The Nation - News from Sept. 4, 1989

More workers are killed on the job in the United States than in most other major industrialized countries, according to a report that says the deaths cost the nation’s economy at least $15 billion each year. Workers in this country are 36 times more likely to be killed than a Swede and nine times more likely to be killed than a Briton, the Chicago-based National Safe Workplace Institute found in its annual Labor Day report. In addition, a U.S. worker is more likely to be seriously injured on the job than a two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker is to contract cancer, according to the report. Among other findings: More than 10,000 men and women die each year from on-the-job injuries, another 70,000 workers become permanently disabled each year as a result of job-related conditions and 1 in 11 will be killed or seriously injured at work.