ISN's Katie McLaughlin recently spoke with ConstructConnect about the newly released Serious Injury and Fatalities (SIFs) White Paper, a new report by ISN that reveals the trends and insights on serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) in the U.S. workplace from 2017 to 2022. The report analyzes more than 127,000 recordable incidents from contractors in 26 different industries, and highlights the top causes, sectors, and sizes of companies that experienced the most SIFs.

“If you look at the trends in safety in general we’ve seen a decrease in general incident rates over the last 20 or 30 years, but if you look at the serious injuries and fatalities, the life-altering, life-threatening injuries, we’ve really seen a pretty steady rate there,” McLaughlin noted.

The report shows that 2022 saw a drastic increase in the number of fatalities, especially in the oil and gas sector, and that contact with objects or equipment was the leading cause of death. It also notes that sprains, strains and tears were the most common type of injury reported by contractors, which could be related to an aging workforce. The report also examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the data, and finds that it resulted in higher hospitalization cases and a shift in the distribution of injuries. The report concludes that measuring and reporting SIFs is crucial for improving safety performance and preventing life-altering injuries.

“We’ve seen an uptick in reporting, but as we continue to look at this our hope is that we can help share these trends for specifically those companies that maybe don’t have a dedicated health and safety team, that don’t have software that tracks all of their incident information. If this gives them some ideas of ways to look at their data, ways to highlight factors or causes of risks in their workplaces that may result in a serious injury and helps them prioritize their mitigation strategies and their resources to have the most impact in reducing serious injuries, that would be our goal.”

Read the original article from ConstructConnect here.

Request a copy of ISN's Serious Injuries and Fatalities White Paper here.