2014 was the safest year on record for the U.S. aluminum industry, according to recently released data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The report – the BLS Workplace Injury and Illness Summary – showed that the number of recordable workplace safety incidents in the aluminum industry fell to their lowest level since tracking began in the current system in 1994. Recordable incidents declined 17 percent year-over-year in 2014 to a rate of 3.4 per 100 full-time employees while DART (days away from work, restricted, or transferred) cases similarly dropped 16 percent to 2.1 recordable incidents per 100 full time employees that resulted in lost or restricted days or job transfer. Both of these rates surpassed the performance of U.S. manufacturing as a whole which averaged a 4.0 recordable incident rate and 2.2 DART rate in 2014.
These improvements are the continuation of a trend – recordable incidents in the aluminum industry have declined by 48 percent since 2003 and the industry’s DART rate has dropped by 43 percent over that same period. While the Association recognizes that any incident or injury is one too many, the tremendous improvements made by the industry to date are being used as a foundation upon which to drive further improvements on the goal to zero.
The Aluminum Association has a long standing commitment to industry safety and supports a variety of programs to help maintain the safety of aluminum industry employees. Over the past 22 years, the Aluminum Association’s biannual Casthouse Safety Workshop series has trained more than 3,000 aluminum workers on hazard mitigation in the casthouse setting. In 2015, the Association trained more than 180 participants from more than 50 companies – a single-year record.
In addition to sponsoring worker training and extensive research on worker protection and related issues, the Aluminum Association also releases an annual Molten Metal Incident Report to highlight information on hazardous events that occur at facilities melting aluminum. The report is the product of a voluntary program started in 1983 to share safety information among facilities. Although not intended to be statistically representative of the entire industry, the report provides useful information to help guide safety efforts in molten aluminum environments.
Published in the January 2016 Edition of American Recycler News