Technical note

TECHNICAL NOTES

Definitions

	For a fatality to be included in the census, the decedent must have been
employed (that is working for pay, compensation, or profit) at the time of the event,
engaged in a legal work activity, or present at the site of the incident as a
requirement of his or her job.  Fatalities to volunteer and unpaid family
workers who perform the same duties and functions as paid workers are also
included in the counts.  These criteria are generally broader than those used by
Federal and State agencies administering specific laws and regulations.
(Fatalities that occur during a person's normal commute to or from work are
excluded from the census counts.)

	Data presented in this release include deaths occurring in 2006 that
resultedfrom traumatic occupational injuries.  An injury is defined as any wound
or damage to the body resulting from acute exposure to energy, such as heat,
electricity, or impact from a crash or fall, or from the absence of such essentials
as heator oxygen, caused by a specific event or incident within a single workday
or shift. Included are open wounds, intracranial and internal injuries, heatstroke,
hypothermia, asphyxiation, acute poisonings resulting from short-term exposures
limited to the worker's shift, suicides and homicides, and work injuries listed
as underlying or contributory causes of death.

	Information on work-related fatal illnesses is not reported in the BLS census
and is excluded from the attached tables because the latency period of many
occupational illnesses and the difficulty of linking illnesses to work exposures
make identification of a universe problematic.

Measurement techniques and limitations

	Data for the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries are compiled from various
Federal, State, and local administrative sources including death certificates,
workers' compensation reports and claims, reports to various regulatory agencies,
medical examiner reports, and police reports as well as news and other
non-governmental reports.  Diverse sources are used because studies have shown that
 no single source captures all job-related fatalities.  Source documents are matched
so that each fatality is counted only once.  To ensure that a fatality occurred
while the decedent was at work, information is verified from two or more independent
source documents or from a source document and a follow-up questionnaire.
Approximately 30 data elements are collected, coded, and tabulated, including
information about the worker, the fatal incident, and the machinery
or equipment involved.

Identification and verification of work-related fatalities

	In 2006, there were 81 cases included for which work relationship could not
be verified with a second document; however, the information on the initiating source
document for these cases was sufficient to determine that the incident was likely
to be job-related.  Data for these fatalities are included in the Census of Fatal
Occupational Injuries counts.  An additional 46 fatalities submitted by States were
not included because the source documents had insufficient information to determine
work relationship and could not be verified by either an independent source document
or a follow-up questionnaire.

	States may identify additional fatal work injuries after data collection
closeout for a reference year.  In addition, other fatalities excluded from the
published count because of insufficient information to determine work relationship may
subsequently be verified as work-related.  States have up to seven months to update
their initial published State counts.  This procedure ensures that fatality data are
disseminated as quickly as possible and that legitimate cases are not excluded from
the counts.  Thus, each year's report should be considered preliminary until final
data are issued.  Over the last 5 years, increases in the published counts based on
additional information have averaged fewer than 27 fatalities per year or less than
0.5 percent of the revised total.  The BLS news release issued August 10, 2006,
reported a total of 5,702 fatal work injuries for 2005.  Since then, a net addition
of 32 fatal work injuries were identified, bringing the total for 2005 to 5,734.
Revised counts for 2006 will be available in April 2008.

Federal/State agency coverage

	The Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries includes data for all fatal work
injuries, whether the decedent was working in a job covered by the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA) or other Federal or State agencies or was outside the
scope of regulatory coverage.  Thus, any comparison between the BLS fatality census
counts and those released by other agencies should take into account the different
coverage requirements and definitions being used by each agency.

	Several Federal and State agencies have jurisdiction over workplace safety and
health.  OSHA and affiliated agencies in States with approved safety programs cover the
largest portion of the nation's workers.  However, injuries and illnesses occurring in
certain industries or activities, such as coal, metal, and nonmetal mining and highway,
water, rail, and air transportation, are excluded from OSHA coverage because they are
covered by other Federal agencies, such as the Mine Safety and Health Administration and
various agencies within the Department of Transportation.

	Fatalities occurring among several other groups of workers are generally not
covered by any Federal or State agencies.  These groups include self-employed and unpaid
family workers, which accounted for about 18 percent of the fatalities; laborers on
small farms, accounting for about 1 percent of the fatalities; and State and local
government employees in States without OSHA-approved safety programs, which accounted
for about 4 percent.  (Approximately one-half of the States have approved OSHA safety
programs, which cover State and local government employees.)

Acknowledgements

	BLS thanks the participating States, New York City, and the District of Columbia
for their efforts in collecting accurate, comprehensive, and useful data on fatal work
injuries.  BLS also appreciates the efforts of all Federal, State, local, and private
sector agencies that submitted source documents used to identify fatal work injuries.
Among these agencies are the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; the National
Transportation Safety Board; the U.S. Coast Guard; the Mine Safety and Health
Administration; the Employment Standards Administration (Federal Employees' Compensation
and Longshore and Harbor Workers' divisions); the Federal Railroad Administration;
the Department of Energy; State vital statistics registrars, coroners, and medical
examiners; State departments of health, labor and industries, and workers'
compensation agencies; State and local police departments; and State farm bureaus.