28-Year Old Construction Worker is Latest to Lose His Life

Another life was taken too-soon, thanks to the construction industry and it’s ever-increasing rate of job-related fatalities. On July 12, 2018, Angel Espinosa, a 28-year-old Staten Island, New York worker was killed after being struck in the head by a steel beam that fell from a scaffolding. Angel Espinosa is sadly another statistic in how often these construction-related deaths occur in New York. According to the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) New York apparently hit a 14-year record high in 2016 when it came to construction-related deaths. Even more frightening is the statistic that the record number of deaths, 71 in 2017, was up 55 deaths since 2015.

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) has outlined the most fatal hazards associated with the construction industry, calling them the “Fatal Four.” While these hazards include falls, electrocution, being struck by an object and being caught in/between machinery, falls were listed as being the leading cause of death amongst the industry’s workers.

In New York alone, a total of “464 construction workers died while on the job.” A lot of this has to due with the high number of safety violations found on these construction sites. According to the NYCOSH, “over 2 in 3 (68%) of sites” were in direct violation of the safety measures that should be implemented across the board.

What is infuriating about these statistics is that most of these fatalities could have been prevented. Willful violations, situations where the employer knew of a hazardous condition or a violation and made no reasonable effort to correct, is a huge factor in the rising numbers of injury and deaths and likewise, could be a reason for its decrease, should and when it happens.