Steel Erection Fatalities in the Construction Industry

Construction fatalities continue to occur during steel erection. Using 166 case files resulting from Occupational Safety and Heath Administration (OSHA) investigations of steel erection fatalities during the years 2000–2005, the writers examined the data to determine the proximal causes and contributing physical factors. Of the 166 fatal events, results showed proximal cause “falls” represented 125 of the fatal events, “crushed/struck/hit by object” represented 40, and one was caused by electrocution. The rate of fatalities tended to reduce from 2000 to 2005. As a result, OSHA may be reaching one of its goals established following the introduction of the new steel standards in 2002, an annual reduction of 30 fatalities. The results of this study indicate that employer compliance with OSHA’s fall protection standards and instructing employees in recognition and avoidance of unsafe conditions could save lives.     

The Nature of Struck-by Accidents

Construction accidents are broadly categorized into five basic groups, namely falls (from elevation), shock (electrical), caught in/between, struck-by, and other. “Struck-by” accidents accounted for 22% of all construction-related fatalities recorded by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration between 1985 and 1989. Recent (1997 to 2000) data show that the percentage of struck-by accidents constituted 24.6% of the fatalities and serious construction worker injuries. Struck-by accidents primarily involve workers struck by equipment, private vehicles, falling materials, vertically hoisted materials, horizontally transported materials, and trench cave ins. Determining possible causation factors of these accident types is often difficult, due to the broad categories utilized in the accident coding system. This study resulted in gaining insights about the root causes of the struck-by injuries. By finding the root causes, effective methods for accident prevention can be developed.     

Impact of Green Building Design and Construction on Worker Safety and Health

Sustainable, or “green,” rating systems, such as the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), are leading to changes in the way owners, designers, and contractors approach the design, construction, and operation of buildings. The processes and features included in green design and construction may have positive and/or negative impacts on construction worker safety and health. This paper presents the findings of a research study of the impact of green building design and construction practices on construction worker safety and health. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recordable and lost time injury and illness data from green projects (as identified by LEED) and from nongreen projects was collected through a structured questionnaire survey. The data collected was analyzed to test for the presence of a difference in OSHA recordable incident rates (RIRs) and lost time case rates (LTCRs) between green and nongreen projects. It was found that there was suggestive, but inconclusive evidence of a statistically significant difference in the RIRs of the green and nongreen building projects included in the study. No statistically significant difference was found between the LTCRs for the green and nongreen projects included in the study. The study findings provide valuable information to the construction industry for the purposes of project safety planning and the assessment of safety and health on projects.     

Novel immunogenic antigen homologous to hyaluronidase in meningioma

This study sought to identify causal factors for slip, trip and fall accidents occurring during the delivery of mail. Analysis of in-house data produced information about accident circumstances for 1734 fall cases. The most common initiating events in delivery falls were slips and trips. Slips most often occurred on snow, ice or grass, while trips tended to involve uneven pavements, obstacles and kerbs. Nearly one-fifth of falls occurred on steps, with step falls requiring longer absence from work than falls on the level. Half of all falls occurred during November-February and three-quarters of falls occurred between 7 and 9 a.m. Incidence rates for female employees were 50% higher than for their male colleagues. Accident-independent methods included interviews with safety personnel and managers, discussion groups with delivery employees, and a questionnaire survey of employees and managers. These techniques provided data on risk factors related to the task, behaviour, footwear and equipment. Arising from these accident-independent investigations, it is suggested that unsafe working practices, such as reading addresses while walking and taking shortcuts, increase the risk of falls. Organizational issues include management safety activities, training and equipment provision. Measures are discussed that might lead to a reduction in the incidence of delivery fall accidents.     

Effect of Safety and Environmental Variables on Task Durations in Steel Erection

In spite of the efforts by government agencies, labor organizations, and researchers in the field of health and safety, injuries and fatalities continue to affect the construction industry. In 2002 the construction industry had the undesirable distinction of having two of the most dangerous occupations in the United States, with fatalities among structural steel workers at 58.2 per 100,000 workers (fourth highest rate) and among construction laborers at 27.7 per 100,000 workers (ninth highest rate). Costs associated with construction accidents, such as increased insurance premiums and medical expenses, and loss of productivity are also concerns in the industry. It has not been demonstrated how unsafe working conditions affect worker performance, and the impact of unsafe work practices on worker performance has not been quantified. This paper describes a methodology that included direct observation of steel erection activities and statistical analysis of task duration data. The data collected at steel erection sites included safety conditions such as the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), elevation of the work area, environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity, and worker performance in the form of task durations. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis of 186 of steel erection task durations collected over a six-month period showed that the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), the time of day during which the operation was being performed, the elevation at which the work was being performed, and the presence of decking below the work area had statistically significant effects on the durations of steel erection tasks.     

Fatalities in Trenching Operations—Analysis Using Models of Accident Causation

More than 65 construction workers are killed each year due to trench related accidents. Accident prevention begins with having a clear understanding of the causes of these accidents. This paper discusses the analysis of 296 fatality reports related to trenching operations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the 1997–2001 time frame. In this paper, two models will be considered to analyze the fatality reports and to find the major relationships between the “how” and the “why” of trenching fatalities. The first model considers the causes related to physical processes, and the second model evaluates causes that can be linked to human behavior. The understanding of the major links between these two models and other factors will help to develop more effective strategies to prevent trenching fatalities.     

OSHA Regulations Effects on Construction

The financial consequences of the direct and indirect cost of construction accidents is large. Previous cost studies show that accidents add approximately 6.5% to the nation's construction expenditures. However, the data from the present investigation indicate there has been a reduction, during a 5 year interval (1976–1981), in the amount contractors perceive they spend for complying with OSHA rules and regulations. The decrease in terms of percentage of construction cost is from 2.8% to 1.4% for the ENR 400 firms and from 4.5% to 2.4% for the OCA (Ohio) contractors. The foregoing may be due, in part, to either a variation in OSHA enforcement methods, or a change in the standard operating procedures of contractors, or both reasons. Whatever the reason, contractors, both large and small, appear to have learned to cope with OSHA and feel that the associated rules and regulations are less of a monetary burden.     

A task-based approach to assessing lead exposure among iron workers engaged in bridge rehabilitation

The assessment of worker exposures to airborne contaminants in the dynamic environment present at most construction sites poses considerable challenges to the industrial hygienist. In this study, we applied a task-based approach to the assessment of lead exposure among structural steel iron workers engaged in a large, complex bridge rehabilitation project. We evaluated the usefulness of task-based exposure data for the development of worker protection programs. Task-specific and multitask samples were collected, and operation-specific and 8-hr time-weighted averages were calculated. The task-specific data showed significant differences in exposure levels among different tasks. Arithmetic mean exposures varied from 1,357 micrograms/m3 lead for torch cutting and 989 micrograms/m3 for scaling to 31 micrograms/m3 for reaming and 4 micrograms/m3 for drilling. Our task-specific data were compared with the task-based exposure levels presented by OSHA in its Lead Exposure in Construction-Interim Final Rule (29 CFR 1926). There was good general agreement between our results and OSHA's reported data. Task-based data were very useful in exposure assessment and much more precise than full-shift and operation-based measurements in guiding strategies for worker protection. These findings suggest that task-based data should routinely be collected in evaluating exposure to lead and perhaps other toxic substances in construction work.     

Crane-Related Fatalities in the Construction Industry

One of the major causes of fatalities during construction is the use of cranes or derricks during lifting operations. Using the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) case files from fatality investigations during the years 1997–2003, the writers examined the data to determine the proximal causes and contributing physical factors. The research results showed the use of mobile cranes with lattice and telescopic booms, truck or crawler mounted, represented over 84% of the fatalities in the use of cranes/derricks. To reduce the rate of crane fatalities the writers believe that crane operators and riggers should be qualified and requalification should occur every 3?years. Crane safety training must be provided to specialty trade crafts before they are allowed to work around cranes during lifting operations. In addition, a “diligent” competent person [as defined in 29CFR 1926.32(f)] should be in charge of all aspects of lifting operations. Finally, OSHA should improve its system of collecting information during fatality investigations, placing emphasis on intervention strategies to improve usefulness of the investigations to researchers and policymakers inside and outside the Agency.     

Rare electrocution due to powerline contact in a hot-air balloon: comparison with fatalities from blunt trauma

Powerline contact by hot-air balloons is one of the most frequent concurrences in balloon accidents resulting in injury or death. Injuries and deaths are usually a result of blunt trauma from falls. In this report, we describe the aircraft, the circumstances of the accidents and the autopsy data in two powerline contact accidents involving three deaths, one from electrocution and two, from blunt trauma sustained in falls. Appropriate pilot behavior is briefly discussed.     

Analysis of Construction Worker Injuries That Do Not Result in Lost Time

Attempts to examine the root causes of injuries in the construction industry have been largely focused on fatalities and other serious injuries. These efforts were undertaken with the assumption that the root causes of serious injuries could lead to identifying approaches that could prevent the recurrence of similar injuries in the future and that these approaches would also be successful in eliminating many minor injuries. While some injuries may be either minor or serious depending on small differences in worker position, etc., that assumption does not appear to be valid for most injuries. The trends of causes leading to minor injuries are often quite different from those resulting in serious injuries. With this assumption, an examination was conducted to profile nearly 136,000 construction worker injuries, most of which did not result in lost time. Results indicate that these injuries, not resulting in lost time, generally do not fit the profile of injuries that result in fatalities or that are serious. Over half of the injuries in the present study were associated with lacerations (usually of the fingers and hand) and injuries sustained by the lumbar spine, upper extremities, or eyes. The percentage of injuries that involved lacerations was considerably higher for construction than for all other industries. The costs of injuries were found to be quite varied, depending on the part of the body that was injured.     

Fatalities and injuries in the Kuwaiti construction industry

This paper presents an analysis of construction accidents in Kuwait along with accident causation and injuries that can be considered serious or fatal, so that corrective measures can be taken to decrease casualties, resulting in a safer construction industry. The paper evaluates the existing injury and cost reporting-investigation system of construction accidents in government agencies and private firms. This research confirms that construction is the most hazardous industry in Kuwait, with accidents accounting for 48%, 38% and 34% of all disabling injuries and 62%, 38% and 42% of all fatalities in 1994, 1995 and 1996, respectively. These rates are considered high and can be compared to construction accident statistics in the U.S.A. which accounted for 14% of all work-related deaths and 9% of disabling injuries in 1993. Based on the study, falling from a height appears to be the major cause of construction injuries and fatalities in Kuwait. Poor accident records and reporting systems hide the extent of the construction safety problem in Kuwait. In addition, many people at management level are unaware of accident-related costs and the effectiveness of a safety program in reducing project costs.     

In vitro effect of indomethacin on polymorphonuclear leukocyte function in preterm infants

During 1984 to 1988, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigated 10 incidents, with 11 fatalities, involving the inadvertent connection of air-line respirators to inert gas supplies. Seven deaths resulted from connecting an air-line respirator supply hose to a line which normally carried inert gas. Four deaths were caused by leakage or backfill of inert gas into a line which normally carried breathable air. Ten of the deaths were from nitrogen and one from argon. The circumstances of the 11 deaths indicated that coupling compatibility and supervisory oversight were major factors in the inappropriate supply of irrespirable gas to the respirators worn by these workers. Conscientiousness among safety personnel to the hazards of asphyxiation by inert gas, and compliance with current OSHA regulations, the ANSI Z88.2 standard, and NIOSH respirator certification approval regulations would have prevented these fatalities.     

Risk for falls in the elderly. Role of activities of daily living and of the subjective assessment of health status. A case-control study

Prevention and treatment of falls in the elderly are today important questions the primary care physicians has to face. It is known that falls are associated with numerous factors related to health status and demographic variables. The role played by the activities of daily living (ADL) and by a negative subjective health rating of one's own health status, and how both could increase the incidence of diseases due to home accidents, is less known. This case-control study carried out in the accident ward of S. Camillo Hospital in Rome, studied 110 elderly patients, who suffered from fractures caused by falls. The main goal was to identify the possible associations among falls, ADL and lower limb mobility, as well as studying the importance of a positive subjective health rating to prevent these accidents. Controls have been selected in other wards of the same hospital and in an out-patient's department. Results show that the risk of falling is associated with previous falls (odds ratio = 3.81), with poor mobility at home (OR = 2.49), outside home (OR = 2.06), out of one's own area (OR = 1.74), and with a negative subjective health rating (OR 3.33). Multivariate analysis has pointed out that a negative subjective health rating keeps being a statistically significant risk factor for falls (OR = 2.86), independently from the objective health conditions of the subject. Such a negative subjective rating often develops itself just as a consequence of a previous fall without injuries.     

Development and Initial Validation of Sustainable Construction Safety and Health Rating System

This paper presents a study to develop and validate a sustainable construction safety and health (SCSH) rating system. The rating system provides an opportunity to rate projects based on the importance given to construction worker safety and health and the degree of implementation of safety and health elements. A Delphi survey using an expert panel of 12 experienced safety and health professionals representing different sectors of the construction industry was employed to develop the SCSH rating system. The study resulted in a rating system consisting of a total of 50 safety and health elements organized into 13 categories. Each category contains safety and health elements which carry credits based on their effectiveness in preventing construction worker injuries and illnesses. The rating system was initially validated based on data from 25 construction projects and found to accurately represent the safety performance of large projects. The SCSH rating system can be used as an effective tool to develop and plan construction safety and health programs and evaluate the potential safety performance of construction projects.     

Factors which support effective worker participation in health and safety: a survey of New Jersey industrial hygienists and safety engineers

Strategies for increasing worker involvement in health and safety are widespread and have received emphasis in various OSHA reform proposals; however, much remains unknown about the effectiveness of these strategies. This paper draws on a survey of more than 400 New Jersey members of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) and the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) which addressed a broad range of issues relating to health and safety conditions and practices, including the use of worker or labor/management health and safety committees (HSCs) and worker health and safety representatives. Stepwise discriminant analysis was used to explore the relationships between effective participation and variables which describe worksites and potential health and safety resources and barriers. Effective strategies for involving workers appear to be conditional on a number of variables, most importantly on worker activism and the effective use of formal union negotiations. Findings are consistent with studies from both the U.S. and abroad which emphasize the role of unions in shaping opportunities for effective worker participation.     

Project Performance Control in Reconstruction Projects

Cost, schedule, and quality are the main indicators of performance in construction projects. These indicators are highly interrelated and require some balance and trade-off among them to achieve efficient overall control over project performance. Focusing on these performance indicators, the primary objective of this study is to investigate the use of conventional control techniques in projects involving reconstruction of occupied buildings. To facilitate this analysis, performance data have been collected, using a questionnaire survey, from 25 reconstruction and 15 new construction projects. The survey was followed by structured interviews with construction practitioners and project participants to elicit success-related factors and to identify some of the unique problems affecting the control of reconstruction projects. Using the collected data, performance comparison was conducted between new and reconstruction projects along with a detailed analysis of the suitability of existing techniques for the control of the cost, schedule, and quality in reconstruction projects.     

Identifying Root Causes of Construction Accidents

Construction accident investigation techniques and reporting systems identify what type of accidents occur and how they occurred. Unfortunately, they do not properly address why the accident occurred by identifying possible root causes, which is only possible by complementing these techniques with theories of accident causation and theories of human error. The uniqueness of the construction industry dictates the need to tailor many of the contemporary accident causation models and human error theories. This paper presents an accident root causes tracing model (ARCTM) tailored to the needs of the construction industry. ARCTM proposes that accidents occur due to three root causes: (1) Failing to identify an unsafe condition that existed before an activity was started or that developed after an activity was started; (2) deciding to proceed with a work activity after the worker identifies an existing unsafe condition; and (3) deciding to act unsafe regardless of initial conditions of the work environment. In addition, ARCTM emphasizes the need to determine how unsafe conditions exist before or develop after an activity is started and proposes that these unsafe conditions are due to four causes: (1) Management actions∕inactions; (2) unsafe acts of worker or coworker; (3) non-human-related event(s); (4) an unsafe condition that is a natural part of the initial construction site conditions. Thus, ARCTM acknowledges the possible contribution of both management and labor to the accident process. This perspective helps in better explaining accidents on construction sites and in identifying areas where prevention efforts should be directed, so that labor and management may provide more effective measures for preventing accident occurrence.     

Alcohol in fatal and nonfatal injuries: a comparison of coroner and emergency room data from the same county

Although alcohol is thought to be associated with severity of injury, relatively little data are available that compares alcohol's involvement in injury cases treated in the emergency room (ER) with coroner cases of injury fatality, both coming from the same county. Data from a probability sample of casualty patients 18 years and older treated at the University of Mississippi Medical Center ER in Jackson during a 6-month period (n = 275) are compared with data from coroner reports of all fatalities from unnatural causes among those 18 and older in the same county during a 1-year period surrounding the 6 months of data collection in the ER (n = 222). The two samples are compared on demographic characteristics, cause of injury, place of injury, and alcohol use before the event. A significantly larger proportion of the coroner sample was positive for alcohol (57%) and intoxicated (36%), compared with the proportion of those in the ER sample breathalyzed within 6 hr of injury, and reporting no drinking after the event who were positive (15%) and intoxicated (6%). Differences were most pronounced for motor vehicle accidents and fires. Violence-related injuries were more likely in the coroner sample (32%) than in the ER sample (16%), and they were more likely to involve alcohol at levels of intoxication. Those in the coroner sample were also more likely to be alcohol-positive for injuries occurring in all places except the home of another and the workplace. Using logistic regression, gender (male) and site (coroner) were predictive of a positive blood alcohol across all causes of injury combined. Gender (female), being alcohol-positive and site (coroner) were significantly predictive of motor vehicle accidents. Alcohol was not found to be a significant predictor for falls, other accidents, or injuries resulting from violence. Data suggest that alcohol's association with severity of injury varies by cause of injury.     

Fatal and hospitalized injuries resulting from the 1994 Northridge earthquake

BACKGROUND: The Northridge earthquake struck Los Angeles on 17 January 1994, originating from a previously unknown thrust fault. The earthquake measured 6.7 on the Richter scale and caused extensive damage to buildings, utilities and roadways. This report describes injuries occurring in the Northridge earthquake which resulted in death or hospital admission. METHODS: Earthquake-related deaths were identified by the Los Angeles Department of the Coroner. All 78 hospitals in Los Angeles County were screened for earthquake-related admissions and were found in 16 of them. Coroner's records and medical records from the 16 hospitals were individually reviewed to identify earthquake-related injuries and to obtain information about the injury. RESULTS: A total of 171 earthquake-related injuries was identified in Los Angeles County, 33 were fatal and 138 required hospital admission. Injury rates were approximately equal by gender and increased significantly with increasing age. Most of the fatalities were due to building collapse, and most of the hospital-admitted injuries were caused by falls or being hit by objects. Motor vehicle injuries and burns were also common causes of injury. Head and chest injuries were common among fatalities, and extremity injuries were the most common among those admitted to a hospital. CONCLUSION: Earthquakes cause injuries through many mechanisms, and a clearer understanding of these pathways can help focus prevention strategies. Research combining comprehensive surveillance with risk factor assessment can help identify behaviours and circumstances increasing the risk of injury in an earthquake.