Alcohol-related fatalities dropped from 16.020 to 15,786.

Alcohol-related fatalities among youths age 15 to 20 rose from 2,219 to 2,238.

Fatalities involving trucks and passenger cards dropped.

Fatalities involving light trucks and motorcycles increased. So did speed-related fatalities.

Seat-belt use reached 71 percent in 1999, the highest ever. The DOT also reports what everybody knows, but which some people like to deny: Seat belts really do save lives.

The DOT found that 57% of people killed in car and light truck crashes last year were unbelted.

Total fatalities increased from 41,501 to 41, 611 , or 114 a day. From the Record Newspaper 11/09/00

Jobs Covered by the New Ergonomics Standard

Within general industry, OSHA is applying the proposed rule to the following three areas, where the problem of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD)is especially likely to appear:

• Manufacturing production jobs;
• Manual handling jobs requiring forceful exertions; and
• Jobs where OSHA recordable MSDs meeting a screening criteria have been reported.

Examples of jobs that typically are:

· Manufacturing jobs
· Assembly line jobs producing products, subassemblies, components and parts
· Paced assembly jobs (assembling and disassembling)
· Piecework assembly jobs
· Product inspection jobs
· Meat, poultry and fish cutting and packing
· Machine operation
· Machine loading/unloading
· Apparel manufacturing line jobs
· Food preparation assembly line jobs
· Commercial baking jobs
· Cabinetmaking
· Tire building

Examples of jobs that typically are manual handling jobs:

· Patient handling jobs (i.e. nurses aids, orderlies, nurse assistants)
· Package sorting, handling and delivering
· Hand packing and packaging; baggage handling (i.e. porters, airline baggage handlers, airline check-in)
· Warehouse manual picking and placing
· Beverage delivering and handling
· Grocery store bagging
· Grocery store stocking
· Garbage collecting

Remember, the program is job-specific, not company-specific. Simply because you have an employee in a position that is identified by OSHA as requiring an ergonomics program does not mean you must now evaluate every employee in each of their jobs.