Июнь 2010
If news reports told of jet planes crashing everyday, killing 243 passengers and crew each time, neither the public nor government authorities – including the President – would stand idly by for long. Things would begin to happen quickly either to improve the safety of the planes or to put them out of business.
But according to studies by the National Safe Workplace Institute in Chicago, an estimated 240 people die every workday in this country as a result of on-the-job accidents or protracted job-related illnesses. And not much – certainly not nearly enough – is being done about it.
Add it up: 243 deaths every workday equals 60,000 deaths a year and the figure might be as high as 70,000. Each year, 6,000 individuals die in this country from injuries sustained on the job, according to 1985 figures compiled for Congress by the Office of Technology Assessment. Others suffer illnesses brought on by exposure at work to chemicals, dust, and other noxious materials, which cause their deaths many years later. Most workers in dangerous jobs aren’t even aware of the risks they run simply by working at them.
And, except in California, where employers convicted of operating unsafe workplaces are sometimes sent to prison, most public agencies seem to make light of the situation. In the last 8 years, the federal government has won only two criminal cases against employers who defied safety rules. In that same period, California won 112 cases against employers.
Joseph A. Kinney, an ex-marine and Vietnam vet, got mad enough to fight for safe workplaces. His youngest brother, Paul, died in 1986 at age 27 when a building scaffold collapsed in Denver. His brother’s death tore him up. «The fire captain who supervised the rescue called my brother’s death a travesty,» Mr. Kinney recalls. «He could see that the scaffold was not properly erected.» In May 1987, he started the National Safe Workplace Institute to research job safety and prod lax government agencies.
Not only construction work holds dangers. Shockingly, for women at work, murder is the greatest risk, according to J. Paul Leigh of San Jose State University in California. He studied the risk of death in 347 occupations, using 1970 Census Bureau job categories. Nothing has changed much since then.
«Women are not taking a lot of blue-collar jobs that involve a lot of danger,» Mr. Leigh says. «They take service jobs at an all-night grocery or a liquor store or a photo development booth. They get robbed and they get killed.»
Kathy Fisler, 28, works in a convenience store near her home in San Jose. She has been robbed once, and an 18-year-old girl was killed while working nearby in a photo development booth.
«It got me a little leery,» she recalls. «But if you’re paranoid, you shouldn’t work here. I had a cop tell me he would not want my job.»
Mr. Kinney says that of an estimated 7,000 people who die on the job each year, he has seen research indicating that 350 are women and that murder accounts for 42 percent of their deaths.
One expert suggests that taking easy measures could reduce the number of attacks on women clerks in stores: Keep the cash register in view from the street. Use a drop safe to deposit bills larger than 1 dollar. Greet each person who enters.
In Mr. Leigh’s analysis, all but one of the 30 occupations ranked as having the highest risk of death in the United States are in the blue-collar or service trades. The exception is airplane pilots, who are second only to loggers overall. Among white-collar workers, messengers and office helpers follow pilots in risk of death. Managers and department heads of retail stores are third. Unexpectedly, astronomers and physicists are seventh, coaches and gym teachers 14th, and athletes 18th. Editors and reporters ranked 35th. Mr. Leigh ranks job risks for embalmers and librarians at zero.
*107/266/5*
GENERAL HEALTH