Denver — Evaluating OSHA’s Top 10 list of most frequently cited standards against Bureau of Labor Statistics data can help link citations and injuries, although it isn’t a one-to-one relationship.
Jay Vietas, senior director of research at the National Safety Council, offered that view as well as an analysis Tuesday during the 2025 NSC Safety Congress & Expo.
Citing assistance from Ken Kolosh, statistics manager at NSC, Vietas presented “The Injuries Behind the Citations” immediately after the presentation of OSHA’s Top 10 most frequently cited standards for fiscal year 2025.
Vietas aimed to connect the “what” to the “why” by using 2023 BLS injury and fatality data as examples that may be associated with OSHA violations. They don’t fully establish causality, however, he stressed.
The BLS data shows that 5,283 workers died from on-the-job injuries in 2023. That includes 885 deaths related to falls, 725 of which were the result of falls to a lower level.
The presentation featured a discussion on other reported causes of death in 2023. Among them:
- Transportation incidents (1,942)
- Workplace violence (740)
- Exposure to electricity (142)
- Forklift, order picker, platform truck – powered (67)
- Caught in or entangled in running powered equipment (53)
- Struck by running powered equipment during maintenance, cleaning, testing (48)
