Safety BLR recently covered a report on top causes of workplace injuries and occupational hazards. The report came from The Travelers Companies, Inc., which is the largest workers’ compensation insurer in the United States. Travelers Inc. released an Injury Impact Report identifying common work injury causes after analyzing more than 1.5 million workers’ compensation claims filed over a four year period of time.

Both employers and employees must be aware of work injury causes so extra efforts can be made to try to avoid these specific incidents.

Whenever an injury does occur, whether the cause is a common one or not, victims also need to explore options for making a workers’ compensation claim.

What are the Leading Causes of Workplace Injuries? 

According to the data from the Travelers Companies, Inc., the most frequent reasons why employees got hurt at work and made workers’ compensation claims included:

• Injuries while handling materials. 32 percent of workers’ comp claims were made by employees harmed while handling materials.
• Falls, slips, and trips. Workers who had fallen made 16 percent of total work injury claims for benefits.
• Getting hit by objects or colliding with objects. In total, 10 percent of workers who made workers’ compensation claims had been hit by an object or collided with some object at work.
• Accidents while using tools. This type of accident accounted for seven percent of total claims which occurred.
• Trauma which occurs over time. In total, four percent of claims made to Travelers came from workers who had hurt their bodies over time as a result of strain or over-use.

The most common injuries suffered due to these harmful incidents included cuts, sprains, strains, contusions, punctures, fractures, inflammation, and chronic illnesses. However, it was workers who had suffered inflammation and fractures who missed the highest number of total workdays. These employees missed 91 days on average due to inflammation and 78 days on average due to fractures.

Employees with strains and sprains also missed lots of work, losing 57 work days on average, compared with 24 days of work missed on average among workers who suffered cuts or punctures.

Within certain sectors, there were some specific injury causes which were far more common.  For those in retail and construction, for example, falling from heights was a leading cause of injury. In manufacturing and construction, eye injuries were especially common. The most expensive injuries, however, included amputations, electric shock, dislocations, and multiple trauma injuries.

All workers, regardless of their causes of injury or the type of injury, should be able to get their medical costs covered and should be compensated for time away from work that their injuries cause them to experience.  An injured employee will need to show his or her harm was job-related in order to be able to get benefits for the work-related injury.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 28th, 2016 at 6:08 pm and is filed under workers' compensation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.