Lost-time Injuries Research Articles

Sprain/strain back injuries in New South Wales underground coal mining

Data on all NSW underground mine one day lost time injuries over the period 1st July 1986 to 31st December 1988 were analysed ( n = 14956). An analytical cross-sectional study of all sprain/strain back injuries (SSBI) in relation to other sprain/strain injuries and all other injuries showed the following: (1) SSBI contributed 20.6% of all injuries in underground coal mining. (2) SSBI frequently recurred. (3) SSBI accounted for more lost days per injury than other sprain/strain injuries and other injuries. (4) 67.6% of SSBI were a result of over-exertion and 21.0% the result of a fall. (5) 31.2% of SSBI involved handling. (6) Mining equipment was involved in 64.3% of SSBI. Results of more detailed analyses of SSBI in relation to age, time into shift, occupation, time of accident, agency of accident, agency of injury and equipment use are presented and appropriate preventive strategies are discussed.

The Lifting Team

Lifting is an art, not a random task. If risk is concentrated where it can be controlled, incident rates can be reduced dramatically. It is much easier to control the variables that lead to injury in a team of two lifting members than in a population of nurses. The lifting team study shows that a 95% reduction in lost time injuries can be obtained if a professional lifting team, rather than nurses, lift clients. Secondary benefits to the lifting team approach are: greater nursing morale, recruiting tasks become easier if nurses do not have to lift, and additional time for bedside nursing care.

Risk and severity of non‐back occupational injuries after lumbar laminectomy for degenerative disc disease

An increased risk, after lumbar laminectomy, for lost work time occupational back injury (odds ratio, 5.9; 95% confidence interval, 1.9-18.8) and disability (mean 292.8 days vs. 24.8 for controls) was previously demonstrated. Such differences could be due to physical sequelae of back surgery or to psychosocial factors. Extensive literature addresses the impact of psychosocial factors on the incidence of occupational injury and severity of disability. This study assumes that psychosocial factors would affect both back and non-back injuries, while surgery-related physical factors would not. The odds ratio for non-back lost work time injury for subjects in the same cohort studied previously was 1.5 (0.5-4.5), with no significant increase in duration of disability (mean 27.0 days vs. 24.8 for controls). The increased risk for back injury in the absence of an increased risk for other injuries suggests that physiologic rather than psychosocial factors provide the more likely explanation for the differences in back injuries.

Personal and environmental factors in coal mining accidents

Leigh, J., Mulder, H.B., Want, G.V., Farnsworth, N.P. and Morgan, G.G., 1990. Personal and environmental factors in coal mining accidents. Journal of Occupational Accidents, 13: 233–250. Using data from an existing industry wide accident/incident reporting system, this cross-sectional study describes the 16700 non-fatal lost-time accidental injuries that occurred in the N.S.W. coal mining industry in the 2 1 2 year period between 1 July 1986 and 31 December 1988. Annual incidence rates in various exposure groups were as follows: underground mine face workers 638 1000 , underground mine non-face workers 411 1000 , underground mine surface workers 199 1000 , open cut mine workers 164 1000 . Distribution of accidents by age, work experience and occupation of the injured employee, nature of the injury, part of the body injured, type of accident causing the injury, activity undertaken at the time of the accident, type of the shift, time into the shift, agency of the accident, agency of the injury, equipment involved in the accident, place of the accident, compensation cost of the injury and number of lost working days are reported. The relative importance of various environmental and personal factors is discussed.

Improving Occupational Safety in a Large Industrial Plant

A replication of the injury prevention model developed by Sulzer-Azaroff and her colleagues was conducted in a large industrial plant to assess its generality and to measure the effect of targeting safety behaviors on accidents and lost time injuries. Approximately 225 employees in three departments participated. Safety behaviors were determined for each subunit and the dependent variable was the percent of safety achievements. A combined changing criterion and multiple baseline across groups design was used. The intervention consisted of feedback, reinforcement, and goal setting, with successively higher goals set for 4-5 week periods. Employees received weekly graphed feedback and praise, low-cost rewards following the first goal attainment and special rewards thereafter. Major celebrations followed 100% goal attainment. Safety performance improved steadily, generally matching or exceeding the increasing goals. Safety scores of 90%, 99% and 100% were achieved and accompanied by sigificant decreases in accidents and lost time injuries. Conservative estimates indicated a net annual savings of $55,500.

Mechanization, the Labor Process, and Injury Risks in the Canadian Meat Packing Industry

During the 1980s, Canada's major manufacturing industries experienced considerable financial restructuring and technological transformation, largely in response to recessionary pressures. At the same time, the rate of lost-time injuries in Canadian manufacturing rose steadily. This article explores the relationship between these sets of factors. The meat packing industry has been selected as a case study of the interaction between industrial organization, the labor process, and the risk of workplace injuries. The authors suggest that the following factors have contributed to high and rising injury rates in the meat industry during the 1980s: consolidation into a smaller number of large, highly specialized, and mechanized plants; deteriorating labor relations in the face of falling profits; and an intensified labor process stressing line speedups and a growing risk of repetitive strain injuries. These observations are supported by a detailed analysis of the relationship between the labor process and workplace injuries at one packing plant considered typical for the industry.

The long-term effects of a token economy on safety performance in open-pit mining.

A token economy that used trading stamps as tokens was instituted at two dangerous open-pit mines. Employees earned stamps for working without lost-time injuries, for being in work groups in which all other workers had no lost-time injuries, for not being involved in equipment-damaging accidents, for making adopted safety suggestions, and for unusual behavior which prevented an injury or accident. They lost stamp awards if they or other workers in their group were injured, caused equipment damage, or failed to report accidents or injuries. The stamps could be exchanged for a selection of thousands of items at redemption stores. Implementation of the token economy was followed by large reductions in the number of days lost from work because of injuries, the number of lost-time injuries, and the costs of accidents and injuries. The reductions in costs far exceeded the costs of operating the token economy. All improvements were maintained over several years.

Reducing Manual Materials Handling in Underground Coal Mining with Mechanical-Assist Devices

Historically, manual handling of materials has consistently accounted for over 25 pct of all industrial accidents. In underground coal mining, the situation is worse. Materials-handling accidents routinely account for 30 to 35 pct of all lost-time injuries. Research sponsored by the Bureau of Mines, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, and conducted by Essex/Canyon Research, Inc., developed and evaluated several mechanical-assist devices to reduce the manual effort and the corresponding risk of injury from handling supplies and equipment in underground coal mines. The prototype devices were supplied to cooperating coal mining companies for evaluation. On-site visits, task analyses, and interviews were used to evaluate the devices. Three of them performed exceptionally well and have shown promise for reducing the amount of manual lifting and handling required underground.

Lost-Time Injuries

Lost-Time Injuries

The Effect of Industrial Relations on Absence Attributed to Injury

Two possible results of disturbed industrial relations are industrial disputation and a worsening of the level of absence attributed to injury. To ascertain whether a relationship exists between these two results, correlation coefficients were calculated between industrial disputation data and injury statistics for Queensland. Correlations for each year of the study were indicative of a positive association between industrial disputation and absence attributed to injury. The results suggest that the relationship between industrial disputation and absence attributed to injury depends on a number of factors. The state of industrial relations, social and cultural characteristics, industry structure, and the type of work performed appear to affect the level of absence. These and other factors should be considered when lost-time injury statistics are used as an index of the efficacy of an accident-damage-control program or a particular countermeasure.

Validation of a Behavioral Measure of Occupational Safety

This investigation attempted to demonstrate directly the relationship between a behavioral measure of safety and occupational injury rates. Behaviorally specific safety rules were written for 12 departments (n = 107 employees) of a farm machinery manufacturing company. Trained observers collected baseline data concerning the percentage of employees in each department working in complete compliance with the rules. Rank-difference correlation between mean departmental baseline performance and previous departmental injury incidence rates were computed. The results revealed a significant inverse relationship between behavioral performance and overall injury rate (rho = -.76 p < .01), and between behavioral performance and lost-time injury rate (rho - -.65, p < .05). It was concluded that applied behavioral analysis could provide a valid and reliable measure of safety which would allow more systematic evaluation of the efficacy of various safety campaigns.

The Disabled Employee: Physical, Psychological and Social Changes Occur in Employees with Disabling Lost-Time Injuries

The Disabled Employee: Physical, Psychological and Social Changes Occur in Employees with Disabling Lost-Time Injuries

The determination of effective injury controls for metalcutting lathe operators : Etherton, J.R., Trump, T.R., and Jensen, R.C.Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, 1981, 7. Supplement 4, 115–119

Operators of metal-working lathes are one of the largest manufacturing machine worker populations in the United States. Machines (other than vehicular) account for over 10% of occupational injuries each year. An estimated 3,400 operators of metal-working lathes suffer lost-time injuries annually in the United States. Some of these are fatal. Therefore an investigation was undertaken to determine methods for reducing injuries to lathe operators. Three methods were used: (i) review of injury reports, (ii) human factors analysis, and (iii) fault-tree procedures. The investigation followed the man-machine systems approach of looking for injury-producing dysfunctions between the lathe and the lathe operator. The major sources of injury were found to be chips and workholding devices. Secondary tasks were found to be more hazardous than is generally recognized. The use of three methods for approaching the problem was found to be useful in that injury controls were identified which are likely to be adopted because of their potential for improving safety without adversely affecting productivity.

Lymphocytotoxins in rheumatoid arthritis: prevalence, lymphocyte specificity, and HLA-DR antigens.

37% (57/155) of sera from patients with rheumatoid arthritis contain cold-reacting lymphocytotoxic antibodies. Lymphocytotoxins were predominantly of the weakly reactive type and were more likely to be present in patients who were HLA-DR4 positive. By contrast, patients who were HLA-DR3 positive were more likely to have strongly reactive lymphocytotoxins. The lymphocyte subclass reactivity of the lymphocytotoxins was: 67% versus B lymphocytes, 27% against both T and B cells, and 7% for T cells.

Improved Ingress/Egress System for Large Mining Trucks

Analyses of mining accident data suggest that approximately 40% of all lost time injuries in open-pit mines occur while mobile equipment operators are ascending or decending their vehicles. This study, sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Mines examined the human factors and engineering design considerations contributing to these accidents and possible solutions to the problem. The analysis included such relevant factors as type and frequency of injuries, biomechanics of ascending/decending current ingress/egress systems, operational damage sustained by current ingress/egress hardware, operating environmental considerations (e.g., terrain, mud, ice, spilled lubricants/fuels, etc.) operator functions performed from ladders and platforms and secondary tasks performed while ascending/decending. The impact of emergency egress requirements was also addressed. Alternate improved designs were defined and evaluated. The best was fabricated and is currently being field tested.

Occupational illness and accidents reported from California shipyards

Today a quarter of a million people are employed in U. S. shipyards and boatyards. During the second World War more than 1,700,000 were employed in 1943. Altogether more than 3 to 3.5 million civilians worked in shipyards during the war period. In California, employment in privately operated shipyards hit a wartime peak of 312,000. About 35,000 to 40,000 have since been employed in government and private yards at any one time. The U. S. injury frequency rate for shipbuilding and repairing has compared favorably with that for all manufacturing industries in recent years, whereas boatbuilding and repairing has had a much poorer record. About four out of 100 workers in U. S. yards sustained a lost time injury in 1970. From 1947–1971, private ship and boatyard activities under State of California jursidiction resulted in the death of 82 workmen and reported lost time injuries to 14,250. The California injury rate, exclusive of naval yards, comes to about seven lost workday injuries per year per 100 workers, or one in 14 employed either ashore or aboard a vessel. The California occupational disease reporting system is described. The 321 disabling and nondisabling illnesses reported in 1970–1971 are reviewed. From 1961–1971, 11 reports of lead poisoning were received. Limitations of present occupational disease reporting systems are discussed. The need for epidemiological studies, screening programs, and other medical surveillance systems is cited to aid in recognizing chronic, delayed, and latent problems and to anticipate effects of the ever changing work environment on the health of working people.

1974 GEOPHYSICAL ACCIDENT REPORT

SEG’s Safety Committee reports that in 1974 geophysical exploration accidents increased in number of injuries and lost time injuries, but fatalities declined from 8 in 1973 to 6 in 1974. The great increase in lost time injuries, despite fewer man hours worked, caused a drastic rise in frequency. Severity decreased by 300 for the year and this is attributed to the two less deaths in 1974.

Industrial survey of lost time injuries.

An attempt to discover factors affecting lost time injuries under varying government programs involved visits to a sampling of industries in six provinces and six states. The resulting observations are used to illustrate some variables, many of which have previously been ignored, but which must be considered in any objective study of man at work.

Occupa,onal dermatoses of solid waste workers.

The occupational health problems of municipal solid waste workers in Cincinnati, Ohio, are reviewed. A high frequency rate of lost-time injuries among waste collectors is confirmed. Forty-three percent of the laboring groups volunteered for a dermatologic examination. Occupational dermatoses most commonly observed included callused palms, bruised anterior legs (50% and 41%, respectively, among waste collection helpers), and hand dermatitis (52% of wastewater workers). Other common job-related conditions observed were folliculitis, abrasions, and xerosis. Among many nonoccupational dermatoses noted, certain microbial infections were indirectly related to the work. A brief historical review of the diseases of solid waste workers indicates an awareness of health hazards for over 250 years.