AGENCIES: Putting Trivia Ahead of Safety

Each year literally millions of U.S. workers are killed or crippled by job-related injury or disease. Six years ago, Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to solve this pressing industrial problem. But progress has been slow, if measurable at all. Last year 12,400 workers were killed in industrial accidents, not a very significant improvement over the 13,700 who died in 1971, OSHA's first year; another 2.1 million suffered disabling injuries. The Public Health Service in 1973 estimated that there were 390,000 new cases of occupational disease in the U.S. every year, and as many as 100,000 deaths;...

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