Construction deaths in Oregon peak while injuries decline

Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR), Apr 23, 2008 by Libby Tucker

Oregon's construction industry has the highest fatality rate of any industry in the state and last year saw the most workplace deaths in a decade, with 12 fatalities reported in 2007, according to the Oregon Occupational Safety & Health Administration.

But a close examination of the number and causes of reported accidents suggests the trend could be a statistical blip, OSHA says.

"We're still talking about such small numbers in a statistical sense, I don't know how significant (the 2007 total) is," said Michael Wood, OSHA administrator. Even though, he added, each death is important to the families and colleagues of the workers.

The Oregonian reported last week that the state's construction death rate had reached its highest point in 10 years, with 11.55 deaths per 100,000 construction workers reported in 2007 and 13.37 per 100,000 in 1997. The actual construction death toll each year, however, comes closer to 9.84 per 100,000 workers in 2007 and 10.94 per 100,000 in 1997, Wood said.

That's because OSHA's 2007 figures represent the 12 workers compensation claims filed in 2007 for construction-related fatalities. But two accidents that occurred in 2006 weren't reported until 2007, bumping the number of deaths in 2007 up to 12 and the number in 2006 down to five.

"We did do an analysis based on injury year and it still shows that 2007 was a high year, (just) not quite as dramatically high," Wood said. "The reality is construction continues to be a dangerous business. We cite violations regularly."

In addition, two of the 12 fatalities reported last year were due to traffic accidents and did not occur on the job site. OSHA last year began investigating traffic accidents that occurred during work hours or that occurred in company-owned vehicles, though the traffic accidents alone aren't enough to skew the death rates.

Even after adjusting the fatality rates to account for the year the accident occurred, the construction industry led the state in workplace deaths in 2007. The agriculture, forestry and fishing industries ranked second with less than half the construction death rate, at 5 fatalities in 2007, according to OSHA.

"2007 was not a good year in our construction world, no. (But) I don't think it's setting a trend for increasing fatalities." Dave Parsons, a loss-control consultant for the Oregon-Columbia Chapter of the Associated General Contractors, said. "It's sort of a little blurp."

Construction industry employment has grown significantly over the past five years, and the ratio of trained safety professionals to total workers has gone down, Parsons said. Safety training also tends to fall by the wayside as production ramps up, he said. And employers often wait until the winter, when work is slower, to conduct safety training.

Despite the spike in workplace fatalities, the number of accidents on construction sites is declining, and OSHA continues to conduct 5,000 work site inspections each year, Wood said.

"Overall what we've seen in the last decade is the decline in loss incidents have dropped significantly in the industry despite this recent peak in fatalities," Jessica Adamson, public affairs director for the Oregon-Columbia Chapter of the Associated General Contractors, said.

During the 10 years between 1996 and 2006, contractors participating in AGC's loss control program saw the number of injuries, including fatalities, on their job sites decrease by a total of 62 percent. The program hires consultants to assess job site safety, much like an OSHA inspection, and then design safety programs tailored to the company.

"For us, whether OSHA is staffed enough or could be doing more (isn't relevant)," Adamson said. "This industry takes this responsibility seriously. ... We don't wait around for OSHA to show up on our doorstop to respond."