The Most Risky Jobs in the United States - Day Ten

With a fatality rate of 17.4, construction laborers are our nation’s 10^th most dangerous occupation.  They are subject to electrical hazards, cave-ins, and falling objections, and perform heavy labor in all kinds of weather. 

The biggest risk is falls.  More than 250 construction workers a year are killed by them, according to the Laborers Health and Safety Fund of North America.

In road construction, a major cause of death is getting struck by cars or construction vehicles.  In loading dump trucks for example, drivers cannot see where they’re backing up.

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.

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BE CAREFUL WHEN SETTLING YOUR CASE!

In Pennsylvania, workers’ compensation cases are settled by entering into a compromise and release agreement.  The parties then must go to a hearing in which the workers’ compensation judge determines whether the injured worker understands the significance of the agreement.

 In Hong v. WCAB, 51 A.3d 905 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2012), the injured worker entered into a lump sum settlement.  The agreement did not say whether unpaid medical bills would be paid in addition to the lump sum.  After the settlement, the injured worker learned that one physician had an outstanding bill in excess of $37,000.00 which the employer refused to pay. 

The Commonwealth Court stated that to set aside a compromise and release agreement, the party trying to set it aside must show fraud, deception, duress, or mutual mistake.  The court found that none of these factors was present.  The court found that had claimant wanted to ensure payment of past medical bills in addition to the lump sum, his counsel could have included appropriate language in the agreement.  That the claimant had counsel was an important factor for the court.

Bottom line:  Make sure you understand the Compromise and Release Agreement, including and provisions concerning the payment of medical expenses.

PROTECTING YOUR RIGHT TO MEDICAL COVERAGE

If you are keeping the medical expenses open when you settle your case, look closely at the language.  Sometimes injured workers will settle a workers’ compensation case while keeping the insurance companies’ responsibility to medical bills open. 

In DePue v. WCAB, 61 A.3d 1062 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2012), the injured worker entered into a compromise and release agreement which described the injury as “closed head injury with seizure disorder and short-term memory loss.”  After the compromise and release agreement was approved, the injured worker filed a penalty petition alleging that the employer failed to pay for medical bills for a shoulder injury and then filed a review petition to add a left shoulder injury to the description of injury.

The Commonwealth Court ruled that the injured worker cannot do so.  In connection with the resolution of the case, the injured worker is bound by the description of injury contained in the compromise and release agreement.  The parties can, by agreement, say that the agreement is without prejudice to the right of the claimant to add additional injuries at some future point.  Absent that language, the injured worker is going to be bound by the description of injury contained in the compromise and release agreement.

Bottom line:  If you are keeping medical expenses open in the settlement of your workers’ compensation case, pay careful attention to the description of injury contained in the agreement.

TAKING MONEY FROM YOUR POCKET

Under Pennsylvania Law, an employer is entitled to a credit equal to 50% of any old age benefits against workers’ compensation benefits the employee receives.  If the employee was collecting old age benefits before the work injury occurred, the employer is not entitled to a credit.  This credit does not apply to social security disability benefits.

For example, if an employee receives $2,200.00 per month in workers’ compensation benefits and $1,100.00 per month in social security retirement benefits (old age benefits), the insurance company would be obligated to pay only $1,650.00 monthly. ($2,200-$1,100/2=$1,650.00)

In Caputo v. WCAB, an injured worker challenged this position, arguing that it was a violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The Court rejected the employee’s challenge. 

Bottom line:  Employers are entitled to reduce payments of workers’ compensation benefits by 50% of social security retirement benefits the injured worker receives.

American Lawyer Media and Martindale Hubble have selected Pennsylvania Attorney Gregory J. Boles as a “2013 Top Rated Attorney.”  Mr. Boles, partner with the Pennsylvania workers’ compensation law firm, Fenner & Boles LLC, will be listed in the November 25, 2013 edition of the Legal Intelligencer, Pennsylvania’s premier legal publication.  Attorneys recognized as “Top Rated Lawyers” have achieved significant leadership status and are highly regarded by their peers for both their legal ability and high ethical standards.

Mr. Boles’ practice is exclusively devoted to the representation of the disabled in workers’ compensation, social security disability, pension and insurance contract litigation.  He has also been chosen as a Pennsylvania SuperLawyer every year since 2007.  Each year, no more than five percent of the lawyers in the state are selected by the research team at Super Lawyers to receive this honor.

Gregory Boles is a graduate of Georgetown University and Villanova Law School. Before opening his own practice in 2000, Greg was a partner in Willig, Williams & Davidson, where his practice was devoted exclusively to the representation of injured workers.

He is the author of "Consumer's Guide to Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation" and "Caregiver's Guide to Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Billing."  Greg has written extensively on Pennsylvania workers' compensation and has lectured before attorneys, labor unions and advocacy groups for the disabled.

Diane Fenner graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Barnard College, and also has a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University. Diane has been practicing law since 1983.

It is often erroneously asserted that workers’ compensation documents are not subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Under HIPAA regulations, medical records may be obtained without authorization “as authorized by and to the extent necessary to comply with laws relating to workers’ compensation or similar programs.” Medical providers are required reasonably to limit the amount of protected health information disclosed under C.F.R. 164.512 (e) to the minimum necessary to accomplish the workers’ compensation purpose.

Bottom line: the insurance company and their attorneys are not entitled to see all of your medical records.