Workers’ Memorial Day — April 28, 2016
Weekly / April 22, 2016 / 65(15);389
Altmetric:
Workers’ Memorial Day, observed annually on April 28, recognizes workers who suffered or died because of exposures to hazards at work. In 2014, 4,679 U.S. workers died from work-related injuries (1). Although deaths from work-related injuries are captured by surveillance systems, most deaths from work-related illness are not. In 2007, an estimated 53,445 deaths from work-related illness occurred (2). In 2014, employers reported approximately 3 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses to private industry workers and 722,000 to state and local government workers (3); an estimated 2.7 million work-related injuries were treated in emergency departments, resulting in 113,000 hospitalizations (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (CDC-NIOSH), unpublished data, 2016)*
Occupational injuries and illnesses also have economic costs. The societal cost of work-related fatalities, injuries, and illnesses was estimated at $250 billion in 2007 on the basis of methods that focus on medical costs and productivity losses (2).
New estimates of worker hearing impairment from the CDC-NIOSH Occupational Hearing Loss Surveillance program are reported in this issue of MMWR. The audiometric data analyzed in this report represent one example of existing health data that CDC-NIOSH uses for occupational health surveillance.
References
- Bureau of Labor Statistics. National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2014 preliminary results [Table 2]. Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics; 2015. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdfpdf iconexternal icon
- Leigh JP. Economic burden of occupational injury and illness in the United States. Milbank Q 2011;89:728–72. CrossRefexternal icon PubMedexternal icon
- Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employer-reported workplace injuries and illnesses in 2014 [Table 2]. Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics; 2015. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/osh.pdfpdf iconexternal icon
Suggested citation for this article: Workers’ Memorial Day — April 28, 2016. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2016;65:389. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6515a1external icon.
MMWR and Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report are service marks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply
endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of
the date of publication.
All HTML versions of MMWR articles are generated from final proofs through an automated process. This conversion might result in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users are referred to the electronic PDF version (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr) and/or the original MMWR paper copy for printable versions of official text, figures, and tables.
Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to mmwrq@cdc.gov.