Items Tagged with 'falls from heights'

During a 45-year career, there is a one in 200 chance that a construction worker will die from a work-related incident. That’s a pretty scary statistic.

During the demolition of a building, a complaint was lodged with UK Health and Safety Executive inspectors, who visited the site and found a worker stripping slates from a fragile roof without any safety measures in place to prevent a fall, or mitigate any potential life-threatening effects as a result of such a fall.

With this year’s National Fall Safety Stand-Down – which began on Monday – OSHA is hoping to reach even more than the million+ workers who heard the word in the 2014 event, by way of the more than 5,000 construction industry employers who got involved.

Falls-from-ladders are a leading cause of fall injury and death. In the US, more than 500,000 people a year are treated, and about 300 people die, from ladder-related fall injuries. The estimated annual cost of ladder injuries in the US is $11 billion, including work loss, medical, legal, liability, and pain and suffering expenses.