaning out a bin.
No one should have to sacrifice their life for their livelihood, because a nation built on the dignity of work must provide safe working conditions for its people."
A relative of a badly injured teen who fell through a skylight while shoveling snow on the rooftop of a Westwood, Mass., business said it’s time for everyone to get off the roof — it’s just too dangerous, according to an article in the Boston Herald.
Elisabeth A. Scotland plunged about 25 feet down an elevator shaft onto the top of an elevator car on May 16, 2014, after attending a Red Sox game at the team’s Fenway Park stadium in Boston.
Working at height remains one of the biggest causes of fatalities and major injuries. Common cases include falls from ladders and through fragile surfaces. “Work at height” means work in any place where, if there were no precautions in place, a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury (for example a fall through a fragile roof).
Falls-from-ladders are a leading cause of fall injury and death. In the US, more than 500,000 people a year are treated, and about 300 people die, from ladder-related fall injuries. The estimated annual cost of ladder injuries in the US is $11 billion, including work loss, medical, legal, liability, and pain and suffering expenses.