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traumatic
occupational injury
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Construction Safety |
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Construction is a high hazard occupation. During the period from 1980 through 1995, at least 17,000 construction workers died from injuries suffered on the job. Construction lost more workers to traumatic injury death than any other major industrial sector during this time period. Construction has the third highest rate of death by injury: 15.2 deaths per 100,000 workers. Only mining and agriculture experience higher rates. The leading causes of death among construction workers are falls from elevations, motor vehicle crashes, electrocution, machines, and struck by falling objects. |
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Fatality Investigation Reports (conducted under the FACE Program) Since the inception of the FACE program in 1982, hundreds of fatal incidents involving construction workers have been investigated by NIOSH and State investigators. This link provides a list of those cases which in turn links to the full-text reports on the FACEWeb.
NIOSH Alerts on Construction Hazards NIOSH has published a number of Alerts on hazards that are faced by workers in the construction industry. These Alerts provide brief overviews of the problems, present case descriptions of fatal incidents, outline the relevant safety standards and practices, and summarize NIOSH recommendations for prevention.
All NIOSH Alerts on Traumatic Injury Hazards
Building Safer Highway Work Zones represents a collaborative effort between government, labor, the construction industry, manufacturers, and academia to address worker safety in highway work zones. Previous prevention activities by the traffic safety community have focused on protecting motorists traveling through work zones. The safety of workers, particularly those who must work on foot around construction vehicles and equipment, has received considerably less attention. To increase awareness of these hazards, NIOSH reviewed current highway safety literature, analyzed fatality and injury data, and convened a meeting of work zone safety stakeholders. This document is the result of those efforts. It presents complementary prevention measures to protect workers from hazards posed by construction vehicles and equipment as well as by traffic vehicles. These prevention measures are directed to varied stakeholders with interest in work zone safety—road builders and maintainers, contracting agencies, policy makers, and manufacturers--and address issues ranging from the contract.
This topic page contains links to both safety and health resources concerning the construction industry. If you want more information on health risks to construction workers--including silica dust and other lung hazards, noise, carbon monoxide, lead, asphalt, etc.—try this topic page.
ELCOSH: Electronic Library of Construction Safety and Health This electronic library, developed and maintained by the Center to Protect Workers' Rights, is a large set of information on construction hazards, statistics, prevention strategies, training. A good resource for construction companies, safety and health professionals, supervisors and workers.
Falls from elevations cause more fatal injuries in construction than any other cause. This comprehensive document presents an overview of fall hazards, statistics on deaths resulting from falls, and information on fall protection programs. Additionally, full text reports from several hundred investigations of fatal falls are included.
Other Construction-related Publications and Materials Construction: NIOSH Research Projects
(DHHS (NIOSH) Pub. No. 97-152) August 1997. NIOSH Facts: Construction Safety and Health. August 1997 Reducing Injury Risk From Jolting and Jarring on Mobile Equipment Update: NIOSH Warns of Danger of Trench Cave-ins (DHHS (NIOSH) Pub. No. 93-110) May 20, 1993 Criteria Document-Development of Draft Construction Safety Standards
for Excavations (DHHS (NIOSH) Pub. No. 83-103) May 1983.
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