Focus on Reducing Harms

Today’s Akron Beacon Journal ran a story on page three of the B section about the rising number of fatalities in Ohio workplaces this year.  In the first month of 2015, seventeen Ohioans have died on the job as a result of fatal workplace accidents.  For the full year of 2014, 46 deaths were the result of unsafe work conditions.

A related story a few days earlier noted that OSHA had “cited and fined a Northeast Ohio company for failing to protect employees after a worker was crushed to death in an industrial machine last year.”

“OSHA issued a statement Wednesday that said it’s recommended a $28,000 fine for BRT Extrusions in Niles for six serious safety violations that the agency found after a 49-year-old man was killed in August while reaching into an aluminum extrusion press to remove unprocessed parts.

The statement said the company did not ensure that the machine was powered off completely during maintenance. The statement said a supervisor had switched the machine to automatic mode while employees were on a lunch break.”

A $28,000 fine does not seem proportionate the harm caused.  Where is the cacophony of moral outrage we routinely hear when a young black man kills a liquor store clerk during a robbery?  Why do we not read in the newspaper about our president or governor launching a ‘War on the Unsafe Workplace?’

While we are subjected to a near constant barrage of outrage about violent street crime, about police officers dying in the line of duty, and about both government over-reach and government failure to reduce the violence…let’s take a moment to review the relative magnitudes of harms caused by our most routine sources of violence.

While we should mourn and be outraged about a police officer being killed on the job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the highest death-on-the-job numbers by occupation in the US in 2013, police officer deaths are not even close to the highest magnitude of workplace harm.

Bureau of Labor Statistics Data on Workplace Deaths by Occupation, 2013

Transportation & Material Moving	1,184	27%
Construction & Extraction	818	19%
Installation, Maintenance & Repair	356	8%
Building & Grounds Maintenance	242	5%
Fisheries, Farming & Forestry	225	5%
Law Enforcement	97	2%
TOTAL	4, 405	100%

And if we look beyond workplace deaths to other causes of harm in the US, we can see that our near exclusive focus on street crime and homicides, again, draws out attention away from other sources of harm that cause many, many times more damage to American families and communities.

According to CDC data we need to move very far down the list of leading causes of death in the US in 2013 before we get to homicides.  And the CDC list fails to highlight (among other causes, indented below) what would be third on the CDC list: deaths that result from preventable medical error. 

CDC Data on Leading Causes of Death in US, 2013
Heart Disease	611,105
Cancer	584,881
Preventable Medical Error	210,000*
Respiratory Disease	149,205
Accidents	130,557
Strokes	128,978
Alzheimers	84,767
Diabetes	75,578
Flu	56,979
Nephritis	47,112
Suicide	41,149
All Firearm Deaths	33,363
Homicides	16,121
Gun-Related Homicides	11,208

*Actually best estimates provide a range of deaths due to preventable medical error from 210,000 to 440,000 in 2011.

Indented causes of death on this list were not included in CDC list as separate items.

We invest billions in a failed War on Drugs and a War on Terror that created ISIS in Iraq in response to an attack from Saudi Arabians and focuses on Muslim extremist in the US when most domestic terrorism has been perpetrated by white, right-wing, Christian, males—although these are not the characteristics highlighted in our analysis of terrorism…except when the terrorist is a dark and Muslim.

A report commissioned by the second Bush administration found “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”

Citing data from this report, Thinkprogress reported that “Fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists, as compared to 30 percent by ecoterrorists and 12 percent by Islamic extremists. Right-wing extremism has been responsible for the greatest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. in 13 of the 17 years since the Oklahoma City bombing.”

My point here is not to jump to the conclusion that being the highest source of harm-causing behavior means that this must be the focus of our policy debates and where we invest our tax dollars. 

My point is, given the wide discrepancies between the data on highest sources of harm and what we do debate about and invest in, that we should not merely accept that the issues on our agenda are just given or natural or the only possible options. 

We should expect persuasive explanations from elite agenda-setters and do our best to reduce the most harmful forms of violence victimizing American families and Communities.