Under a requirement that took effect Jan. 1, 2015, employers must report to OSHA within 24 hours any work-related amputation, in-patient hospitalization, or loss of eye. (The requirement to report a fatality within 8 hours was unchanged.) Injuries may be reported directly to an OSHA field office, to the OSHA toll-free number, or via an online form; details are available at www.osha.gov/report.html. In the FIRST FULL YEAR of the reporting program, employers notified OSHA of 10,388 incidents involving severe work-related injuries, including 7,636 hospitalizations and 2,644 amputations. The reports were from federal OSHA states ONLY and do NOT include injuries from states that administer their own safety and health programs. These federal ONLY numbers amount to 30 work-related severe injuries a day — evidence that, despite decades of progress, many U.S. worksites remain hazardous to workers.
For a breakdown of hospitalization and amputation reports by industry…