224 Ball and Vosberg: Safety Training and Fatal Accidents Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 2010. 36(5): 224–229 A Survey of United States Tree Care Companies: Part I - Safety Training and Fatal Accidents John Ball and Shane Vosberg Abstract. Tree work has a high accident rate compared to many other occupations. News accounts of recent accidents can be easily accessed through the internet, though this may not provide a true picture of the number and types of accidents occurring. U.S. government bureaus and agen- cies have produced reports citing the number and circumstances of fatal accidents in the profession. The government’s information is obtained from many sources and may not accurately identify types or frequency of these accidents. A survey of the accidents and safety training among tree care companies was conducted using a mail questionnaire based on the Tailored Design Method. The company managers responding to the survey over- whelming identified having trained field workers as very important yet only about two-thirds of their companies conducted any training. The train- ing most often conducted was on aerial lifts, chain saws, and chipper, which was provided by company employees in a field setting. Driver’s train- ing was not part of a formal safety program for most of the companies. Aerial rescue was practiced by about one-fourth of the surveyed companies. The most common fatal accidents involved contact with an electrical conductor followed by being struck by a falling limb. The relative number of fatal accidents by event or exposure in this survey was similar to that identified by two federal government reports on fatal accident in the field. Key Words. Arboricultural Accidents; Arboricultural Accident Survey; Safety Training; Tailored Design Method; Tree Care Industry Accidents. Arboriculture has always been regarded as a high-risk pro- fession due to a work environment that encompasses work- ing aloft and manipulating heavy loads while using pow- er equipment. It has also been described as a profession having peculiar risks, ones associated with the unique skills and equipment needed to perform this work (Blair 1989). Unfortu- nately, tree work has also been regarded as a profession with a poor safety record (McGarry 1962; Ryan and Ertel 1988). News accounts of tree care industry accidents are readily available from the internet and describe a wide range of situations and injuries, a reflection of the complexity of the work. However there is little data quantifying tree worker accidents, past or pres- ent. Kiplinger (1938) listed 33 different accidents that he either witnessed or investigated, noting a large number were due to “top men” dropping limbs before being certain the drop zone was clear of people. Kiplinger identified a number of other accidents that were common to the time period, including contact with energized conductors and workers being hit by passing traffic, but he pro- vided little information on frequency of these events. Karl Kuem- merling (1948) surveyed tree worker accidents in the state of Ohio between 1944 and 1946. He concluded that falls were the most common type of accident followed by contact with an electrical conductor and being struck by a falling limb. McGarry (1962) in a survey of accidents occurring in the Bartlett Tree Expert Com- pany observed that 75% of the accidents could be placed in one of eight categories: falls to a lower level, falls to the same level, caught in-on-or between something, striking against something, being struck by something, over-exerting, contact with an electri- cal conductor, and poisoning from chemicals or plants. Regardless ©2010 International Society of Arboriculture of the circumstances, the tree care industry accident rate in terms of lost time, injuries per hours of exposure was four to five times higher than all-industry averages at the time (Chadwick 1972). The federal government has tracked accidents in the tree care profession and reported these findings in publications through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). An NIOSH Alert (1992) on tree care industry accidents pointed out that approximately 20 tree workers were killed each year with the two leading causes being electrocution and falls. The publica- tion concludes that tree workers and their employers lacked train- ing and may be unaware of the risks in this field. A 1996 report (Market Update 1996) noted 40 fatalities the previous year in the tree care profession with 13 each occurring from falls or contact with an object and equipment, and seven each involving vehicles or electrical contact. A more recent publication from the Bureau of Labor Statistics concluded that, on average, there were 58 fa- talities per year in the tree care industry (Wiatrowski 2005). Most fatalities were due to being struck by an object, falls, contact with an electrical conductor, or transportation-related. The latest gov- ernment report of tree worker accidents found that being struck by or against an object was the most common cause of death, fol- lowed by falls then electrocution (Castillo and Menendez 2009). However, there are limitations to these two government reports as they are based upon narrations of accidents investigations and not meant to represent all the fatalities in the industry nor their rela- tive frequency. A study of the logging industry found a significant underestimate of fatalities by the government (Scott 2004), a fact the federal government recognizes (National Institute for Occu-
September 2010
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