Overdose Rate Highest for Workers in Dangerous Occupations
Thursday, August 9, 2018 | 0
A study released by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Wednesday finds that workers employed in high-risk industries such as construction and fishing were five or six times more likely to die of an opioid overdose than the average for all workers.
Researchers studied death certificates of the 4,302 people who died from opioid-related overdoses from 2011 through 2015, focusing only on those who were employed at the time of death.
They found that the overdose death rate for workers in the construction and extraction industry, 150.6 per 100,000 workers, was nearly six times greater than the average for all workers, which was 25.1 per 100,000. Farming, fishing and forestry workers had an overdose death rate of 143.9.
The study said that the the higher overdose rates correlates with a higher rate of occupational injury and illness in those industries. Occupations that had an average workplace injury rate of 200 or more per 100,000 workers had an overdose death rate of 68.4, compared to 9.0 rate for all workers.
“There is a lot of pressure to work in pain,” Jodi Sugerman-Brozan, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, told the Boston Globe. “Construction is the occupation in which people have the highest rate of work-related injury and the highest rate of work-related fatality. ... Reducing workplace injury is a key strategy to reduce opioid use and addiction.”
Other occupations that had higher-than-average overdose death rates included material moving, installation and repair, transportation, production, food preparation and serving, building and grounds cleaning and maintenance, and health care support.
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