Many people have jobs that involve working with heavy equipment or machinery. The widespread use of heavy equipment in many industries is one of the things that makes the productive capacity of modern society so large.
However, the fact that there is widespread machinery use in a great deal of industries also has its downsides. One such downside in that some very significant worker safety issues can arise in relation to heavy equipment and machinery.
Workplace accidents sometimes occur involving a worker making contact with such equipment. These accidents can seriously injure a worker. For example, equipment-contact workplace accidents can sometimes result in a worker losing a limb.
And this is not the limit to how tragic such accidents can end up being. In some instances, a worker can die as a result of a workplace accident involving contact with a piece of equipment.
In what industry do equipment-contact-related workplace fatalities happen the most often? A review of federal data by Bloomberg indicates the answer to this question is the logging industry. The review found that loggers exceed all other types of workers when it comes to number of such fatalities for every 100,000 workers.
The review found that the workers who had the next four highest rates of such fatalities were: miscellaneous extraction workers, iron/steel workers, farmers/ranchers and miscellaneous agriculture workers.
One hopes that all employers in the logging industry and the other above-mentioned industries make sure to properly train their employees on safe use of the types of equipment/machinery that are involved in their employees’ jobs and take particularly strong efforts in preventing equipment-contact-related accidents.
Source: Bloomberg, “The Deadliest Jobs in America,” May 13, 2015