The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog purposely tries to omit the gender
of the worker(s) involved in the incidents that are posted. We feel “who cares
what their gender is?”. For every injury involving a male worker, there has
been a similar incident involving a female worker. Albeit not with the same
amount of frequency. With no statistics to back this statement up, we feel that
a majority of the shop floor workers in our industry are males. Which was based
on visiting anywhere from 60-70 plants around the world. The APSB has found an interesting
study titled “Occupational injury risk by sex in a manufacturing cohort” that
focuses on the aluminium industry.
ABSTRACT
Objectives This
study expands previous research comparing injury risk for women and men in a
cohort of 24 000 US aluminium manufacturing workers in 15 facilities from 2001
to 2010.
Methods We
compared injury rates (all injury, first aid, medical treatment, restricted work
and lost work time) by sex and by job and sex. Using a mixed effect modelling
approach, we calculated ORs and 95% CIs adjusting for age, job tenure,
ethnicity and year as fixed effects and person, job and plant as random effects.
Additionally, we modelled the data stratified by plant type to examine potential
differences in injury risk between smelter (generally recognized as more
hazardous) and fabrication production environments.
Results Risk
of injury was higher for women in four out of the five injury outcomes: all
injuries combined (OR: 1.58, CI 1.48 to 1.67), injuries requiring first aid (OR:
1.61, CI 1.54 to 1.70), injuries requiring medical treatment (OR: 1.18, CI 1.03
to 1.36) and injuries requiring restricted work (OR: 1.65, CI 1.46 to 1.87). No
difference in the risk of lost time injury by sex was found in this cohort.
Analyses stratified by plant type showed similarly elevated injury risk for
women, although the risk estimates were higher in smelters than fabrication
plants.
Conclusions To
our knowledge, this is the largest single-firm study examining injury risk by
sex with sufficient data to appropriately adjust for job. We show a consistently
higher injury risk for women compared with men in the smelting and fabrication
environments.
The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog congratulates the authors of this
study. The APSB found the study and conclusions to be interesting and hope our
industry reads the study. The study can be found here. Please note if you
scroll down, a floating menu will appear that will allow you to download the
study as a .pdf free of charge.
Please comment.
16 comments:
I would bet the females are overall safer, based on injury data at my workplace.
Neither, its unfair to say that someone's gender will cause them to be safe or unsafe. It all about attitude, perspective, aptitude, and experience that makes a person commit unsafe/safe acts, not their gender. We all have (unless mentally unstable) a sense of self preservation, it is wether or not we consistently choose to prioritize that sense over the perceived risk of a task that determines the safety of that individual.
Great comments, I agree. I would have never even consider looking at the sex of a worker. But the authors of this study did and provided some interesting points. But, as they say they lack the data to make hard conclusions.
This question is biased based, which will only get opinionated responses. When it comes to top management well it would be neither because nearly all both lack health and safety leadership qualities. The amount of accidents between the both won't matter because as we all know most accidents are unreported and even if through trending and analysis we discover that women have fewer accidents it still doesn't mean they are safety. What you are trying to do here is measure something but what we least desire (accidents) which is a lagging indication. I call this a definition of the insane.
In my opinion females are safer in most cases. Every accident in the office has been by men and none that have been caused by women. Of course this may be just isolated incidents but I think in my opinion females are safer. Safety = females
Women love powerful laundry products with lots of chlorine and fragrances that irritate the lungs or skin of their children. Men are expected to be tough and endure noise that causes hearing loss and fuels the hearing aid industry. Enlightenment is all too rare. My guess is that ignorance rules equally with the genders, but the dangers differ.
Great comments from all. I do agree with you that the question is biased based and will get back opinionated responses. For myself, the question revealed that I never even considered sex, and made me wonder how my opinions or beliefs would be different if I did consider sex. I ultimately decided that sex should not matter. But, to the researchers it did.
ha ha ha,,, I think the men are the ones who should handle safety.
If I look at the data for my plant for the past 2 years, I'm even on both. For me, this study is a non-issue.
Well I shant name names of companies, but I do know there in one (very well known oil sands) company out there who likes to hire women heavy equipment operators/drivers over men, as they are statistically known to be safer, easier on the equipment and take more pride in their work than their male counterparts.... Over all they are more cost saving for the company then men are.
From my perspective I have to agree with this, the workers who give me the most grief are those 30 and under and male. Next group are 50 and over males/females equally, never have any issue with the women in general who are much more willing to work safe and take safety to heart! Guys though - well they just have to 'get er done'.....
The title is misleading 'Who is safer...?"
While the article is all about RISK - who is more at risk. It states nothing about who actually IS safer.
So - I would agree that in a smelting environment women ARE and MORE RISK of being injured just by the fact that they are not as big or strong as men. But I would have to ask this: Do they actually HAVE MORE injuries than their male counterparts?
The worldwide male to female birth ration is 101:100. This is natures way of correcting for males being characteristically "unsafe" ever since we crawled out of the primordial stew; fighting wars, hunting wooly mammouths, crossing the north atlantic in boats made out of animal skins, etc.
Now is this trend indicative of current behavioral differences between genders? I'd like to think that we've evolved since those days, especially now that behavioral based safety culture is so well implemented in many work places. That behavior just may come more naturally to some than others. ; )
interesting discussion and many great comments
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Non Fatal Occupational Injuries and Illnesses Requiring Days Away From Work 2013 report (12/16/14) .
"The 2013 nonfatal injury and illness incidence rates for men in private sector, state government, and local government (all ownerships) decreased to 119.2 cases per 10,000 full-time workers, down from 122.1 in 2012. (See table A and table 6.) The 2013 incidence rate for women was statistically unchanged at 97.0 compared to 98.8 in 2012. Injuries and illnesses to men accounted for 61 percent (705,100) of all cases and required a median of 10 days away from work—three days more than the median for women.
(See table 6.) The two leading types of injuries or illnesses for both men and women were sprains, strains, tears and soreness, pain. (See chart E and table 14.) Men incurred sprains, strains, or tears at a greater rate than women with 42.5 cases per 10,000 full-time workers compared to a rate of 37.2 for women. Women had a higher incidence rate of bruises, contusions with an incidence rate of 10.0 days-away-from-work cases per 10,000 full-time workers compared with a rate of 8.0 for men."
I believe that Table A - Incidence rates for nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses involving days away from work by gender, all ownerships, 2009-2013 shows a fairly constant 20 more injuries per 10,000 workers year for men.
But that does not answer the question really, as KL Coish pointed out, it's about risk.
I have two trains of thought;
Firstly, are men in higher risk industries than women?\
Secondly, does the macho element of man mean they are putting themselves in harms way?
Thank you everyone for commenting. For me I learn alot from all of your comments. Reading the comments about equipment operators for the old sands company reminded me of a recent trip to several Russian republics. Almost all of the overhead crane operators are female. I wonder why?
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