ANALYSIS OF FATALITIES RECORDED BY OSHA

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has had the l ong-standing mandate to promulgate standards and to enforce them. Anot her mandate is for OSHA to collect injury and illness information. Whi le vast amounts of information have been collected over the past two d ecades, only isolated studies have been conducted to evaluate that inf ormation. An independent study was conducted on selected injury data p ertinent to the construction industry. This analysis focused on those areas in which the greatest numbers of violations have been recorded a nd those in which the greatest number of fatalities have occurred. Thi s examination of the data revealed some interesting trends. Some of th e findings confirmed the work of other research efforts and others app ear to be unique to this study. The injury data can be useful to ident ify key areas that warrant special attention. Falls continue to be the major cause of fatalities. Safety efforts must be focused on fall pro tection if dramatic improvements in safety performance are to be made. Through the examination of the existing data it was concluded that th e injury data is not consistently coded and this leads to less meaning ful information.