U.S. adolescents (< 18 years) experience a higher rate of job-related injuries compared with adults. Safety education is considered critical to the prevention of these incidents. To prepare middle- and high-school students for safe and healthy employment, NIOSH and its partners developed a free curriculum, Youth@Work—Talking Safety, built on a theoretical framework of foundational workplace safety and health competencies that are fundamental to all jobs.

On Monday morning at the AIHce, Brendan Moriarty, CIH, CSP, Chubb Insurance, discussed in a workshop the significant potential for an injury to a younger worker. According to NIOSH, an estimated 200,000 young workers are injured on the job in the U.S. every year. About 70,000 are injured seriously enough to go to the emergency room.

Every nine minutes, a U.S. teen gets hurt on the job. With many young people working summer jobs right now, OSHA is targeting teenagers with safety messages designed to educate them about hazards they may face and ways to stay safe on the job.