Document 93EqZZqVyx4zVzpeN3bazBbD7

THE INDUSTRIAL SAFETY MOVEMENT TREND OF ACCIDENTAL WORK DEATHS HAS BEEN DOWN gain, but the larger part is certainly the product of organized safety work This gain was achieved m spite of the introduction of a new and large-scale source of accidental death in the nation More than 1,400,000 motor vehicle deaths have oc curred in America from 1913 through 1963, against some 12,000 in the years before It is worth noting that though death rates for the entire population--that is, for all ages --from 1903-07 to 1963 declined 38 per cent, the death rate for persons of normal working age--25 to 64 years--declined nearly 50 per cent Work accident death data do not antedate 1928, hut even since that date, there has been a 53 per cent decline in the death rate from work accidents In fact, despite a tremendous increase in the labor force, there has been a reduction of several thousand in the total number of deaths from work acci dents per year Figures for 1963 show 14,200 work deaths that year Although this total was somewhat above that for recent years, it was below the 15,000 total of ten years previously The work accident figures probably under state the progress made in industrial safety, for they include a very large number of nonindustrial work deaths Farm work, trade, and services accounted for more than half the accidental work deaths in 1963 The remaining 6,700 deaths occurred in manu facturing, public utilities, transportation, construction, and the extractive industries (mining, quarrying, and gas and oil wells) Overall frequency and seventy rates for industry are not available, but figures on the expenence of concerns reporting to the Na tional Safety Council provide a dramatic summary of the progress of organized safety work in the nation From 1928 to 1963, reporting firms expenenced a decline in the frequency rate for all disabilities from 3187 to 612 This means that four out of every five disabling iniunes per any given number of man-hours of exposure are now being prevented by con cerns reporting to the National Safety Coun cil Both seventy rates (number of days charged per 1,000,000 man-hours of expo sure) and the number of accidental deaths and permanent total disabilities in relation to man-hours worked declined in the same penod by more than two-thirds Though these figures represent onlv com- 1-10