A survey of work related accidents induced death in Public service and Green space laborers of Tehran Municipality in 2004-2005

Work related accidents cause the death of thousands of laborers annually. According to United States National Protection Agency the rate of disabilities resulted from work related accidents have increased from 5.9% in 1961 to 10.87% in 1976. The ILO data shows that in the EU, with the exception of England and Holland, every 6 in 100 thousand workers lost their lives due to work related accidents. The same figure is, 7 in Australia, 7 in Canada, 4 in Japan, 7 in Switzerland, 6 in Austria, 7 in Belgium, 3 in Denmark, 5 in Germany, 4 in Greece, 3 in Holland, 6 in Portugal, 10 in Spain 6 in Sweden and 16 in Turkey. The published data in Iran Shows that 14706 work-related accidents occured in 1982, the mentioned data dosent show the real number of accidents it merely shows those of which reported by work inspectors. The design of the study was case series. Public service and green space laborers of Tehran Municipality who have died during 2004-2005 due to work related accidents were studied. Following the report of each accident a questionnaire containing question about the different aspects of the accident and the characteristics died person was completed by the health inspectors. The questionnaires were gathered and the data was analyzed. Totally 9 cases of deaths following work related accidents were reported in 2004 and 6 cases in 2005 which caused a total number of 67500 person-day work loss in 2004 and 45000 person-day work loss in 2005. Considering the fact that the number of the laborers were 21000 annually, it means 43 deaths in every 100 thousand workers in 2004 and 26 deaths in every 100 thousand workers in 2005. The leading cause of death in 2004 were driving accidents which in 22.5% of them the laborers had not used necessary safety equipments and in 66.5% the drivers were culprit. The remaining 11.5% were due to other reasons. In 2005 the leading cause of death was driving accidents again which in 67% of them the laborers had not used necessary safety equipments and in 33% the drivers were culprit