Abstract
Published reports to assess incidents in hazardous waste operations are scarce. This study was designed to evaluate incident trends in a relatively large hazardous waste cleanup company. The data for 6.5 years, winter 1990 through spring 1996, provided 1848 incident reports with 87% involving injury/illness cases. Over 75% of injury/illness incidents were due to mechanical agents, 10% occurred because of chemical exposure, 5% involved poisonous plants and insect bites, 2% resulted from temperature extremes, 1% were from cumulative injuries/illnesses, and in 7% the agent was not recorded. Almost 31% of injuries were related to the upper extremities, with the fingers most often injured, followed by the hands. Lower back strain cases constituted 11% of injuries, ankle/foot/toe cases 9%, and knee cases 5%. Recovery technicians (laborers) had the highest frequency of injury/illness incidents (52%), followed by supervisors (15%) and heavy machinery operators (10%). The incidence rates (IRs) for all recordable incidents ranged from 11.9 for the second quarter of 1990 down to 1.2 for the fourth quarter of 1995 with a mean (SD) and median of 6.3 (3.0) and 6.1, respectively. For the time period studied, IRs decreased significantly (p<0.01). It was concluded that hands-on experience in the field and improvements in the health and safety program of the company—including expanding its focus (originally the prevention of chemical exposure) to include construction safety—reduced the incidents considerably. Introduction of new regulations has also contributed to this trend.