Falls in the Workplace | Falls

Why it’s important

Fall injuries are a common workplace injury.

The construction industry experiences the highest frequency of fall-related deaths. These deaths are mostly falls from heights.

The highest counts of nonfatal fall injuries are in the educational and health services and the healthcare and social assistance industries. These injuries are mostly slips and falls on the same level.

Other industries at high risk of fall injuries include:

Nursing and residential care
Ambulance services
Building cleaning and maintenance
Transportation and material moving

Fact

In 2020, 805 workers died from falls.1 211,640 suffered severe injuries requiring days away from work in the private industry.2

Impacts

Fall injuries create a considerable financial burden. In the United States, workers’ compensation and medical expenses associated with workplace falls are estimated to cost $70 billion annually.3

Other countries face similar challenges in the workplace. In fact, the international public health community has a strong interest in developing strategies to reduce fall injuries.

National campaign to prevent falls

Falls are the number one cause of construction worker fatalities. The goal of the national campaign is to prevent fatal falls. Each year as part of the campaign, there is a National Stand-Down focusing on fall prevention.

Safety risks

Falls in the workplace frequently involve:

Unprotected edges
Unsafely positioned ladders
Misused fall protection
Water, grease, and other contaminants on the floor
Clutter and tripping hazards in walkways
Irregularities in the floor and wall openings

Prevention

Federal regulations and industry consensus standards provide specific measures and performance-based recommendations for fall prevention and protection. However, persistent unsafe practices and low safety culture across many industries define steady fall injury rates each year.

Reducing fall injury and death rates require:

Implementing new effective fall prevention and protection technologies
Using appropriate PPE like harnesses, fall guards, and slip-resistant footwear4
Improving the work safety culture by educating the workforce

These efforts require continued collaboration from:

Regulators
Industry leaders
Professional associations
Labor unions
Employers and employees
Safety professionals
Researchers

What CDC is doing

As a leader in occupational safety research, NIOSH plays a key role in these complex fall-injury prevention efforts. NIOSH bases fall-injury prevention research strategic planning and goal setting on:

The magnitude or emergence of the problem as shown by data
Immediacy of need
Resources and expertise available to work on the problem
Current research
Strength of partnerships
Status and momentum on research-to-practice efforts

Input from the National Academy of Sciences program review enhances the strategic planning process.

Resources

Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) Reports

Review Falls related NIOSH FACE and State FACE reports for recommendations to prevent similar deaths in CDC Stacks. View by Collection (NIOSH/FACE) or search for reports using keywords in the search bar.

More on falls

See the NIOSHTIC-2 database search results on falls. NIOSHTIC-2 is a database of occupational safety and health publications funded in whole or in part by NIOSH.

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