NWRA, SWANA review solid waste collection fatalities

The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA), Arlington, Virginia, and the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), Silver Spring, Maryland, reviewed solid waste collection fatalities at a joint safety committee meeting Nov. 12.  

The session covered preliminary results from the research team’s ongoing analysis of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) database on industry fatalities. NWRA is funding and executing this research in collaboration with EREF, the Environmental Research & Education Foundation, in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

Researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, gathered research on solid waste collection fatalities through OSHA data from the past 22 years, with the data covering 2002 to 2023. 

In the meeting, Nicole D. Berge, a University of South Carolina associate professor, took attendees through data the team has gathered. The project is expected to take three years, and Berge said they were halfway through. 

“My research team has been focused on gathering data about fatalities in the solid waste industry and using that information to help gain a more in-depth understanding associated with the circumstances surrounding those fatalities,” she said. 

Berge began by noting that the occupation of refuse and materials collectors is listed as one of the top 10 most dangerous jobs by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Collection-related fatalities 

The project’s current focus is waste collection-related fatalities, which are incidents involving waste collection vehicles, equipment or workers that occurred outside waste management facilities and represent the largest category of fatalities. The category is further divided into subcategories, which are waste collection route activities, collection vehicle maintenance and pre- and postcollection route activities. 

Overall, OSHA-reported solid waste collection fatal incidents from 2002 to 2023 were 469, according to Berge and the project team’s research. Out of the 469, 387 fatalities were collection-related. They categorized 55 of the fatal incidents as maintenance and 27 as off-route.  

The research team further analyzed the data, finding that the majority of fatal incidents occurred in the Northeast U.S. with 153 reported fatalities. The team also found that the majority of fatal incidents happened during a regularly assigned task. 

Waste collection route activities 

Diving deeper into the collection category, Berge showed data from the subcategory waste collection route activities, which represents the largest number of fatal incidents within the category. 

The most common job-related activity being done at the time of fatality is riding on a truck exterior. The next is active collection, then in collection zone, which refers to anything that happens during the collection route other than emptying the waste container in the truck, which is the third most common activity done at the time of fatality. 

To understand the data, Berge said her team used a sequence of events describing the fatality. She said this helps them learn how to mitigate the trigger of the event. The sequence analyzes the preceding event, the first harmful event and the most harmful event of each incident. 

The most common first harmful event in waste collection route activity fatal incidents is “fell from vehicle,” followed by “struck by nonwaste management vehicle.” The research showed 48 percent of waste collection route activity fatalities involved interaction with the waste collection vehicle. 

Fatalities when riding on the truck exterior represented 24 percent of the waste collection-related fatal incidents, and the majority of these incidents happened on a regularly assigned task and were in an urban area while the average age of the person involved was 37. 

Berge detailed the preceding events for riding truck exterior fatalities, with the most common being a worker mounting, riding or moving. An example provided was slipping from or jumping off a step or dismounting into traffic. She also presented data showing which truck type was the most common in the fatal incidents, with 87 percent being rear-loaders. 

The researchers also factored in any citations listed in the OSHA-reported data. Other contributing factors for fatalities include employee decisions and behavior, mechanical issues, surrounding environment, weather and systematic issues. 

Fatalities during active collections 

Slightly lower than waste collection route activity fatalities are fatalities during active collections, also representing 24 percent of incidents. The most common first harmful event in this subcategory is “struck by nonwaste management vehicle” followed by “struck by waste collection vehicle.” 

Rear loaders also were reported as the most common truck type for this category, however, 40 percent of the data from this category could not determine the truck type. 

Improper procedures the researchers found as contributing factors included truck reversing, a brake not set, walking in front of a truck and walking behind a truck. 

Berge said the project’s next steps include accessing data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which the researchers found would potentially add 523 additional cases, though this still needs to be confirmed case by case. 

Other plans for the project include completing a statistical analysis of OSHA collected data, complete analysis of FARS data, merging the OSHA and FARS databases and obtaining combined fatality data, comparing data with BLS and continuing data collection for fatalities at other solid waste facilities.