The Chances of Being Killed on the Job

Next to police officers or security guards, cab drivers stand the greatest chance of being slain on the job, according to two new studies.

The studies also found that there is a striking dearth of information on what contributes to the risk of being a potential on-the-job homicide victim. The lack of information persists, said a Los Angeles public health expert, despite the fact that as many as one-quarter to one-third of all workplace deaths may be homicides.

These impressions emerge from studies of workplace homicide in California and Texas. The Texas study also found that the murder rate for cab drivers in Texas exceeded that of felon prison inmates.

The California study was conducted by Jess Kraus. Both of the reports and an editorial on the subject appear in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Kraus’ report and the second study, conducted by the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control, also agreed that managers of retail stores--especially those on duty after dark--have a high homicide risk.

In California, the study found, the killing rate of police officers is equal to the equivalent rate of 20.8 slayings per 100,000. The homicide rate of cab drivers is 19. Security guards are third, with 16.5. In Texas, the CDC study found cab drivers have an even higher homicide rate--36.9 per 100,000, topped only by the police rate, extremely high at 44.4.

In a telephone interview, Kraus complained that poor record-keeping in California--and most other states, too, apparently--makes it difficult to determine the true homicide rates for many occupations, since reporting of homicides on the job is sporadic. Inadequate records, he said, make it difficult to assess the role of homicide in the workplace, but, he added, a variety of studies make it clear that homicide accounts for a quarter to a third of all workplace deaths--meaning, he said, that more concentrated study is urgent.

Records are incomplete, Kraus said, because states vary in their reporting requirements, with employers sometimes obliged to report deaths just as they would injuries--but sometimes not. He also found serious lags--of as much as months or years--in cordination of coroner records and worker safety agency reports.

The number of robbery-homicides at nighttime convenience stores declines, he said, when cash registers are visible from the street and signs make it clear that money is placed in a safe that cannot be opened by store personnel. Similar workplace precautions might be taken if more was known about homicide patterns.

Taxicabs, for instance, might be more universally equipped with bulletproof shields separating the driver and passengers. But wider use of such equipment, both studies agreed, ought to also include better occupant-protection devices--like air bags--for passengers in case they are thrown forward into the partition in a sudden stop.

In an editorial accompanying the two new studies, two experts at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health note that there are an estimated 1,600 homicides on the job each year, but that the question of workplace killings has never even been addressed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Most workplace slayings are committed with firearms--with handguns the most popular single weapon, the editorial noted. “Society appropriately invests enormous resources in the protection of the President and selected officials,” the editorial observed, calculating that Presidents have the highest occupational murder rate of all--four homicides in 186 man-years of service.

But, the Johns Hopkins experts concluded, “for other occupations, much more can and should be done to reduce the death rate from homicide.” “This is a problem we have never looked at before except sporadically,” said Kraus, who is on the UCLA faculty. “Homicide on the job has never been looked at as an accidental injury and they (homicides) have never been counted.”

Pills, Glove Compartment

Alerted because his practice is headquartered in the scorching San Joaquin Valley, a Visalia physician is urging increased awareness of the risks posed by what is apparently a common consumer practice--tossing bottles of pills and other drugs into the glove compartment of your car and leaving them there.

The problem, writes Dr. Richard Seymour in a letter to the editor in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., is that interior glove compartment temperatures can easily reach 150 degrees on summer afternoons and 110 in the comparative California cool of mid-November. Such heat levels are certain to cause many drugs intended to be stored at far lower temperatures to break down and lose effectiveness, Seymour maintains.

“Prescription labels rarely bear any recommendation concerning storage temperatures,” he wrote. “Medication kept in automobiles in warm or hot weather should be placed in insulated containers on the floor and shielded from direct sunlight.”