7578409658

used to describe potential risk factors for injury to workers in the meatpacking industry.

The NTOF provides new national Information on work-related traumatic deaths in the United States. Death ccrtificates are used as a source for this data base. Death certificates are included in the system if they meet the following criteria; “Injury at work” item on death certificate is checkcd yes, underlying or contributory cause of death (International Classification of Dis-eases, 9th Revision) is estemal, and age at death is 16 years or older. Occupation is coded by the 1980 Census Index of Industries and Occupations, industry is classified by the 1972 Standard IndustriaJ Classification (SIC) (Office of Management and Budget, 1972), and erternal cause of death is categorized by injury dcscription.

The BLS annual survey provides inci-dence rates based on a national stratificd random sample of approrimately 280,000 private-sector establishments in the United States. Workers in companies that have less than eleven employees, public-sector em-ployees, and self-employed workers are ex-cluded from this sample. Ali injuries record-ed on each companys OSHA 200 log (requircd by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) are supposedly report ed; by definition, these include injuries resulting in medical treatment beyond First aid, loss of consciousness, lost work time, or restricted job activities. The BLS defincs occupational injuries as injuries “which result from a work accident or from exposure in-volving a single incident in the work envi-ronment" Injury rates are calculatcd based on employees working 40-hour weeks and 50 weeks per year, but are reported as rates per 100 employed persons. Rates are reported by industry and are not specific for occupation or other worker characteristics.

The SDS provides Information on naturę of injury, extemal cause, occupation, and body part injured. The SDS uses the Census codes for occupation of worker, the SIC codes for industry, and the American National Standards Institute Z16.2 standard (ANSI, 1962) for injury characteristics.

SDS data are obtained from States that voluntarily supply workers’ compensation claim information to the BLS. In most States all public-sector employees and self-employed persons who are injured are exclud-ed. Definitions of injury and reporting criteria vary from State to State as shown in Table l.

RESULTS________

A descriptive analysis of these data sourc-es yielded the following profile of occupational traumatic injuries in the meatpacking industry.

Incidence

The meatpacking industry (SIC 2011) has the third highest injury ratę among all U.S. manufacturing Industries; this rank has per-sisted from 1976 through 1985. The annual BLS survey shows an average incidence ratę of 27.6 injuries per 100 workers per ycar during 1982-1985. This ratę is slightly lower than the ratę (31.4 per 100 workers per year) reported for 1976-1981 (Pezaro et al., 1985). The average annual incidence ratę for lost-work-day injuries is also lower (13.5 per 100 workers) than during 1976-1981 (15.0 per 100 workers). During 1982-1985 an average of 145,000 people were employed in the meatpacking industry each year.

Mortatity

Information for fatally injured workers is limited to death certificate data included in the NTOF. Twentv-five such deaths were identified for the meatpacking industry during 1980-1985. The average annual ratę is almost 3 deaths per 100,000 workers. The distribution of death varies by occupation: meat cutters account for 13%; meat pack-ers, 13%; maintenance workers, 28%; truck drwers, 13%; and truck loaders, 4%. The causes of death include one electrocution, three falls, two unintentional stabbings, three intentional firearm wounds, and eight motor-vehicle-related deaths. Other deaths are primarily caused by blunt force trauma resulting in crushing injuries. There is no pattern by age distribution, and only one woraan died.

Morbidity

The findings on nonfatal injuries are based on the workers’ compensation infor-

48

Journal of Safeiy Research