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PCCA Journal|3 rd Quarter 2011 38

Safety News

Continued from page 37

tery by reducing the brightness of your screen, placing your phone in airplane mode, and closing apps you are not using that draw power, unless you need to use the phone.

6. If you lose power, you can charge your cell phone in your car. Just be sure your car is in a well-ventilated place (remove it from the garage) and do not go to your car until any danger has passed. You can also listen to your car radio for important

news alerts.

7. Tune into broadcast television and radio for important news alerts. If ap-plicable, be sure that you know how to activate the closed captioning or video description on your television.

8. If you do not have a hands-free device in your car, stop driving or pull over to the side of the road before making a call. Do not text on a cell phone, talk, or tweet without a hands-free device while driving.

9. Immediately following a disaster, resist using your mobile device to watch streaming videos, down-load music or videos, or play video games, all of which can add to network congestion. Limiting use of these services can help poten-tially life-saving emergency calls get through to 9-1-1.

10. Check www.ready.gov regularly to find other helpful tips for preparing for disasters and other emergencies.

A

preliminary total of 4,547 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States in 2010, about the same as the final count of 4,551 fatal work injuries in 2009, according to results from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) program conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rate of fatal work injury for U.S. workers in 2010 was 3.5 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, the same as the final rate for 2009. Over the last three years, increases in the published counts based on information received after the release of preliminary data have averaged 174 fatalities per year or about 3 percent of the revised totals. Final 2010 CFOI data will be released in Spring 2012. Economic factors continue to play a role in the fatal work injury counts. Total hours worked were up slightly in 2010, in contrast to the declines recorded in both 2008 and 2009, but some histori-cally high-risk industries continued to experience declines or slow growth in total hours worked.

“When the Occupational Safety and

Health Act was passed in 1970, the National Safety Council estimated that 14,000 workers died each year on the job. Now, with a workforce that has doubled in size, the annual number of fatalities has dropped significantly,” Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said. “But it’s not enough. We cannot relent from our enforcement of laws that keep our nation’s workers safe. One worker killed or injured on the job is one too many.”

Construction Industry Fatalities Down Again

The number of fatal work injuries in the private industry construction sector declined by 10 percent in 2010. Fatal work injuries in construction have declined every year since 2006 and are down nearly 40 percent over that time. Economic conditions may explain much of this decline, with total hours worked having declined another 6 percent in construction in 2010, after declines in both 2008 and 2009.

Other key preliminary findings of the 2010 Census of Fatal Occupational Inju-ries:

The number of fatal work injuries among the self-employed declined by 6 percent to 999 fatalities, more than the decline in their hours worked. The number of fatal injuries among wage and salary workers increased by 2 percent in 2010.

Work-related fatalities resulting from fires more than doubled from 53 in 2009 to 109 in 2010, the highest count since 2003.

Workplace homicides declined 7 percent in 2010 to the lowest total ever recorded by the fatality census, but workplace homicides involving women increased by 13 percent.

Fatal work injuries among non-Hispanic black or African-American workers declined by 9 percent in 2010, while fatalities among non-Hispanic white workers were higher by 2 percent. Fatal work injuries involving Hispanic or Latino workers were down 4 percent in 2010.

The number of fatal workplace inju-ries among police officers increased by 40 percent, from 96 in 2009 to 134 in 2010.

BLS Reports on Fatal Work Injuries

Note: the following information is from BLS and OSHA news releases.

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