Fatalities among British Columbia fallers and buckers 1981-7

In Canada, the forest industry has the highest rate of lost time injury (161 per thousand workers in 1986) and has the highest fatality rate (1.04 per thousand workers in 1986) of all industries. A retrospective case series of fatal accidents occurring among those employed as fallers or buckers in the British Columbia Forest Industry was studied. 87 cases were found and the files of the provincial coroner were accessed to provide data on these accidents. Due to a lack of denominator data, no risk factors could be identified by several hypotheses for future research were developed. These included: the possibility that lack of work experience and young age may play a role in these accidents, the observation that there are "peaks of incidence" just before noon, on Mondays and Thursdays and in January. There was also the surprising finding of the lack of toxicological evidence indicating impairment of any of these workers. Future directions for research are discussed.