os sum 01/01/95 ISSUES 95-3 Safer Construction...1990's ISSUES IN LABOR STATISTICS __________________________________________________________ U.S. Department of Labor Summary 95-3 Bureau of Labor Statistics January 1995 Safer Construction Workplaces Evident During The Early 1990s Construction workers build our Nation's highways and homes, erect its workplaces, and keep these structures in good repair. In the process, these workers traditionally have faced a much higher risk of serious injury than workers on factory floors and other worksites. Since the early 1970s, the construction industry's incidence of injuries and illnesses resulting in lost worktime typically has exceeded the national rates by a wide margin--usually by more than 60 percent. But construction's safety picture appears to have brightened somewhat in the early 1990s, even though many of the industry's potentially dangerous working conditions (such as working at elevations, in uncertain weather, and under time constraints) still lurk. The accompanying chart shows a decline in the construction industry's rate of injuries and illnesses serious enough to require workers to take time off from work or to lighten or restrict their workload for each of the years 1991-93. Its 1992 and 1993 rates (respectively, 5.8 and 5.5 per 100 equivalent full- time workers), in fact, were the lowest on record for the industry since the mid-1970s. Moreover, the sheer size of the 1991-93 rate declines helped narrow the persistent gap in rates of serious injury and illness between it and the private sector as a whole. In 1990, the lost workday case rate in construction (6.7 per 100 workers) was 63 percent higher than the national rate (4.1 per 100 workers). In 1993, the corresponding rate was 45 percent higher(a construction rate of 5.5 compared with a 3.8 rate nationally), the smallest spread between the two ever recorded by BLS. And in 1993, the rate gap nearly closed between construction and certain other hazardous industries. That year, the frequency of lost workday injuries and illnesses in construction (5.5 per 100 workers) differed little from the rate in manufacturing (5.3) or the rate in transportation and public utilities (5.4). In the construction industry, injury and illness rates and hours of work usually move in the same direction in a given year. But between 1992 and 1993, hours of work rose by 5.5 percent while the number of lost workday cases remained about the same. Injury and illness characteristics BLS recently began surveying the "who and how" of cases involving days away from work in the construction industry and the number of days lost. In 1992, nearly 210,000 such incidents were reported, half of them requiring at least 7 days away from work to recuperate. (Because of limited resources, the characteristics of another 21,000 construction cases involving just restricted work activity were not studied in more detail here.) The accompanying table shows the most common disabling conditions sustained by construction workers and the leading ways in which these injuries and illnesses involving days away from work happened. Serious "sprains and strains" was, by far, the principal physical characteristic of construction workers seriously injured, accounting for nearly two-fifths of the 210,000 cases reported in 1992. Such sprains commonly affected the back. "Fractures," "cuts, lacerations," and "bruises, contusions" together composed another fourth of that case total. Overexertion from lifting, pulling, or pushing heavy or unwieldy objects was the leading way in which disabling injury or illness occurred; such a disabling event was mentioned in nearly a fourth of the 1992 construction cases. Next in frequency was being struck by an object, followed by falls to a lower level. Given the nature of the industry, falls from elevations were a much larger share of that industrys case total (12 percent) than their share of all private industry cases (5 percent). Injuries and illnesses in construction industries resulting in days away from work, selected characteristics, 1992 ------------------------------------------------------------ Percent Percent Disabling condition of Disabling event of total total ------------------------------------------------------------ All cases 100% All cases 100% Sprains, strains 38 Overexertion 23 Fractures 10 Struck by object 18 Cuts, lacerations 9 Fall to lower level 12 Bruises, contusions 8 Struck against object 8 Multiple injuries 3 Fall on same level 6 All other conditions 32 All other events 33 ------------------------------------------------------------ For more information on nonfatal incidents in construction and other private industries covered by the Bureau's Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, contact the Office of Safety, Health and Working Conditions, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2 Massachusetts Ave., NE, Washington, DC 20212- 0001, (202)606-6180. Separate information on fatal work incidents is available from the Bureau's Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, first conducted nationally in 1992. Information in this report is available to sensory impaired individuals upon request. Voice phone: (202) 606- 7828; TDD phone: (202) 606-5897; TDD message referral phone: 1-800-326-2577. This information is in the public domain and, with appropriate credit, may be reproduced without permission. NOTE: The original issue, including its chart, is available upon request at the BLS telephone number listed above.