Construction Dangers – 35% Due To Falls
A report on construction dangers was produced this week by OSHA. Construction is one of the most expensive groups of classification codes. This has been the case for many years. In the early 2000’s some California insurance carriers were charging $170 for every $100 of payroll for roofers.
This situation was very likely due to the inherent risk involved with a construction boom in the state.
Roofers and multi-level construction always pay extremely high premium rates. OSHA tallies very accurate figures on death claims. I had read this article earlier in the year. We were called into help on four claims earlier in the year where an employee was severely injured due to a fall – almost all exclusively from a ladder.
The following is from OSHA on fatalities. The 17.6% figure is significant when trying to underwrite the risk. OSHA was actually able to define four areas where 56% of the construction death occurred in 2011. They had named the four areas of extreme risk as the “Fatal Four.”
According to the BLS, there were 4,188 worker deaths in the US in 2011. The “Fatal Four” were:
- Falls – 259 out of 738 total deaths in construction in CY 2011 (35%)
- Electrocutions – 69 (9%)
- Struck by Object – 73 (10%)
- Caught-in/between – 18 (2%)
There were 419 worker death caused by the “Fatal Four” in 2011. The full breakdown on construction worker deaths can be found here. The updated numbers actually lower the construction work fatality rate to almost 13% as there were actually 4,693 worker deaths in 2011.
The 2012 preliminary data on fatalities was published recently. A series of charts on from the BLS indicates that 16 percent of all worker fatalities were in the construction industry – see chart 15.
The 2012 numbers will likely be revised numerous times before producing a final accurate count.
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