Workplace Safety in US – Death rate has dropped 81 percent, saving half a million lives

Since Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1970, theU.S. workplace death rate has dropped 81 percent, saving half a million lives. Economic and technological changes have swept workers out of the most deadly jobs and into comparatively safer ones. New state and federal standards have outlawed corner-cutting that formerly killed employees, imposing costs on companies that don’t comply. Still, deaths from workplace injuries in the U.S. averaged 13 a day in 2012, and the number of work-related deaths—counting illnesses such as lung cancer—may be 10 times as large.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Workplace Safety: OSHA’s Creation Has Saved Lives – Businessweek.