[Fatal accidents among seamen occuring at sea and on shore]

The objective was to study specific mortality of seamen with particular reference to fatal accidents that occurred other than at sea. The study is a retrospective cohort study. Included in the cohort were 27.884 seamen, both fishermen and sailors from the merchant fleet, who had been members of a pension fund during 1958-1986. Most standardised mortality ratios were greater than 1: 1.26 for all causes and 1.83 for all external causes. There was no healthy worker effect. The excess of deaths from all external causes included all subcategories of death from accidents, poisonings and violence, not just accidents at sea. A significant trend was found for length of employment at sea, accidental poisoning, other accidents, and accidental drowning; correlation coefficients for all causes, all accidents, suicide, and injuries undetermined whether accidentally or purposely inflicted were 0.7-0.8. Compared with seamen who started work during 1968-1977, those who started work in 1978 or later had higher mortality from all causes, road traffic accidents, poisoning, other accidents, homicide, and injuries unknown whether accidentally or purposely inflicted, but not from all accidents at sea and accidental drowning. Seamen seem to be a special group with a high risk of fatal accidents occurring not only at sea. The association between fatal accidents other than at sea and employment time as seamen, indicates that seamen are modified by their occupation in the direction of hazardous behaviour or lifestyle.