While all California businesses are required to take certain safety precautions in order to protect their employees, there are some professions where employees will always be at risk for injury. If an employee does become injured while on the job, there are certain steps that should be taken.
Steps an employer can take if an employee becomes injured
Dealing with occupational hearing loss in California
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hearing loss is the third-most common chronic condition in older American adults. It afflicts 11 percent of the working population, and 24 percent of cases involving workers' hearing loss occurred due to noise exposure at their job sites. Any noise that is louder than 85 decibels is considered to be hazardous.
Preventing injuries while erecting walls
Many California construction workers are involved in erecting and installing both interior and exterior walls as a routine part of their jobs. Unfortunately, numerous accidents occur every year when workers fall while doing so.
Daylight saving time causes increase in workplace injuries
Each spring, most people, including California residents, set their clocks ahead one hour. Research based on the U.S. Department of Labor and Mine Safety and Health Administration injury data from 1983 to 2006 suggests that the hour of sleep lost due to daylight saving time could be tied to the 5.7 percent spike in workplace injuries that occurred the day following each daylight saving time change. In addition to a greater number of injuries, researchers say injuries were more severe and caused a loss of nearly 68 percent more workdays.
California worker safety and nail gun hazards
Although nail guns are both easy to use and help increase job productivity, they pose special hazards to workers due to the velocity of the nail's discharge from the gun. Workers should thus be aware of the risks involved with nail guns and to take steps in order to minimize their risks of injury.
Vibration and workplace injuries in California
While most California employees are probably aware of the possibility of having a workplace accident and becoming injured, they may not first think of the types of injuries they might suffer due to long-term exposure to vibration in the workplace. Vibration injuries, however, are a very real and documented type of workplace injury, commonly affecting people who use power tools as a part of their daily jobs.
Why falls continue to be a problem in the workplace
In California and around the country, falls are a persistent hazard in workplace settings. A serious fall can occur even when a worker is just walking through the building or trying to change a light bulb. According to information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 605 workers were killed and approximately 212,000 more were injured as a result of falls in 2009.
Man trapped in concrete pipe for more than 2 hours
It took more than two hours for emergency crews to free a construction worker trapped in a concrete pipe in California. The incident occurred shortly before 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 8 when a construction worker was performing some type of work in an underground pipe. Emergency personnel were not clear as to how the man became stuck in the pipe, but the original call that came in was for a person trapped in a confined space near the area of Starlight Avenue and Oak Valley Parkway.
Workers' comp for California employees with herniated discs
Many California workers may find themselves in need of workers' compensation if they sustain a herniated lumbar disc injury while on the job. A herniated disc occurs in the connected bones or vertebrae of the spine. Vertebrae are held together by strong and cushioned connective tissues called discs. These discs are made of a hard outer shell and filled with gel-like watery substance that absorbs impact from movement.
Why do CA Workers' Compensation Insurers Deny Doctors' Recommended Medical Treatment?
Today, CAAA releases the second infographic in our series comparing medical care, UR, IMR, amount spent on overhead and other measures of quality patient care in group health vs. workers' compensation insurance. California's workers' compensation insurance system suffers in comparison. There are problems with group health insurance, but they are nothing compared to California workers' compensation insurance. Today, we continue the comparison by showing the avalanche of Utilization Review (UR) denials in workers' compensation - more than 1,748 times that of group health, for 15 million fewer patients! We know that this unjustified constant denial by UR is a concerted effort by insurers to delay and deny paying for doctors' recommended medical care.
