A Review of the Literature on Preventive Occupational Health and Safety Activities in Small Enterprises

This study concerned with the characteristics of occupational deaths and injuries in the construction industry of South Korea. The national statistics of industrial accidents in the years 1991-1994 were extracted from the annual publications of the Ministry of Labor. These data were analyzed in terms of the size of company, age of injured person, work experience, accident type, injury type, injured part of body, and agency of accident. The results show that there are some patterns in the characteristics of occupational injuries of construction industry: (1) deaths occur more frequently in the older workers; (2) the most common type of accident is 'falls from a height'; (3) 'fracture' is the leading injury type; (4) the body sites most vulnerable to injury are the leg, foot and toe in the non-fatal injuries, while the head, face, and neck in deaths; (5) most of the accidents occurred from the temporary construction or fabric. The results also show that there are differences in accident characteristics between occupational deaths and nonfatal injuries. These findings identified in this study can be used to decide the accident prevention programs.