AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS JOBS - DAY 9

With a fatality rate of 21.3 per 100,000 workers, farmers and ranchers have the ninth most dangerous occupation.

Over half the fatalities on farms stem from tractor accidents, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.  On ranches, all-terrain vehicle accidents are the most likely to kill workers.

Technical advances, including rollover protection for tractors, have reduced fatalities in the last few decades.  Nonetheless, farming and ranching remains a very dangerous occupation.

AMERICA’S MOST UNSAFE JOBS DAY 8

With a fatality rate of 22.1 per 100,000 workers, trucking is our nation’s eighth most dangerous job.

Drivers face tremendous pressure to get the freight delivered on time, maximizing the potential for dangerous truck accidents.  Despite rules requiring rest stops, many drivers are greatly fatigued.  Forty-eight percent of truckers report falling asleep at the wheel at least once in the previous 12 months, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

According to Henry Jasnay Vice President of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, rest stops of 30 minutes are required after eight hours of driving but are insufficient to rest drivers, who often feel just as tired as before their 30-minute break.

Many truckers falsify log books to show enforcement officers that they’ve complied with the rules.

A new danger is that heavy rigs travel on narrow, rural two-laners to supply fracking sites.  These roads were never engineered to handle large trucks

AMERICA’S MOST UNSAFE OCCUPATIONS DAY 7

Perhaps not surprisingly, power linesmen engage in the 7th most dangerous job in the United States.  Falls and electrocutions are the main causes of fatal injuries for power linemen, who often have to work in storms and cold to restore.

After high winds or ice storms cut power, lines are de-energized, making it less dangerous to work with.  In jobs in regular weather, however, linemen may be dealing with thousands of volts of electricity.

 

 

AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS JOBS - DAY 6

Refuse collection is one of the most hazardous jobs in the United States. Refuse and toxic waste are major sources of pollution that could cause serious personal injury disease if not properly disposed of.  The job of a sanitation worker is to protect society from the dangers associated with waste.  Because they deal with hazardous materials every time that they are on the job, sanitation workers put themselves at risk for serious personal injury from exposure on a daily basis.  Through technology and training, substantial efforts have been made in the waste industry to make such work safer.  Nonetheless, sanitation workers are among the top 10 most dangerous occupations, according to the cable news network.

Sanitation workers can be injured in a variety of ways.  Refuse collectors are hit by impatient drivers trying to bypass a garbage truck.  Defective equipment can cause unsafe working conditions.  Refuse trucks that have mechanical problems cause injury to its operators, resulting in cuts, severed limbs, and other serious personal injuries or wrongful death.  Operators standing in the rear platform can fall off the back of the truck and even be run over while it is in motion.  Clean up and collection crews can also sustain personal injuries from slipping, tripping, or falling on debris, oil or other chemicals.  In addition, hazardous chemicals can cause serious burn injuries if they are not handled properly.  Finally, sanitation garages are not maintained in safe conditions.  Oil and substances may collect on garage floors and defective floors might not be repaired when they should.

AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS JOBS – DAY 5

Continuing my entries on the nation’s riskiest occupations is the discussion of the fifth most perilous job:  ironworkers. 

Though falls are the most common cause of death for ironworkers, they also risk injuries from steel beam or reinforced concrete wall collapses, “struck-by” injuries from falling or swinging objects, and contact with live electrical lines.  Because new work rules require vertical beams to be anchored with four bolts instead of two, beams are less likely to work loose and crash, which has greatly enhanced the safety of the occupation.  Pennsylvania has an estimated number of iron and steel workers of 1,850, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

AMERICA’S RISKIEST JOBS

Continuing in my series on the most dangerous occupations in America is the nation’s fourth most dangerous job: Roofers. 

With a fatality rate of 40.5 per 100,000 workers, roofers face an extraordinary risk of occupational injury.  Because height is an inescapable hazard of the job, the odds of suffering critical injuries and accidents are much greater than in other occupations.

In addition to falls, however, they suffer burns, electrocutions, chemical exposures, and hoisting accidents.  Deaths and injuries have been significantly reduced as a result of better safety training and stricter guidelines in the use of guardrails, harnesses, and other systems. 

 

AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS JOBS – DAY 3

Major airline pilots have low job fatality rates, but for Bush, Charter, and Air Taxi pilots, the work is much more risky.

According the the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, human error is the number one cause of deaths for airline pilots. 

About a 5^th of fatal U.S. crashes occur in Alaska, according to the National Institute of Occupations Safety and Health.  Flying is much more common in Alaska, particularly because 82% of the State’s towns and settlements are reachable only by air.

AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS OCCUPATIONS, DAY TWO

It is probably not surprising to the watcher of the Deadliest Catch that fisherman have the second most dangerous occupation in the United States.  Half of fishing industry deaths are caused from boats capsizing in storms or sinking from hull damage, according the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. 

In the past, the risks associated with fishing were made worse because boats tried to maximize the amount of fish they catch before a cap for the season was reached.  The government has since instituted an individual quota system for many fisheries, allowing boats to fill their assigned catch any time during the season.  As a result, crabbers no longer have to venture out in foul weather or work all night to beat others in a competition. 

 

AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS OCCUPATIONS

Over the next ten days I am going to discuss the most dangerous jobs in the United States, according to U.S. labor statistics.  Today the most dangerous occupation of all... Loggers.

Few would be surprised by these statistics.  Loggers work with heavy loads in bad weather on steep slopes.  They face a particular danger known in the trade as “widow makers,” which are dead branches snagged in tree tops that work loose during cutting.

The fatality rate pro per 100,000 workers is 127.8.  In the past, the biggest exposure for loggers “was men on the ground hit by falling trees or chainsaw kickback,” according to Neil Ward, Vice President of the Forest Resources Association.  He went on to say that manual chainsaws are now hardly ever used except for upon steep slopes.

To improve worker safety, companies are encouraging workers to wear more visible clothing and to use a signal system to alert logger to imminent dangers.  Companies increasingly have been using mechanical filling, in which loggers sit in a protective cabin while a steel arm holding a chainsaw reaches out to cut the trunk.

Pennsylvania is the nations largest producer of hardwood lumber, producing over 1 billion board feet per year.  Pennsylvania’s logging industry provides more than 90,000 jobs, or 10 percent of Pennsylvania’s manufacturing work force, in 2,600 companies.

TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIES IN THE NFL

Frontline, a PBS news program, recently ran a two-hour show on traumatic brain injuries in the NFL.  "League of Denial:  The NFL's Concussion Crisis" can be watched online, and probably will be repeated on TV during the next year.

According to Frontline, the first confirmation of the effects of the violent football collisions has on the brains of NFL players occurred in 2002 when Dr. Bennet Omalu performed an autopsy on former Pittsburgh Steeler star center Mike Webster, who had died at the age of 50.  Inside Mike Webster's brain he found that he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the first hard evidence that playing pro football "could cause permanent brain damage."

Despite that mounting evidence of a concussion crisis in the NFL from 1994 to 2002, the NFL consistently denied that there was a problem.  In December 1994 NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue described concussions as a "pack journalism issue" claiming that the actual concussion problem was relatively small.  In 1995, NFL players attended a seminar with a panel of medical experts who described the symptoms and dangers of concussions.  After attending the conference, San Diego Charger Gary Plummer said the following:  "By their standards, I must've had 200 concussions." 

In 1999, Mike Webster claimed that football had given him dementia.  Later that year,  the NFL Retirement Board ruled that he was permanently disabled.  In 2001, Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Troy Aikman announced his retirement, in part, as a result of concussions he had suffered during his NFL career.  Three years later, Pittsburgh Steeler Justin Strzelczyk died in a car crash at the age of 36.  He had been complaining of depression and behaving erratically, and an autopsy later showed that he was suffering from CTE. 

Meanwhile, the NFL's Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee continued to deny that concussions were a significant problem, stating in January 2004 that most concussed players recovered quickly.  Soon thereafter, former Steeler Terry Long commits suicide by drinking antifreeze.  An autopsy revealed that he had CTE.  The MTBI Committee continued to deny the significance of the concussion problem, despite mounting evidence that linked football to the early onset of dementia.

In November 2006, former Philadelphia Eagles player Andre Waters committed suicide at the age of 44.  Like those before him, an autopsy revealed that he had CTE.

The NFL's MTBI Committee continued to issue denials of a serious concussion problem in the NFL, criticizing every study done that linked concussions to CTE, dementia, and depression.  Not until December 2009, after a shakeup in the NFL's MTBI Committee, did the NFL acknowledge that concussions can lead to long-term problems.  The following year, the league warned that concussions can change "your life forever.”  Shortly thereafter, they gave $30,000,000.00 for research to the National Institute of Health for research into brain trauma. 

Meanwhile, though the NFL continued to change the rules of the game to make concussions less likely, the 2012 NFL season showed a 14 percent rise in the incidents of concussions.  In January 2013 the NFL Players Association announced that it would fund a $100,000,000.00 Harvard Medical School research initiative into the health problems that affect current and former football players.  The initiative's focus is broad, but does include an analysis of head trauma. 

Three months ago, the NFL agreed to pay a $765,000,000.00 settlement of the lawsuit filed by retired players against the NFL for brain injuries, they suffered.  As part of the settlement, the league did not admit any wrongdoing.

Surprisingly, many of the most dramatic cases of traumatic brain injury involve Pennsylvania-based NFL players.  The message from the NFL's experience:  Take concussions seriously.  If any of your children suffer concussions as a result of their participation in sports, they must be seen by a neurologist experienced in the treatment of traumatic brain injury.

According to the Philadelphia Eagles, Quarterback Nick Foles suffered a concussion shortly before he left Philadelphia's game against Dallas.  Foles had performed terribly in the game, and some are speculating that his concussion had occurred far earlier than either he or the Eagles claim.  There is no evidence, however that Foles suffered his concussion earlier than claimed.

INJURED WORKERS’ RIGHTS WHEN PURSUING A MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE ACTION ARISING OUT OF TREATMENT FOR A WORK INJURY

In a personal injury action, the injured person may recover past and future pain and suffering, special damages, medical expenses and wage losses. 

Ordinarily, an insurance company paying wage loss or medical expense benefits in connection with a work injury has a right to recover for medical expenses and wage loss benefits in an action against a negligent party who caused the work injury. 

It is not clear whether future medical expenses or wage loss benefits are recoverable. 

Usually, the courts do not allow the negligent party to offer evidence that the injured person has received money from other sources, including workers’ compensation, in order to reduce the damages payable to the injured party. 

This rule, however, is limited in medical negligence actions, in which an injured person “is precluded from recovering damages for past medical expenses or past lost earnings incurred to the time of trial to the extent that the loss is covered by a private or public benefit...that the claimant has received prior to trial.”

This means that in a medical negligence action, the injured party is not allowed to collect for past medical expenses or wage loss benefits if those expenses have been paid by a workers’ compensation carrier. 

Bottom line:  If you are collecting workers’ compensation benefits and are pursuing a medical negligence action arising out of treatment for the work injury, the attorney representing you in the medical negligence action has to be very careful about settling the case if he does not understand how the MCARE Act interacts with the workers’ compensation act.