William Schriver Construction Industry Research and Policy Center
Table of Contents Section List of Tables in Text
Table II. A Comparison of Ranks of Causes of Fatal Events in 1991 - 2000 with 2001 Appendix A: Appendix B:
Figure B2. Frequency of Causes of Construction Fatality Events (2001) Figure B3. Frequency of Causes of Construction Fatality Events (1995-2000) Figure B4. Comparison of Construction Fatality Causes - Combined Categories (Pooled Years 1995-2000 with 2001)
Table C2. Construction Fatal Events by Type of Project, 2001 Table C3. Construction Fatal Events by Four-Digit SIC, 2001 Table C4. Construction Fatal Events by Project Value, 2001 Table C5. Construction Fatal Events by Construction Operation, 2001 This paper reports on the causes of fatal events in the construction industry which occurred in calendar year 2001. Seven earlier studies1 by the Construction Industry Research and Policy Center (CIRPC) analyzed the causes of fatal events in this industry in 1991-1992, 1993-1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000. II. Data The data analyzed in this report, provided by OSHA from Form 170's, consist of narrative descriptions of the 719 fatal events inspected by OSHA resulting from accidents which occurred in construction during calendar year 2001. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 provides States with the option of administrating the Act themselves or accepting Federal administration of the Act. Twenty-nine States and the District of Columbia chose administration under the Federal System, and the remaining 21 States and two Territories chose self-administration under State Plans2. In this report as in earlier reports, analysis includes all OSHA-inspected fatal construction accidents regardless of Federal or State administration. Also, as in the earlier studies, non-accidental fatalities on construction sites or contractor yards (such as deaths from non-work related heart attacks, strokes, seizures, etc.) and fatalities of construction workers killed off-site in traffic accidents were excluded from the analysis; these fatalities accounted for about 3 percent of OSHA-inspected fatal construction events in 1991-2000 and 3 percent in 2001. Although the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employers to report fatalities to OSHA within eight hours of the occurrence of the event, all fatalities on construction sites are not inspected by OSHA; for example, OSHA does not inspect fatal construction events involving independent contractors with no employees. Therefore, the results reported upon here do not provide a year-to-year analysis of changes in the absolute number of fatal events or individuals killed on construction sites. Each narrative record typically consists of a brief description of the event leading to the fatality, although this is not always the case. Where the narrative description was omitted, inconclusive or completely unclear the event cause was coded "unknown cause or other"; otherwise each narrative was analyzed and classified into one of 31 cause categories, although a great deal of collective judgment was often required to classify the cause of many of the accidents. This report also includes the following classification of each fatal event according to coding by the OSHA compliance officer who investigated the accident: (1) type of construction (new or addition, alteration or rehabilitation, maintenance or repair, demolition, other); (2) estimate of total project value (seven dollar-value categories beginning with "under $50,000" and ending with "$20,000,000 and over"); (3) 17 end-use categories, such as "single-family housing," "multi-family building," "commercial building," "street or highway," etc.; and (4) the construction operation being performed that caused the fatal event (selected from a list of construction operations such as "backfilling and compacting," "cutting concrete pavement," "erecting structural steel," "installing equipment (HVAC and other," etc.). However, CIRPC's review of over 1200 case files of fatal construction events occurring in 1997, 1998 and 1999 revealed that coded data for an event were sometimes internally inconsistent or did not comport with corresponding narrative descriptions. Consequently, the data analyzed in this report are restricted to the direct causes of the fatal events where the authors were able, in most cases, to classify the events with relative certainty according to 31 types of causes, essentially the same types as were used in CIRPC's previous fatality studies. However, coded data are included in Appendix C for the following: (1) end-use of structure; (2) type of construction; (3) occupation of the victim(s); (4) contract value of the construction project; and (5) construction operation associated with the fatality. In classifying the events a rule of primacy was followed for multiple-cause fatalities (representing less than 1 percent of the fatality events in this study and the earlier studies cited): the first cause in the chain of causes was recorded as the cause of the fatal event. Definitions of the causes are shown in Appendix A. III. Analysis
A. Distribution of Fatal Events by Cause Table 1 shows the cause classification system, the number of times each cause represented a fatal event in 2001, the relative frequency of each cause and the number of victims killed3. It can be seen that "fall from/through roof" led all other causes in number of fatal events (86 or 12.0 percent of total fatal events), followed by "fall from/through structure" (77 or 10.7 percent). The third leading cause was "crushed/run-over of non-operator by operating construction equipment" (55 or 7.6 percent); the fourth leading cause was "electric shock from equipment installation/tool use" (48 or 6.7 percent); the fifth leading cause was "struck by falling object/projectile (including tip-overs)" (40 or 5.6 percent); and the sixth leading cause was "fall from/with ladder" (38 or 5.3 percent). The number and relative frequencies of the remaining causes of the 719 fatal events analyzed may be read directly from Table 1. (Comparative frequencies for earlier years are shown in Figures B1 through B4 in Appendix B.) Table 1. Construction Fatality Event Causes, 2001
The number of victims killed by each cause is also shown in Table 1 where it can be seen that in most events only one worker was killed per event. (In one cause category no workers were killed, "electric shock, other".) There were 20 fatality causes where no event had multiple fatalities; only 10 fatality causes included events with multiple fatalities. "Fall from/with platform or catwalk" was the fatality cause which had the most victims killed per event, i.e., 13 events and 17 victims or 1.3 victims per event. Table 2 shows a comparison of the ranks of the causes in 2001 with the average rank of the causes of fatal events during the period 1991 - 2000. It can be seen that the overall rank pattern of the causes in 2001 is very similar to the rank pattern in 1991 - 2000. An overall statistical comparison of the correlation of the rank in 2001 with the average rank in1991-2000 was calculated using a Spearman rank correlation procedure4. The correlation obtained was + .88, p .001, indicating that the ranks of the causes in the two time periods are highly and positively correlated, i.e., did not change significantly between 1991 - 2000 and 20015. Since averaging the 1991 - 2000 ranks removed inter-year variance, a somewhat lower correlation would be expected between 2000 and 2001 ranks of causes, i.e., a measure of the short-term cycle as opposed to a longer-term trend. The Spearman rank-order correlation between 2000 and 2001 causes was calculated and found to be insignificantly higher, .90, p . .001, indicating that the 1991-1998 pattern changed very little between 2000 and 2001. Table 2. Comparison of Ranks of Causes of Fatal Events in 1991 - 2000 with 2001
The correlation result is not surprising given that the general composition of construction output, and therefore the mix of construction operations required to produce the output, was probably very similar during the time periods examined. This interpretation implies that the rank of a cause is a function of the magnitude of exposure to the cause and/or the inherent danger associated with the cause. While the number of OSHA-inspected fatal construction events caused by accidents have had an upward trend since 1991, employment in construction establishments has also increased6. The trend of these fatal events per 100,000 construction establishment employees is as follows: 1991 - 1992: 13.1; 1993 - 1994: 11.8; 1995: 11.4; 1996: 10.5; 1997: 10.6, 1998: 10.4; 1999: 11.0; 2000: 9.5; and 2001: 10.8. APPENDIX A Definitions of Fatality Causes
2. caught in stationary equipment: body or clothing caught pulling worker into equipment. 3. collapse of structure: building or other structure falling on worker, not including falling ladder, scaffold, aerial lift/ basket, platform, with a structure, trench collapse, or wall (earthen) collapse. 4. crushed/run-over of non-operator by operating construction equipment: non-operator run-over or crushed between equipment and ground or another object by an operator controlled piece of construction equipment. 5. crushed/run-over/trapped of operator by operating construction equipment: includes rollover and catching of body in equipment or between equipment and ground or other object while operating the equipment.* 6. crushed/run-over by construction equipment during maintenance/ modification: includes equipment/parts falling on worker while assembling or disassembling equipment. 7. crushed/run-over by highway vehicle: any run-over by non-construction equipment, including trains. 8. drown, non-lethal fall: non-lethal falls into water and flooding of container, trenches, etc. 9. electrocution by touching exposed wire/source: body part contacting the wire/source except when installing equipment or using a tool. 10. electrocution by equipment contacting wire
b. scaffold c. crane/lifting equipment/boom/dump truck: d. other: contact while handling materials, e g. gutters, iron rods, painting equipment, etc. 11. electrocution
from equipment installation/tool use: includes failure to de-energize
equipment, inappropriate energizing, contacting energized part with
tool or body, and inadequately grounded tools or exposed tool wires. Figure B1. Comparison of Construction Fatality Causes (Pooled Years 1995-2000 with 2001) Figure B2. Frequency of Causes of Construction Fatality Events (2001) Figure B3. Frequency of Causes of Construction Fatality Events (1995-2000) Figure B4. Comparison of Construction Fatality Causes - Combined Categories (Pooled Years 1995-2000 with 2001) APPENDIX C Table C1. Construction Fatal Events by End-Use Type, 2001
Table C2. Construction Fatal Events by Type of Project, 2001
Table C3. Construction Fatal Events by Four-Digit SIC, 2001
Table C4. construction Fatal Events by Project Value, 2001
Table C5. Construction Fatal Events by Construction Operation, 2001
1
An Analysis of Fatal Events in the Construction Industry, 1991-1992
(1993), An Analysis of Fatal Events in the Construction Industry, 1993-1994
(1995), An Analysis of Fatal Events in the Construction Industry, 1995
(1996), An Analysis of Fatal Events in the Construction Industry,
1996 (1997), An Analysis of Fatal Events in the Construction Industry,
1997 (1999), An Analysis of Fatal Events in the Construction Industry,
1998 (2000), An Analysis of Fatal Events in Construction, 1999
(2001), and An Analysis of Fatal Events in the Construction Industry,
2000 (2002), Construction Industry Research and Policy Center , University
of Tennessee, Knoxville.
2 States in the Federal System are: AL, AR, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, KS, LA, ME, MA, MS, MO, MT, NE, NH, NJ, NY, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SD, TX, WV and WI. States and Territories under State Plans are: AK, AZ, CA, HI, IN, IA, KY, MD, MI, MN, NV, NM, NC, OR, PR, SC, TN, UT, VT, VI, VA, WA and WY. 3 Each event included at least one person killed and in several events additional workers were killed or injured. 4 Sidney Siegel, Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1956), p. 219. 5 Seventeen of the 719 fatal events had either no narrative or a narrative too incomplete to classify the cause of fatality. These records were coded as "unknown" cause; this was not done in prior years. They were omitted from the calculation of the Spearman Rank correlation in order to avoid data distortion. 6 Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Employment, Hours, and Earnings. *Includes fatalities resulting from asphyxiation/fire/explosion/drowning of trapped operators.
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