Hazardous working conditions can cost employees an arm and a leg - or worse. But until recently, the government put little value on the loss of life and limb. In 1986, Cleveland King and a co-worker were killed in Atlanta, Ga., when an unsupported concrete-block wall collapsed, crushing them both to death. The company was fined $2. In 1989, four workers were injured in an explosion at the Phillips 66 Houston Chemical Complex in Pasadena, Texas.
Two of the four died. The company was fined $720. In 1989, Richard Spencer was crushed to death by a forklift at Bethlehem Steel Corp. in Sparrows Point, Md. The company was fined $585. These were among the many facts unearthed in Occupational Safety and Health Administration data by Mike Casey and Russell Carollo in a series that ran four years ago in the Dayton Daily News. This year, Virginia Baldwin Hick and Natalya Shulyakovskaya of the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch found there are still good stories in OSHA records. Hick first used OSHA data in a spring St. Louis Post-Dispatch series that examined local workplace falls that resulted in fatalities. Hick said, "I cut my teeth in computer-assisted reporting by using OSHA data." In a Sept. 4 St. Louis Post-Dispatch story, Hick and Shulyakovskaya used OSHA data to document the organization's progress nationally in deterring workplace accidents.
In 1991, after OSHA violations had peaked in 1990, Congress increased fines. Since then, accident and fatality rates have been declining.