The Cost Of Accidents To Industry

As the debate over health care reform continues, costs have become a critical measure in the many plans and proposals to come before us. Knowing costs is important because it allows comparisons across such disparate health conditions as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, and cancer. This book presents the results of a major study estimating the large and largely overlooked costs of occupational injury and illness--costs as large as those for cancer and over four times the costs of AIDS. The incidence and mortality of occupational injury and illness were assessed by reviewing data from national surveys and applied an attributable-risk-proportion method. Costs were assessed using the human capital method that decomposes costs into direct categories such as medical costs and insurance administration expenses, as well as indirect categories such as lost earnings and lost fringe benefits. The total is estimated to be $155 billion and is likely to be low as it does not include costs associated with pain and suffering or of home care provided by family members. Invaluable as an aid in the analysis of policy issues, Costs of Occupational Injuryand Illness will serve as a resource and reference for economists, policy analysts, public health researchers, insurance administrators, labor unions and labor lawyers, benefits managers, and environmental scientists, among others. J. Paul Leigh is Professor in the School of Medicine, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, University of California, Davis. Stephen Markowitz, M.D., is Professor in the Department of Community Health and Social Medicine, City University of New York Medical School. Marianne Fahs is Director of the Health Policy Research Center, Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, New School University. Philip Landrigan, M.D., is Wise Professor and Chair of the Department of Community Medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York.

The Construction Chart Book presents the most complete data available on all facets of the U.S. construction industry: economic, demographic, employment/income, education/training, and safety and health issues. The book presents this information in a series of 50 topics, each with a description of the subject matter and corresponding charts and graphs. The contents of The Construction Chart Book are relevant to owners, contractors, unions, workers, and other organizations affiliated with the construction industry, such as health providers and workers compensation insurance companies, as well as researchers, economists, trainers, safety and health professionals, and industry observers.

Herbert William Heinrich has been one of the most influential safety pioneers. His work from the 1930s/1940s affects much of what is done in safety today – for better and worse. Heinrich’s work is debated and heavily critiqued by some, while others defend it with zeal. Interestingly, few people who discuss the ideas have ever read his work or looked into its backgrounds; most do so based on hearsay, secondary sources, or mere opinion. One reason for this is that Heinrich’s work has been out of print for decades: it is notoriously hard to find, and quality biographical information is hard to get. Based on some serious "safety archaeology," which provided access to many of Heinrich’s original papers, books, and rather rich biographical information, this book aims to fill this gap. It deals with the life and work of Heinrich, the context he worked in, and his influences and legacy. The book defines the main themes in Heinrich’s work and discusses them, paying attention to their origins, the developments that came from them, interpretations and attributions, and the critiques that they may have attracted over the years. This includes such well-known ideas and metaphor as the accident triangle, the accident sequence (dominoes), the hidden cost of accidents, the human element, and management responsibility. This book is the first to deal with the work and legacy of Heinrich as a whole, based on a unique richness of material and approaching the matter from several (new) angles. It also reflects on Heinrich’s relevance for today’s safety science and practice.