Fatal occupational injuries at road construction sites, 2003–07, Monthly Labor Review Online, November 2010

Fatal occupational injuries at road construction sites, 2003–07

Stephen Pegula

Stephen Pegula is an economist in the Office of Safety, Health, and Working Conditions, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Email: Pegula_S@bls.gov.

During the 5 years from 2003 to 2007, 639 workers were killed at road construction sites, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) program.¹ The majority of these fatal occupational injuries were incurred by workers in the highway, street, and bridge construction industry.²

This report is an update of an earlier analysis of fatal occupational injuries at road construction sites from 1995–2002 that was published in the December 2004 issue of the Monthly Labor Review.³ While total fatal occupational injuries declined nearly 10 percent from 1995 to 2007, fatal occupational injuries at road construction sites have increased in number and as a percentage of all fatal occupational injuries. (See table 1.)

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Notes

1 All data in this analysis are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI). For more information, see the CFOI homepage on the BLS Web site at http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshcfoi1.htm. All data in this report are final. A previous analysis (see note 3) found that the location code for road construction was not being assigned uniformly throughout the data set during this period. Starting in 2003, the CFOI program incorporated a more rigorous examination of road construction site cases that included many of the techniques used in the analysis to identify road construction site cases to ensure that the location code is properly assigned. Because of this enhanced review, no additional case identification measures were undertaken for this analysis. There were, however, a few cases in which the coded data were changed after a review of the case narrative.

2 The 2002 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), which CFOI used to code its 2003-08 data, defines the highway, street, and bridge construction industry as follows: "This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in the construction of highways (including elevated), streets, roads, airport runways, public sidewalks, or bridges. The work performed may include new work, reconstruction, rehabilitation, and repairs. Specialty trade contractors are included in this group if they are engaged in activities primarily related to highway, street, and bridge construction (e.g., installing guardrails on highways)." For more information, see the definition for this industry on the 2002 NAICS page of the U.S. Census Bureau Web site at http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/sssd/naics/naicsrch?code=237310.

3 Stephen Pegula, "Fatal occupational injuries at road construction sites," Monthly Labor Review, December 2004, pp. 43–47, on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2004/12/resum2.pdf.

Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries

Fatal occupational injuries at road construction sites.—Dec. 2004.

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