228 Table 7. Fatal occupational injuries in the tree care profes- sion; a comparison of data with two other studies. Time period Number Authors Event and equipment Falls Transportation incidents 5 Assaults and violent acts 0 Exposure to harmful substances or environment Fire 2001-2006 n=42 1992-2002 n=634 (Wiatrowski 2005) 1992-2007 n=1,285 (Castillo and Menendez 2009) Fatalities as percentages of the total 12 1 Contact with an object 45 29 21 0 35 32 19 0 5 0 46 34 14 0 equipment malfunctions do occur and more attention needs to be paid to operation and daily inspection procedures. The transportation category, while among the lowest in term of fatalities among the three studies, still represented a significant number of fatalities in the tree care industry. All three studies identified highway accidents as the leading cause of fatalities in this category. Unfortunately, training in this as- pect of tree care is lacking. The remaining event or exposure categories, “assaults” and “fire,” did not have any fatalities ap- pear in the survey, although five assault fatalities were noted by Wistrowski (2005) during a 10-year reporting period. The authors of the present study were not able to find fire fatalities in the tree care industry in any reports regarding tree workers. CONCLUSION Tree work is clearly a high-risk profession, one in which train- ing should be considered essential yet only two-thirds of com- panies appear to do formal training. This training is primarily conducted by employees within the company. There are limit- ed means of qualifying an employee as a trainer, though TCIA has started a Certified Treecare Safety Professional to provide training in instruction. There also appears to be some gaps in training, with driver’s training as the most obvious; and while transportation accidents are not as common as most others, they do result in fatalities, typically highway accidents, and this of- ten neglected area of arborist safety needs to be addressed. Our study and the two citied government studies of fatal ac- cidents show similar trends with electrical contact being the most common type of fatal accident followed by contact with an ob- ject, that object being most often the tree or a portion of it. These three events—electrical contact, and struck by a falling limb or tree—may represent almost half of all the fatalities in the indus- try. However, the majority of accidents in the tree care profession do not involve a fatality. Part II of this survey will cover nonfatal accidents among tree workers and will also examine the relation- ship between training to severity and frequency of accidents. Acknowledgments. This research was partially supported by the TREE Fund Hyland R. Johns grant program. Technical assistance by Aaron Weichmann, former graduate student in Indus- trial Safety at South Dakota State University, is gratefully acknowledged. ©2010 International Society of Arboriculture Ball and Vosberg: Safety Training and Fatal Accidents LITERATURE CITED Agnew, J., and A. Suruda. 1993. Age and fatal work-related falls. Human Factors 35(4):731–736. Azaroff, L.S., C. Levenstein, and D. Wegman. 2002. Occupational injury and illness surveillance: conceptual filters explain underreporting. American Journal of Public Health 92:1421–1429. Ball, J., and D.F. Blair. 2009. Chipper accidents are more common than reported. Tree Care Industry 20(3):8–13. Blair, D.F. 1989. Safety training for the professional and the non-profes- sional. Journal of Arboriculture 15:209–214. Buckley, J.P., J.P. Sestito, and K.L. Hunting. 2008. Fatalities in the land- scape and horticultural services industry, 1992–2001. 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John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. 428 pp. Dillman, D.A. 2000. Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method. John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. 464 pp. Freese, F. 1962. Elementary Foresty Sampling. US Department of Agri- culture Agricultural Handbook 232. Gjedraitis, J.P., and J.J. Kielbaso. 1982. Municipal Tree Management. Urban Data Service Report 14(1):1–4. Hall, C.R., A.W. Hodges, and J.J. Haydu. 2007. Economic Impacts of the Green Industry in the United States. Southern Cooperative Series Bulletin 406. S-1021/S-290 Multistate Research Project. Kiplinger, W.C. Tree Surgery. 1938. Michigan Works Progress Adminis- tration. Ann Arbor, MI. 226 pp. Kish, L. 1965. Survey Sampling. John Wiley & Sons. New York, NY. 641pp. Kummerling, K. 1948. Safety for the arborist, pg 33–37. In: P. Tilford (Ed.) 24th National Shade Tree Conference Proceedings. Collier Printing Company, Wooster, OH. Leigh, J.P., J.P. Marcin, and T.R. Miller. 2004. An estimate of the U.S. government’s undercount of nonfatal occupational injuries. Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine 46:10–18. Manta. 2007. Ornamental shrub and tree service companies in the United States. Accessed July 31, 2007. . Market Update. 1996. Injuries and fatalities in landscape and horticul- ture. Grounds Maintenance 31(11):6. McGarry, G. 1962. Accident prevention methods for the tree industry. Arborist’s News 27(8):65–70. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. 1992. Preventing falls and electrocutions during tree trimming. U.S. Dept. Health and Human Services NIOSH publication no. 92–106.
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