It's not going to get better:
The ILO (United Nations International Labor Organization)estimates that approximately two million workers lose their lives annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses, with accidents causing at least 350,000 deaths a year. For every fatal accident, there are an estimated 1,000 non-fatal injuries, many of which result in lost earnings, permanent disability and poverty. The death toll at work, much of which is attributable to unsafe working practices, is the equivalent of 5,000 workers dying each day, three persons every minute.
This is more than double the figure for deaths from warfare (650,000 deaths per year). According tot he ILO's SafeWork program, work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together and resulting loss in Gross Domestic Product is 20 times greater than all official development assistance to the developing countries.
Each year, 6,570 US die because of injuries at work, while 60,225 meet their maker due to occupational diseases. (Meanwhile, 13.2 million get hurt, and 1.1 million develop illnesses that don't kill them.) On on average day, two or three workers are fatally shot, two fall to their deaths, one is killed after being smashed by a vehicle, and one is electrocuted. Each year, around 30 workers die of heat stroke, and another 30 expire from carbon monoxide.
Although blue collar workers face a lot of the most obvious dangers, those slaving in offices or stores must contend with toxic air, workplace violence, driving accidents and (especially for the health-care workers) transmissible diseases. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration warns that poisonous indoor air in nonindustrial workplaces causes
"[t]housands of heart disease deaths [and] hundreds of lung cancer deaths" each year.
-50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know, by Russ Kick pg90
published by The Disinformation Company, 2003
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