| Seventy-five people died on the job in the Boston area in 2016 – the most in any single year since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began releasing that information in 2000.
The New England Information Office of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this week released figures from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries on workplace fatalities in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metropolitan area.
A total of 75 fatal work injuries were reported in 2016. The number of work-related fatalities in Boston increased by 27 over the year and reached its highest level since the series began in 2000. Fatal occupational injuries in the metropolitan area range from a high of 75 in 2016 to a low of 22 in 2012.
Among the 75 fatal work injuries reported in 2016, exposure to harmful substances or environments resulted in 19 deaths, violence and other injuries by persons or animals resulted in 17 deaths, and falls, slips or trips were responsible for 16 deaths.
Within the exposure to harmful substances or environments category, workplace deaths due to exposure to other harmful substances more than tripled over the year, from five fatalities to 16.
Construction and extraction occupations had the highest number of fatal work injuries with 24. Twenty-two of these fatalities were construction trades workers.
The private construction industry sector had the largest number of fatalities in the Boston area with 22, up from 14 in the previous year. Within this industry, transportation incidents were the most frequent fatal event in the construction sector with eight worker deaths.
Seventy-three percent of those who died from a workplace injury were white non-Hispanics, compared to the national share of 67 percent. Hispanic or Latino accounted for 13 percent of those who died from a workplace injury in the local area. Nationwide, this group accounted for 16.9 percent of work-related deaths.
Nationwide, a total of 5,190 fatal work injuries were recorded in 2016, up from a count of 4,836 in 2015. This was the third consecutive increase in annual workplace fatalities and the first time more than 5,000 fatalities have been recorded by the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) since 2008.
Transportation incidents were the leading cause of worker fatalities nationwide in 2016, accounting for 40 percent of fatal work injuries.
The CFOI program, part of the BLS Occupational Safety and Health Statistics program, compiles a count of all fatal work injuries occurring in the U.S. during the calendar year. The program uses diverse state, federal and independent data sources to identify, verify and describe fatal work injuries, to assure counts that are as complete and accurate as possible.
