August 13, 2007 — While the number of occupational injuries and illnesses has dropped sharply in recent years, 83 percent of the decline is attributable to OSHA-engineered changes to recordkeeping rules, reports a study in the July issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The study’s authors assessed the relationship between changes in OSHA recordkeeping regulations and the trend in occupational injuries and illnesses, as reported in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses. They noted the source for the survey is injury logs maintained by employers, which only report injuries and illnesses that are mandated by OSHA’s recordkeeping standard.
The researchers found that injuries and illnesses declined significantly after changes were made to recordkeeping rules in 1995 and again in 2001. Before the first major recordkeeping change in 1995, injuries and illnesses declined annually by 0.5 percent. But from 1995-2000, the slope declined by 3.1 percent annually. The second rule change resulted in a steeper decline of 8.3 percent from 2001 to 2003.
For more information, see the publication.
