You don’t have to work a dangerous job to sustain an occupational injury. Work injuries can happen at any time in any industry, and both employers and workers should be aware and prepared to help prevent them from happening in the first place.

Work Injuries in the U.S.

Millions of employees across the United States sustain work-related injuries every year. In 2017, there were over 2.8 million non-fatal work injuries according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and these are only the ones that were reported. Hundreds or even thousands of injuries may go unreported every year, either because they are considered too ‘small’ or the employees feel they will incur consequences for telling a supervisor.

Work injuries do not just affect a worker on a physical level. Nearly one-third of non-fatal work injuries involved missing one or multiple days of work. These absences can result in loss of income, responsibilities, privileges, or in the worst of cases even a job. Other areas of a workers life can also be affected by a work injury: emotional health, psychological health, family relationships, financial stability, and overall well-being. While some work injuries are the result of a freak accident, most are completely preventable with the proper safety precautions in place.

Most Common Workplace Injuries

The first step to preventing injuries from occurring at work is to understand the most common types of occupational injuries across multiple industries. Learning how to keep employees safe from these common work injuries can help employers develop effective safety policies and prevention strategies:

  1. Overexertion Injuries: Overexertion injuries are the most common and expensive injuries in the country. These injuries happen when employees are doing too much, participating in tasks that are strenuous, or performing tasks that may be above their physical ability to do. Overexertion injuries can result from lifting, pulling, holding, carrying, pushing, or throwing.
  2. Slipping/Tripping Injuries: Slip and falls, or trip and falls, are most likely to happen on wet and slippery surfaces due to spills or improper maintenance. Standing puddles, food/drink spills, or chemical leaks can all lead to slip and falls.
  3. Falling Injuries (from heights): These types of injuries occur when falling from elevated working surfaces such as roofs, windows, ladders, stairs. Depending on the height, these injuries can have devastating consequences such as brain injury, internal organ damage, and spinal injury
  4. Reaction Injuries: Reaction injuries place stress on the muscles, bones, and joints from the force of slipping or tripping and not falling. Reaction injuries often occur when an employee is surprised by their environment.
  5. Falling Object Injuries: When objects are not securely and properly placed, they can easily fall and strike a fellow worker. These types of injuries can lead to severe consequences such as traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries.
  6. Walking Injuries: Workers can walk into all sorts of objects that could cause impact injuries to the body. These types of objects include doors, walls, windows, cabinets, tables, chairs. desks, machines, etc.
  7. Vehicle Accidents: Vehicle accidents are often the most fatal work-related injuries. Workers who drive for work can be distracted, in a rush, or just at the mercy of other dangerous drivers on the road.
  8. Machine Injuries: Industries such as manufacturing and construction have large equipment that can be extremely harmful to workers if they become entangled. Shoes, fingers, arms, clothing, and jewelry are all common culprits for employees becoming stuck in machines.
  9. Repetitive Motion Injuries: Employees who do similar tasks at every shift are at risk for repetitive motion injuries. Typing, lifting, turning, and pressing all seem like simple motions but can cause long-term medical conditions such as carpal tunnel, vision problems, and back pain.
  10. Workplace Violence: Workers do not always get along with each other. When these disagreements get physical, employees can cause serious physical harm to each other.

Preventing Workplace Accidents

While each injury requires its own safety plan to keep workers safe on the job, there are some general safety steps all employees and employers can implement to help prevent occupational injuries on the job:

While some employees sustain injuries minor in nature, other workers have suffered catastrophic and permanent injuries that they will never completely recover from. It’s extremely important for the safety of all workers that employers put the safety of their employees first and create ongoing safety training to reduce the number of injuries on the job.

Work Safely CT

You go to work to earn money so you can enjoy your life, not to sustain an injury that could change it forever. If you or a loved one has sustained a serious work injury on the job, call our winning team at Jacobs & Wallace for help. Our expert team of personal injury and workers’ compensation attorneys has over 40 years of experience defending workers’ rights. Contact us today for a free case evaluation.

 

Keyless ignitions are far more convenient for drivers than the standard key fob, but that convenience may be coming at a cost. More and more stories of keyless cars leading to carbon monoxide deaths have been spreading throughout the media recently and consumers should be aware of the risks if they own a keyless car or are considering investing in this new technology.

Keyless Ignitions Can Be Deadly

The idea of starting your car with the push of a button is appealing for most modern day drivers, especially those who are constantly fumbling around and searching for their keys. With a keyless car, the key fob only needs to be close to the vehicle for your hand to be able to open the door. And with the simple push of a button, your car is started and ready to go.

Unfortunately, as easy as it is to start your car with keyless ignitions, it’s also just as easy to forget to stop it! These forgetful moments are leading to more than just empty gas tanks- they are costing people their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Keyless Cars and CO Deaths

In August of this year, a 91-year-old man from Tampa, Florida parked his car in his garage around 8 o’clock in the morning. When he didn’t show up for a friends poker game the following day, local police performed a wellness check where they sadly found the man dead in his master bedroom. When police arrived at the man’s house, his car was still running in the garage. The carbon monoxide level was at 300% in the home and it appeared the man went to bed and never woke up due to the poisonous gas.

When drivers forget to turn off their keyless vehicles, carbon monoxide gas (CO) continues to leak from the exhaust. Left outside, this gas can blow away with the wind and disperse more easily into the air. However, the danger arises most when people park their cars in their garage where the gas has nowhere left go but into the rooms and vents of your home. Dozens of people have been killed over the years from forgetting to turn off their vehicles and these are only the number of deaths that have been reported, far from the actual total.

The Silent Killer

Carbon monoxide gas is a colorless, odorless gas nicknamed the ‘silent killer’. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 430 people die of carbon monoxide poisoning in our country every year and most never even know it’s happening until it’s too late. CO becomes deadly to humans when they are exposed to the gas long enough for harmful amounts to enter the bloodstream, allowing the gas to replace oxygen in the blood leading to serious illnesses including:

Sadly, a number of carbon monoxide deaths occur when people are sleeping and are not able to  monitor the machines and appliances that leaks are coming from. In the past, generators, furnaces, space heaters, and gas stoves have been typical culprits for releasing this deadly gas into people’s homes, but now we can add keyless cars to the list of CO hazards to watch out for.

Why It’s So Easy To Forget

There are a number of reasons why consumers are having a hard time remembering to turn off their keyless cars, all in which are contributing to the increase in carbon monoxide deaths:

Preventing CO Illnesses and Deaths

Everyone forgets from time to time, but your forgetfulness doesn’t have to cost you or your family their health and safety. Any owner of a keyless car should follow these simple safety steps to helping reduce the chance of deadly CO leaks in their home:

Don’t take a chance on your memory when it comes to your keyless vehicle. Help ensure your car is always off before entering your home to prevent unnecessary illnesses and deaths to you and those you love.

GET READY FOR HO HO HOLDUPS & DRUNK SANTAS IN NYC TOMORROW!
SantaCon is about to flood New York City streets and bars of for the annual event. If you live under a rock and haven’t seen or heard of SantaCon, it’s that annual holiday season kickoff when Santa and elf impersonators embark on a bar crawl, making havoc through the city. You’ll either find the booze-fueled scene amusing or annoying to watch. It all goes down tomorrow, December 8th. If you are heading into NYC here is what you should know:
  1. Expect Grid Lock: Thousands of Santas will begin gathering across midtown Manhattan. From MSG on the 33rd St. plaza between Seventh and Eighth avenues until 11 a.m. Saturday before kicking off the crawl to bars in Midtown, the East Village and Chelsea. The SantaCon festivities last into the night, so be warned.
  2. Metro-North Commuters:  Anyone taking the train from CT into NYC, expect crowded trains and a 24 hour booze ban from noon Saturday until noon Sunday.
  3. Strong NYPD presence: NYPD will be in midtown watching out for “naughty” Santas!

To find out more details of Sanatacon with the official map to either join in, or stay away!  https://www.6sqft.com/the-official-santacon-2018-map-is-here-consider-yourself-warned/

Most people try to start off their New Year with at least one resolution to improve their lifestyle: start working out more, stop smoking, eat healthier. As good as these intentions are, diving right into a New Year’s resolution can easily lead to injuries and even leave you in worse shape than when you started.

New Year’s Resolutions Can Cause Injuries!

The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to start fresh and make some changes regarding your health. However, when it comes to setting resolutions, it’s easy for someone to get a bit carried away. Some of the most popular resolutions that can lead to injuries include:

Resolution-makers who jump into these health goals most often suffer overuse injuries such as joint inflammation, sprains, and stress fractures. They can also make themselves sick from too much ‘healthy’ food all at the same time, or starting crazy fad diets that are actually harmful to your body.

Make Smart Health Resolutions

While there’s nothing wrong with someone wanting to improve their health, the biggest mistake people make with their New Year’s resolutions is starting too fast. Going from 0 to 50 when it comes to diet and exercise can put a lot of harmful stress on your body. Setting up a proper health plan takes time and patience, and the majority of resolution-makers fail at their attempts simply because they tried to do too much far too quickly.

To guide you towards safely improving your health in the New Year, try following these tips for making smarter health resolutions that will help you avoid starting off 2019 in a doctor’s office.

Don’t Overdo It

If you’re planning to start a workout program as your New Year’s resolution, start slow. Even if you have exercised heavily in the past, a long absence in physical activity causes your body to go through a number of changes that can be difficult for you to start where you left off.

Bellefleur Physiotherapy suggests starting off with shorter workout sessions in the beginning. Building up to longer sessions will allow your body to get used to the extra stress and to build the endurance needed to get you to the next level. When it comes to weight lifting, never start off with the heaviest set. Not only could you strain your muscles and joints, dropping weights is easy to do when your body is not strong enough to safely put them down.

Skip The Diet Plans

Some of the popular diet fads and cleanses not only don’t help you lose weight, they can actually make your body feel worse! If a diet claims to help you lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time, chances are it’s probably unhealthy.

Mayo Clinic advises anyone looking to change their diet to start slow and skip the crazy diets. Drinking lots of water, cutting down on munching, adding more healthy food choices to your diet every week, and eating a variety of fruits and vegetable are all excellent steps to take on your way to a new healthier lifestyle.

For more on diets to avoid, check out the 10 Worst Diets of 2018 rated by the U.S. News and World Report.

Consider A Personal Trainer

In 2012, over 450,000 people reported injuries from exercise and exercise equipment- and mostly because they didn’t know what they were doing! If you have never worked out before or are just not sure how to get to where you want to be physically, a personal trainer might be a safer option than jumping on random pieces of equipment at the gym. Personal trainers can evaluate your current fitness level and abilities to suggest exercises that are safe and beneficial. They can also help you avoid equipment injuries by teaching you how to use them correctly and safely for your body type and goals.

Consult A Doctor

When starting any new diet or workout program, it’s always best to consult a doctor first.  Individuals with heart disease or other pre-existing health conditions can put themselves in serious danger by starting a workout schedule their body is not prepared for. Talking to your doctor about your health goals and staying up to date with your physicals can immensely decrease your risks of exercise-induced injuries and illnesses.

Start The Year Off Strong!

Don’t risk your health just to lose a few pounds. Start your New Year off strong by making smart and healthy resolutions when it comes to diet and exercise.

If you or loved has been injured in an accident, Jacobs & Wallace is here to fight back for you. Contact our expert team of personal injury attorneys today for a free consultation.

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