The American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), the world’s oldest professional safety organization, is urging employers to be more active in adopting voluntary national consensus standards and implementing safety and health management systems in response to newly released fatality data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The National Safety Council is alarmed to see a 2% rise in total worker deaths – 5,333 fatal workplace injuries in 2019 compared to 5,250 in 2018 – according to data released on Wednesday, December 16 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses continued their decline in 2013, with slightly more than three million reported by private industry throughout the year – or 3.3 cases per 100 full-time workers.

Nearly 3.0 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses were reported by private industry employers in 2012, resulting in an incidence rate of 3.4 cases per 100 equivalent full-time workers, according to estimates from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.