Senior Member
Machinist - 8th most dangerous job in America?
I read this article, but have a few bones to pick with it.
Machinist made 8th most dangerous job in America?
How so?
I'd think Mining would be on the list.
Obviously some egg-head journalist wrote this without doing much investigating.
America's 10 most dangerous jobs
Senior Member
I don't know how He came up with the numbers, but some of that sounds a little skewed.
If it is correct however I may be going for some kind of prize for outsmarting Darwin. I fit in the bottom four out of five on the list and if the list was expanded to the top 20 there might be a few more spots I could fill
.
I find it hard to believe that fire fighters, bomb squad, electricians, and highway workers are not on the list ahead of sanitation, machinists and laborers.
Steve
Member
Hello,
As usual the job description is not even close for a machinist. I am not sure anyone knows what a real machinist does !
Surely not these people !
Brian
Toolznthings
Senior Member
It might be worth noting that the annual death rate in the US population at large, was 8.7 or so per 1000 in 2005
That would be 800+ per 100,000.
So being alive at all is 45 or so times more dangerous than being a machinist.
The article is just fluff, it is CNN, after all. Not intended to be a "study".......
Possible political motivation? Since "industrial machinist" requires industry, and industry pollutes and is best sent overseas...... as all progressives know. Annual death rate for web page designers is probably a lot lower....
Senior Member
I think they're talking about a traditional (manual) machinist. All the other categories are classic top 10 high death rate jobs (fisherman, logger, ironworker), so machinist sounds believable.
Edit: It's actually not a fluff piece -- it's a report from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. The "machinist" title is actually very broad: "Industrial machinery installation, repair, and operation":
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf
Last edited by lazlo; 08-29-2010 at 09:43 PM.
"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence."
Senior Member
There is a key difference.....
The graph data you show is for "Industrial machinery installation, repair and maintenance workers".
In other words Millwrights and other related workers, including those who presumably do similar tasks in the repair of machinery.
That is NOT "machinists".
Senior Member
I thought about it for a while, and relying just on my memory I can recall far more cases of people killed in industrial accidents than fighting fires (not counting 9/11) or getting blown up diffusing bombs. In fact, I can't recall a single instance in recent memory of a person getting killed disposing of a bomb outside of a war zone.Originally Posted by doctor demo
Senior Member
Why don't I see Mining on any of these lists?
I always thought that mining (the actual guys who go down into the tunnels, stooped over, with a lamp on their heads) was a dangerous gig.
Senior Member
Many of those mentioned may indeed be machinists. Many machinists do more than just make chips.
Senior Member
but your argument is irrelevant.
They may also moonlight as police officers, or housemovers. Those "might be" items are not counted.
While they are "installing, repairing, or maintaining" machines, they are acting as "mechanics", "millwrights" etc, and NOT performing the tasks of machinists.
The statistics are, or should be, for the "job performed" and not for the name applied to the primary skill training of the person........ The primary task of machinists is not those things described in the graph, so those things "might be done" by some machinists, but are not part of the job category.
If machinists DO those things, they would be counted as risks within the category of "machinists", and not of "millwrights" etc, which the true category is. (in the old days there was much less distinction)
Otherwise these statistics are worse than useless.
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