# interesting safety satistics



## murphy4trees (Jan 27, 2009)

At Penn dell ISA symposium today, Tony Trusselt shared the following stat for the tree care industry.

For every 120 minor injuries there are 31 major injusry and 1 fatality. These are very consistent stats, so if you are seeing a lot of minor injuries you can count on a major injury showing up.


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## serial killer (Jan 28, 2009)

I meant to ask him for clarification and got distracted by a football whacking me in the back of the head. Are you sure that the ratio was 121 minor injuries to 31 major injuries to 1 fatality? Or was it 121 minor injuries to 1 major injury and then 31 major injuries to 1 fatality? 

The graph seemed to indicate the first interpretation, which is the idea you got. But I was thinking that what came out of Tony's mouth was the second interpretation. When I think about it a little, that one seems to make more sense. 121 minor injuries to 31 major injuries is essentially 4 to 1, and I know that I see a lot more than 4 minor injuries in a year without ever coming close to a major one.

For people who weren't there, Tony had a nice little graph/chart thing that looked something like this:


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## Philbert (Jan 28, 2009)

In safety, we refer to this diagram as the 'injury pyramid' or the 'ice burg effect'.

Sometimes, when doing accident investigations, people only look at the injury or 'near miss incident' (the part of the ice burg above the water line) as an isolated occurance. To be really proactive, you need to drill down and find out how often the same circumstances or causal factors existed. Remember that most minor injuries or near misses will not be reported or recorded.

The base layer of the pyramid is really the population at risk (everybody). A safety program should be designed to keep them from moving up on the pyramid by using safe work practices, training, proper equipment, PPE, etc.

Philbert


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