Workplace less deadly - By FRANK GREVE, Monterey County Herald, CA
While the overall workplace-fatality numbers show dramatic improvement in the last generation, they also show that the gains are unequal. Fatalities among Hispanic men, for example, are up, especially in the South, whose workplaces are more dangerous than the rest of the nation's, according to Dana Loomis, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health in Chapel Hill.
Loomis and other researchers theorize that Hispanics generally do more dangerous work for less safety-conscious employers and aren't as well trained due to language problems.
The South's longer outdoor work season in hazardous fields such as construction and timber probably is a factor in its higher workplace-fatality rates. Toscano and Loomis also noted the South's abundance of small, rural and non-union companies, whose owners, they say, tend to invest less in safety.