Playing it safely: Liberty Mutual's Research Institute for Safety—celebrating its 50th birthday this month—has been at the forefront of the battle against occupational injuries in the United States. In the next 50 years, it will continue to flex its muscles around the world

Risk & Insurance, June, 2004 by Michelle Kerr

2000: The center introduces the Workplace Safety Index.

Center researchers compiled the first-ever ranking of the leading causes of workplace accidents and their costs using data from Liberty Mutual, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Academy of Social Insurance. The index is designed to held focus public and private safety research efforts on the root causes of workplace injuries and illnesses

2003: The Liberty Mutual Research Center for safety and Health renamed to Liberty Mutual Research institute for Safety.

The renaming coincides with the physical expansion of the Research Institute--from 42,570 sq. ft. to 93,800 sq. ft. The expanded Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety includes a training facility for Liberty Mutual's senior loss prevention consultants, personal, homeowner, and automobile insurance claims adjusters.

2003: Wrist Goniometer is patented by researchers Raymond W. McGorry. Chien-Chi Chang, and Patrick G. Dempsey. The device provides a measure of up-and-down, and side-to-side wrist motion. Computer software calculates the two motions independently.

RELATED ARTICLE: Visualizing a new standard.

Meet Tom Leamon, the man who has served as director for the past 13 years of the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety--one of the world's authorities in the area of occupational injury.

With degrees in applied psychology, ergonomics and industrial engineering, the soft-spoken, quick-witted U.K. native is unquestionably qualified to lead LMRIS. He is also a certified professional ergonomist, a chartered engineer and a European engineer.

While there are probably other people capable of running the Institute, it's hard to imagine anyone who would equal Leamon's passion. When discussing the state of occupational safety in the United States, he becomes especially animated.

That state, of course, includes the work of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Leamon laughs softly when asked how he would run things differently than the current director of OSHA. "If I were John Henshaw? I don't know what I would do if I was John Henshaw. If I ruled the world ..." Leamon pauses and ponders for a moment. There is a trace of mischief in his eyes, but his answer is quite serious. "I would have an OSHA standard that said; 'Don't injure your workers.' Then I would monitor everybody."

"The reason I would do it this way is, some industries are inherently more dangerous than others. If you sit in an office, it's not like driving an 18-wheeler across the country. That's one of the problems with regulation, if you try and control both worlds with a single standard.

"So that's my dream ... 'Don't injure your workforce.' Who's going to disagree with a standard that says 'Don't injure your workforce?'"

Having spent more than 30 years in the field of ergonomics, Leamon has followed the progress of OSHA's ergonomics regulations. He believes the ergonomics debate is a misunderstanding that dates back to OSHA's original ergonomics standard.

"With the original standard, there was not one airline that could have [flown a jet], there was not one trucking company that could have operated the next day [once the standard had gone into effect]. So what basically happened was, people confused ergonomics with the standard."