“A third of the year has already passed and the emergency deaths at work are described by the usual tragic numbers. If the situation does not change, by the end of 2024 we will count over 1,000 victims at work. From January to April 2024 there were 268 victims, 4 more than at the end of April 2023. Compared to the same period last year, commuting deaths increased by +8.8%: it should be highlighted that until March we had recorded a decrease in fatal accidents on the way home to work, unfortunately this trend was not confirmed with the data for the month of April”.
Mauro Rossato, President of the Vega Engineering Workplace Safety and Environment Observatory of Mestre, comments thus on the latest investigation into the emergency developed by his team of experts who, as always, see the incidence as the true indicator of risk for workers in our country , since we are talking about victims compared to the working population. A data that concretely indicates the areas at greatest risk and which is proposed as a valuable mapping for all those who work for safety at work.
Ending up in the red zone in April 2024 with an incidence higher than +25% compared to the national average (Im=Average incidence index, equal to 8.7 workplace deaths per million workers) are: Valle d’Aosta, Trentino- Alto Adige, Emilia-Romagna, Umbria, Puglia, Campania and Calabria.
In the yellow zone: Sardinia, Tuscany, Sicily, Lombardy, Piedmont and Lazio. In the white zone: Liguria, Abruzzo, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Basilicata, Veneto, Marche and Molise.
Also in the first quarter of the year, the Mestre Observatory draws up an identikit of the workers most at risk by age group. And it always does so through mortality rates (per million employed).
A fact, the latter, which continues to be worrying among older workers. In fact, the highest incidence is recorded precisely in the group of workers over sixty-five (34.9), followed by the group of workers between 55 and 64 years of age (13.5).
Foreigners who died at work in the first quarter were 48 out of a total of 206, with a risk of death at work that was almost triple that of Italians. And, in fact, foreigners record 20.2 deaths for every million employed people, compared to the 7.5 of Italians who lose their lives while working.
There are 268 victims at work in Italy, of which 206 at work (1 less than in April 2023) and 62 while commuting (5 more than in April 2023). Still at Lombardy the black shirt goes for the highest number of victims at work (33). Followed by: Emilia-Romagna (28), Campania (20), Puglia (17), Lazio (16), Tuscany and Piedmont (13), Trentino-Alto Adige (12), Veneto and Sicily (11), Calabria (6) , Sardinia and Umbria (5), Liguria (4), Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Abruzzo and Marche (3), Valle d’Aosta (2) Basilicata (1). No fatal accidents occurred in Molise.
At the end of the first quarter of 2024, the Construction sector still recorded the highest number of deaths at work: 41. It is followed by Manufacturing Activities (25), Transport and Warehousing (19), Trade (11 ).
The age group numerically most affected by fatal accidents at work is between 55 and 64 years (69 out of a total of 206).
There were 12 women who lost their lives while working at the end of April 2024, while 7 lost their lives while traveling, i.e. on the home-work journey.
There were 48 foreigners who died at work, while 14 died due to an accident while commuting.
Tuesday appears to be the most mournful day of the week, i.e. the one on which the most fatal accidents occurred in the first quarter of the year (21.8%).
Total injury reports grew by 3.6% compared to April 2023. In fact, they were 187,324 at the end of April 2023, in 2024 they rose to 193,979. Even at the end of April 2024, the highest number of total complaints comes from Manufacturing Activities (22,299); followed by: Construction (10,913), Healthcare (10,873), Transport and Warehousing (10,072) and Commerce (9,759).
In April 2024, female workers reported injuries to 70,733, while those from male colleagues were 123,246. Reports of accidents at work (therefore excluding commuting accidents) were 165,249 at the end of April 2024: 56,341 were women and 108,908 men. Reports of accidents at work among Italians are 133,297, while among foreigners there are 31,952. The age group most affected when working and commuting is between 45 and 54 years old with 41,613 complaints (21.5% of the total).
